January 7, 2012
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Deep space and time
Yesterday I wafted here and there, exploring the places that people go. If I go a lot of places in one day, by the end of it I feel like I am in all those places at once, and the world seems huge and exploding with life. The sky was big too, yesterday, and contrails raced across it like the students who glided across campus.
In the library there is this room called the quiet room. I’m not sure if it’s called the quiet room, but everyone is quiet in it, so it might as well be called the quiet room. It is large and cavernous and if you zip up your bookbag everyone knows it and looks at you. One of the hardest times I have ever laughed was when my friend Erik said he wanted to bring a typewriter in there, and then when people would look at him because of the really loud keys he would say, ‘What? I’m writing a paper.’
I was thinking about old things yesterday. I found a collection of Atlantic Monthly in big hardbound books that go back to 1912. The first thing I thought is, wow, the joke is on people who paid for subscriptions all those years, because I can look at them for free. The second thing I thought is, I should read one of these.
I took out one from 1934 and sat down in the quiet room. The first article I flipped open to was about all the things humans had found about the universe recently. Until recent they had thought there was only the Milky Way, but telescopes had determined that there were myriads of ‘island-universes’ out there, spiraling just like the Milky Way at enormous velocities. The author was trying to advocate for creations of bigger telescopes to find even more things, but I was thinking ‘Wow, in 1934 we had just found out about other galaxies’.
Most of the time I think about history I imagine that people have always known about other galaxies. But if arriving means knowing where you are, then humans really only just got here.
I continued to flip through the yellowing pages, which were soft and tore very easily, and I found an article by a man who was asked by the editor of the magazine to explain why he was a Christian. The article was enchanting, and ended with this:
“There died, last Eastertide, in Virginia, a man who had given his life to teaching young men—Dr. W Crosby Bell. As a religious philosopher he faced frankly the problems of faith. The evening before he died he asked to know the truth, and he was told that he could not recover. Before he lapsed into unconsciousness he insisted on dictating a message to his students. I pass it on, in the hope that it may encourage and strengthen others in the pathway to faith. ‘Tell the boys,’ he said ‘that I have grown surer of God every day of my life, and I’ve never been so sure as I am now. Why, it’s all so! It’s a fact; it’s a dead certainty . . . I’ve always thought so, and now that I’m up against it, I know . . . Tell them I say “good-bye”—they’ve been a joy to me. I’ve had more than any man that ever lived, and life owes me nothing. I’ve had work I loved and I’ve lived in a beautiful place among congenial friends. I’ve had love in its highest form and I’ve got it forever. I can see now that death is just the smallest thing—just an incident—and it means nothing. I know.“
As I read that article I slowly woke up. By the end, I felt like I had remembered all the reasons why I worship. Those fading moments, when a man is given to honesty about all that he has been given here on earth, light the way for us who do not have the benefit of death’s immediate presence.
It was a strange day and it gave me a whispery feeling of truths around each corner. The universe stretches far outward and the past stretches far backward and life reaches far inward. What a curious place man occupies in the picture of all things.
Later, as I drifted off to sleep in an armchair on the warm and bright afternoon, the words slowly descended on my mind, you cannot be sad and grateful at the same time. And that’s when I realized, you need a lot of justification to be sad. Look around: are there really more things in this world that you can hate than you can love?
Don’t forget to be happy.
Comments (7)
“Don’t forget to be happy.” Yes, so often we forget that, no matter the circumstances, it is very much one’s own decision whether or not one is happy. Thank you for that reminder.
It’s great to be thankful for life.
Way cool…really enjoyed reading this.
You’re a brilliant writer!
To make happiness as the end is overrated. I don’t know if you have ever experienced unrequited love? Well, there’s no happiness in that, only sadness. You can be grateful for the experience, but it is a sad experience nonetheless.
I think you *can* be grateful and be sad at the same time. I’ve had my heart broken one too many times, and it’s not just about romantic relationships, but friendships, too. The ones who promised to never cut me off from their lives, and yet were the first ones to loathe me. That is a good justification to be sad.
And sad is not equal to hate. Just because you are sad about a broken friendship doesn’t mean you hate the person. You just wish the friend and you to be reconciled, but it doesn’t mean hate.
That part about the philosopher—he sounds like so many “spiritual” people who claim to know God, but connect Him with astronomy, or astrology. To know God is to understand the Trinity, the Ten commandments, of God’s infinite love, not some long-winded quote about the cosmos. God is God. He should not be commercialized or socialized to fit in with your moods, or how awesome the constellations are. Being a believer takes a lot more suffering and a lot more obedience than that.
@Carmel Jamaica -
I definitely don’t mean happiness is the end – and I wish there had been another word to use besides ‘happy’. It’s like Bob Dylan said – happy is a yuppie word. You’re either blessed or unblessed. We should see what we have as gifts from God. And that’s what I mean by sad – when sadness takes over, and it makes you forget about what friendships you do have. I do that a lot.
I don’t know anything about that philosopher, but the man who wrote the article started straight away by saying he wasn’t a philosopher. He spent the article talking about faith, Scripture, Jesus, and the ten commandments. And if he respected that philosopher, I hope the philosopher wasn’t just a philosopher, but a disciple of Christ who obeyed even when it was difficult.
“Just because you are sad about a broken friendship doesn’t mean you hate the person.”
oo definitely not! Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that people were the thing being hated. Not what I meant at all.
I like your comments. They are very incisive.
@StrokeofThought - I don’t think you understand. Of course I do not neglect the friendships I do have when sadness takes over. But that’s it, I do not have many friends. I’ve got like 250 friends on my list, but I only interact with around 2-4 people. The rest either don’t bother to talk to me, and highschool and college friends who do nothing but drink and go bar hopping. I’m only “friends” with them in Facebook because its necessary to have a couple of classmates you get to keep in touch.
My life is like dark chocolate. It’s chocolate. And everyone loves chocolate, but its bitter. Not really my type, because I love milk chocolate with almonds. Always with any kind of nut. And its not like I don’t have fun in my life–I do. Just that it does get very lonely, and there are those times when not even books (no matter how much I love them) can remedy what I feel. And no, it’s not about a hunger for God either. I’m not an atheist. I do believe in God, and I pray and talk to Him. I am just not blessed and lucky in the love department.
Here’s to the ongoing road to being a bachelorette.