Midnight Musings

So I’m sitting here wondering why I do the things that I do. My greatest curiosity at the moment however is why I wonder why I do what I do at all. It seems to be a uniquely human trait to ponder one’s own existence and be so captivated by its mystery. I can’t quite tell if my dog knows why he exists and that’s why he is content, or if he just simply doesn’t care. There are many days that I think it’s the latter, but I don’t know what either of the conditions would really look like, so who’s to say?

Conclusion: I turn on an odd record that I haven’t listened to in ages, thinking that maybe I’ll just be content to sit; content to think of someone else’s melodies and lyrics.

Nope. I’m still wondering why I turned it on.

One cannot both dissect a thing and keep it whole. We can discuss which would be the greater good in a given circumstance, but we cannot think that they are the same or that we can simultaneously have both.

I am prone to enjoying only the first type of good. I suffer the vice of, as Chesterton would put it, “trying to get the heavens into my head”, and as he says, it’s “my head that splits.” I think I err in thinking I must comprehend something in order to thoroughly enjoy it. My sister said “You don’t have to enjoy something in order to enjoy it.” As contradictory as that sounds, it really hit my dilemma on the head: I try so hard to enjoy a thing to its comprehended fullness that I often seem to fail to perhaps just enjoy, I guess you could say, the novelty of it.

Hmmm…I guess it’s something to keep working on.

PS. Here’s a poem by C.S. Lewis that, for whatever reason, encouraged me tonight.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and
through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my
turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love-a scholar’s parrot may talk
Greek-
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late)
my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was
making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is
breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other
gains.