Thick, the Clouds

Bene --

Coming back from depression.  Again.

It's always a question of "How" for me - some people may well have a facility of pluck or discipline or grit that allows them to throw a stern, guiding hand over their individual selves and steer this way or that, independent of their emotions - and despite having tried feebly over the years to nurture such a facility in my Self - I lack such a power.  I only encounter something like it in the depths of depression, something that says, "No, all the rhymes and platitudes of others fail; I have the choice, to try to live or to take myself away."  And thereafter I only arise from those depths by accepting my weaknesses and nursing myself with positives - I live, I breathe, I am not among the worst off, I grow old but am still able to get by, I enjoy little but can still enjoy nonetheless.  So the first is somewhat on the order of the Existential, but the second is decidedly Epicurean!  And then, in my silly & superficial profession, I style myself Stoic:  taking as a base that there is ultimately one universe, that some to-us-more-or-less-magical basis informs it, that causation exists and eliminates mere chaos, that the order of things cares not a fig for human lives or frailties, and so on.

Reason, if at the base of things, is something we discover and apply, as best we can.  But being human, it is not the Reason of the Cosmos that I cultivate, but that of a human being -- social, individual, and imperfect like all palpable things.

Valete.

Getting Past the 'Question' - Getting On With It

Salvete.  

There is - at least for some - a bafflement or a wonder, first that life should be upsetting and hard, and then later, that there should even be anything recognizable at all, given that chaos and hardship apparently have dominion in the Earth. Do the wretched exist simply to allow the existance of the felicēs? The answer would be a resolution to the question of God, among other things; it would inform us of the meaning of life. 

But it is an answer not forthcoming.  Its question cannot be resolved by human beings; our self-interest precludes objectivity; our mortal and physical limitations preclude full understanding. We can only draw lessons from what we see and what we can reason out. Thus the general question -- "Why? - "Why this, why not something better, or something even worse? Why anything at all?" -- while it frequently poses itself to our pattern-seeking, answer-seeking species, it is not one that should be asked too earnestly, for it admits of no reliable answer. 

In light of this, the proper question becomes, instead, "How?". "How shall we live? How should we live? How can we make the best of an unfortunate situation?"  

Valete.