I'm pretty sure today is a beautiful day. It's still morning, so it's not quite deep enough into the day to tell, but I think it will be. And I don't mean beautiful as in sunny and warm and refreshing with a slight breeze. I'm not talking about the weather. I think today is going to be beautiful for all its mundane moments. Today's little things-- books to read, places to go, food to eat-- have started to gather and it's gonna be good. I can tell.
In class today, a student challenged how people create meaning out of commonplace things. He noted that as people draw substance and salvation from their simplest experiences, they are creating false depth, contriving substance from its opposite, forcing consequence and fate and beauty and God. These people, characters, authors, or otherwise are all too earnest in their disingenuous need for depth, he says.
And you know what, to heck with all of that, I want to create meaning and substance and depth from nothing. I want to do it everyday. I want to live my life looking for redemption in a sprinkler and transcendence in the steam rising from a pot of boiling water. I want to look for God in the rain that is just about to drop from the heavy clouds at this very moment.
So maybe I am talking about the weather.
4 comments:
yeah, to heck with that!
This is crazy--but I was just writing about this yesterday. Talking about the weather represents the most mundane conversation and thought in our culture. But I couldn't agree with you more,there is nothing contrived about the happiness that results from living a simple life in a world you find beauty in. I have been infinitely more happy since I learned to treasure the small moments--sometimes there are bigger things to celebrate, but sometimes there aren't. The small depth has saved me.
Brittany-- Let's talk about weather conversations. I have written/ started to write/ want to finish/ an essay about weather. There is a segment in this pseudo-essay about weather as the most common, mundane conversation and what that says about us. It is the single external thing that we all, every one of us, experience. Right? Weather-- what a unifying thing.
This is why we are where we are, in this program, studying about how to find beauty in the mundane and find connections in everything. and reading this, I know even more why I like you so much :)
Happy essaying!
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