Me: December 2004 Archives

I've always thought that the key to having more in life is wanting less.

I wish I could live it as well as I can say it.

I am mulling over what I heard a writer named Amos Oz talk about in an interview on Fresh Air. He spoke eloquently about growing up in Palestine in the 1940's and 1950's. He talked about the dreams that Jews living in Palestine had for the Jewish state that they longed for. They believed the society they would create would be more just, more compassionate, more democratic, more socialist, more tolerant, more everything beautiful than any other society on earth. He said the worst disappointment was seeing their collective dreams dashed. He suggested that the best thing in life was simply to dream, but to never try and live the dream out. It was a sad thought to me, that the best fantasies and dreams of life can only be ruined by trying to live them out. I have some great dreams. I am compelled to live out some of them at the very least. I would rather be disappointed by the gritty truth of reality than to always wonder.

There are some words I occasionally get dropped from my daily vocabulary by virtue of disuse. It reminds me of the feature in Windows where a menu item which is not frequently used will be hidden from view. If you stop in my office and I'm mumbling something like "I know there is a way to add a table in Word, I've seen it somewhere", you'll know this feature has struck again. BTW, I do know how this behavior can be fixed, so don’t feel a need to send me Windows registry tips.

Some words don't get added to the play list simply because they seem a bit pompous to say out loud. I also run into words which I am comfortable writing but am unsure of the pronunciation for some reason. For instance, consider the word prurient. I have a problem where I know the correct pronunciation, but when I get to the point where I’m actually going to say this word out loud, I panic at the last minute and say "pureyent" instead of "proorient".

Ennui is definitely in this category. It has a pronunciation which seems very different from the spelling and it also seems like a bit of a pompous word to use daily. If I have to explain a word to half the people I talk to it seems a little embarrassing. I don't want to become someone else’s word of the day calendar.

I have been feeling sporadic flashes of ennui lately. I don't think it's caused by depression, but rather by having too much in my life.

Reminds me of an interesting essay, touching on this topic conceptually, posted on kuro5hin.org recently. The article was entitled "Are You A Comfort Addict"?

Like most of what gets posted to kuro5hin, the article didn't entirely make sense, but it did make some points about how the act of having excess in one's life made it harder to enjoy the pleasures of life completely. The article suggested that if you really want to enjoy a great meal, then gorging yourself before hand was not the effective way to achieve that result.

I think this explains part of why I like camping. There is so little stuff to weigh me down. The pleasures of backpacking when they arrive seem transcendant as they follow closely on the heels of walking with a thirty pound pack on your back.