My momma always told me life was like a box of chocolates. But she never explained to me how a simile worked - which made that saying confusing due to my developmental disability.
Taking the statement 'life is like a box of chocolates' at face value though, that doesn't make very much sense either. I'm familiar with the biological concept of life. And I'm familiar with boxes of chocolate. But as far as I've noticed, there are no metabolic processes going on inside any boxes of chocolate.
Perhaps she was talking about one's subjective experience of life. By which she would have meant what? Consciousness? Maybe she was intimating that both animate and inanimate objects are illusory abstractions of some sort of global consciousness. That'd be profound, I suppose. Not terribly useful, but profound...
But no, that is not what she meant. And I know that is not what she mean because she would expressly state that was not what she meant. Waylaying any hint of broaching the profound, she would always explain that 'life was like a box of chocolates' because 'you never know what you're going to get'.
Now, I don't know if you've ever had a box of chocolates. And I don't want to spoil it for you if you have not. But what is inside of a box of chocolates is not that terribly surprising. If you get a box of chocolates, typically, inside will be an assortment of delicious chocolates. There's really not much variation from that formula: box of chocolates = a box with chocolates inside.
Certainly, with life, you really never do know what you are going to get. Life is full of surprises. But no one, to my knowledge, has ever opened a box of chocolates and instead of finding a number of cocoa and sugar based candies, they died of blood cancer.
So, I'm not certain as to what mother meant with that 'life is like a box of chocolates' business. But it sure was nice of her to subject herself to getting raped by that principal to get me into private school.
Earlier this year Cameron Crowe and Ridley Scott directed a movie called "Pearl Jam 20" based on the twenty-year career of our old favorite band. It was released in the height of our most recent and grown-up bout with existential despair. To those who know the Pearl Jam, the film chronicles their storied career with never before seen backstage clips of early concerts, candid interviews with members of the band and live "fan cam" footage of the Roskilde disaster, which we will use as our point of reference in discussing Pearl Jam's existential crisis and how it parallels our own.
Is this just another day? This god forgotten place. First comes love and then comes pain. Let the games begin.
The first hint of an existential crisis we ever had was in college. After not completing multiple papers, it became obvious there was no way to escape a failing grade in two introductory level English courses. It wasn't the first time we experienced academic difficulties - the downward slide began in high school and only got worse at college number two. We knew what depression was and had felt that before, but this was worse. Before it was about personal frustrating/failing with a backdrop of unpleasant circumstances out of our control. Now the direness of the situation led to a loosening of our grip on the plan, the path, we had been holding onto our whole lives. If we fail out of college, then what?
At the same time as we were loosing our grasp on academia we tightened our grips on existentialism. We read Being and Nothingness by Sartre over breakfast every morning and mentally explored the true senselessness of existence. We also read the Arusha Accords to get a better handle on what precipitated the Rwandan genocide. Belief in god, fate or UN intervention had disappeared years ago, but it's much different to feel how pointless our existence is than to just consider it as a theoretical point. When the immediate and (always fleeting) pain of this life hits us, we have to stop and consider why we walk down this path of our lives, no matter how loosely defined it might be.
Is this just another phase? Earthquakes making waves.
Trying to shake the cancer off. Stupid human beings.
The pain of being (and playing) Alive hit Pearl Jam on June 30, 2000. At that point as a band they were mature and somewhat listless, like a single dad in his 40s who hasn't seen his kids in fifteen years. The mainstream popularity of the early and mid nineties were gone and that year's Binaural was their worst album to date. Though it included gems like Light Years, Thin Air and eventual acoustic favorite Of The Girl and was the first new Pearl Jam album we purchased on release day since Vs., it still sounded dark and ugly. The rockers "rocked" only in a technical sense. We loved Nothing As It Seems at the time, but in retrospect just doesn't hold up compared to any of Yield's singles released two years prior. As the PJ20 narrative states, things were already a bit rocky before they hit the stage in the medieval capital of Denmark.
It's an art to live with pain. Mix the light into grey.
Lost nine friends we'll never know. Two years ago today.
History might never know who was actually responsible for the crowd surge that suffocated nine people during the rush to the stage. The organizers of the Roskilde Festival blamed Pearl Jam. The police blamed no one. The families of the victims blamed Anders Breivik. The correct answer was to blame the mentality of crowds, which as always is excitable, ugly and contagious at the same time. Would Pearl Jam blame themselves?
In 1996 Eddie Vedder said during a concert in New York at the base of World Trade Center Building 7:
"I just want to address y'all again - you know, if someone got hurt until the point that they weren't living anymore, I don't think I could ever play again. Some bands go on - we couldn't. Music is not that important."
Until this event, Pearl Jam were going through all the motions you would expect from a band of their stature and composition trying to navigate the music industry, maintain artistic credibility and earn a livelihood. Roskilde and the guilt associated with it, came like a gust of wind to knock them off the path they had spent ten years creating as a band. The nine who suffocated probably would have preferred the wind to gust in their direction, but their unceremonious deaths earned them an escape from this world and the song "Love Boat Captain." Pearl Jam's existential crisis is fully documented PJ20, including how they came out of it to grow stronger as a band.
Are we as strong? We are individuals, not a collective group of people writing and singing songs for an even larger, less collected group. Our problem is not just should we continue as a band but should we continue as human beings? By continue, we don't have to just mean "continue living" since being alive is the perpetual state for all of us not part of the 3322 Fetal-Americans aborted every day. We can make the choice to kill ourselves before our eventual deaths (as certainly some of those 3322 do) but less extreme are the other choices we can make, such as foregoing the day to day activities of our life that suddenly lose all meaning in and of themselves or as means to a similarly meaningless end.
And the young they can lose hope cause they can't see beyond today.
The wisdom that the old can't give away.
Hey, constant recoil. Sometimes life don't leave you alone.
After our worst semester of college we finally began to lose it. It isn't just our frustration with ourselves and the inability to perform academically but a growing fear that even if we succeed there would be nothing waiting for us. The questions start to change from "Why can't I do this?" to "Why am I trying to do this?" We sheepishly break up with up with our romantic partners and suffer through our part time employment like the zombies of those full time adults you see in a county elections board office. We know our behavior is irrational and borderline self-destructive but it also feels like these real-life, immediate problems have forced us to confront meaninglessness. We're miserable but also feel like we can see the stark reality of life and human existence better than before. It feels liberating.
Existential crisises, like financial, do eventually abate and the more well off you are the better you come out of it. External factors knock us into despair but external factors also bring us back to the ephemeral world where we worry about money, the search for love, friendships, economic justice, who green lighted "the Marriage Ref," 90's music and other bullshit that doesn't matter because nothing matters. Note that the search for love and economic justice - what Bertrand and Nipsy Russell would both agree should be two of the most important things we devote our life to - are placed in the same realm as "The Marriage Ref." This might sound like blasphemy but we needn't be stoned to death in Lahore to recognize this truth and get beyond it.
That when all is lost there will be you.
Cause to the universe I don't mean a thing.
And there's just one word I still believe and it's love.
Roskilde produced an existential crisis for Pearl Jam as a band in the same way being unemployed and watching Syrians die to overthrow their government produces an existential crisis in us. Because even though nothing matters, some things (giving your life fighting against an oppressive government) just seem to matter more. Love can also be one of those things, with two caveats. The first is that we sometimes feel as if a long-term emotionally fulfilling relationship is impossible. That makes us despair more but also clears away the pining and the loneliness. Conversely, searching for love can be a distraction from true existential despair that we sometimes need. How can we force ourselves to accept meaningless if we find what feels like meaning in a partner or - in the case of our Mormon and Catholic friends - multiple partners? Finding love might alleviate our immediate suffering but it certainly doesn't alleviate the larger suffering of this pitiful species.
Saul Alinsky said that once we accept our own deaths we're free to live and only care about our lives in so far as we can use them to tactically promote a cause we believe in. Is it worth fighting for democracy and against oppression if all suffering (including ours) doesn't really matter in the long run? Our species and civilization will likely be long gone in 100 years, if not sooner. In the scope of human history and in our current world economy, most of us were born on at least second base - though out of that group not all think we hit a double. Those of us who know better should probably follow the advice of modern philosophers/scientists/shamans like Sam Harris who create a haphazard sense of morality: maximize pleasure/happiness of all beings and minimize harm. It might seem like transitioning from a discussion of existential despair towards moral imperatives is logically inconsistent, but unless we kill ourselves what choice do we have?
Eddie explains Love Boat Captain and talks about the Roskilde incident.
The band plays Love Boat Captain at their 20th anniversary show in Wisconsin this year.
Life’s meaning is relative to whatever and whoever you are. That is because life is inherently meaningless. Please don’t take that as nihilistic or cynical. The fact is that it just objectively has no inherent meaning. That’s OK though because we project meaning onto our own existence, because that is all we can do. We exist. And we have to justify to ourselves why we continue to exist everyday instead of not existing. Sometimes it is a very hard endeavor. But most days it does not enter into the equation. The following is an inexhaustive list of the meaning of life to me:
Watching the Thursday night line up on NBC, save ‘Whitney’
Checking Facebook to see what people have thought enough of me to make an interaction
Picking up my daughter from kindergarten and trying to make her laugh before we get home by suggesting that for show and tell she take a roll of toilet paper, and share with each classmate, one sheet
Checking in with my grandmother to assure her that I am still alive
Looking at exotic places on Google maps and concocting bizarre schemes of how I’d drive there
Buying a sack of 20 limes from the Mexican supermarket on my street for one dollar and feeling like I’ve won the lottery
Reading comedy that my friends write
Studying law and thinking how the accepted principles can be changed for the better
Watching Judge Judy and better understanding my follies than I would through studying law…
Watching Redtube whenever no one else is here
Eating the Indonesian instant noodles that I paid thirty cents for in Chicago by the Aragon Ballroom and feeling like I saved 8 dollars.
Throwing away the scraps of my daughter’s ‘projects’
Watching my daughter sleep and reflecting on how I can be a better parent
Re-reading Chekov or ‘Cruel Shoes’ when I should be doing my assigned school readings
Meeting an incredibly beautiful person I know I have no chance with
Realizing that everything is and always has been and always will be OK
Pissing a human in a car off for breaking for a squirrel
Trying to remember my ‘native’ Romanichal phrases for everyday expressions
Drinking Clover Valley diet soda
Helping friends whenever possible
Driving while listening to Earwolf podcasts
Listening to Bob Dylan and feeling morose
Smiling at everyone I have the strength to smile at
Beating my daughter mercilessly at Wii Mario Kart
Trying to love everything about this godforsaken world
The most important question philosophers and televangelists can answer is the meaning of life. They've never been able to but in this special debate for existential week, Bryan and Glenn finally answer it. No more wondering.
Glenn:
Every day of my life I wake up and hope there's a reason to get out of
bed. Some sort of larger meaning, a point to all the pointless bullshit
that comprises our day to day lives. But there isn't. Even though people
search for meaning and think they find it in coffee, habitual marijuana
usage and listening to chillwave, it's all a facade. We are animals who
were created on accident and thus nothing we do can ever be right or
wrong. That’s why I listen to Thom Yorke’s solo stuff and smoke pot.
Bryan:
Well that’s where I have to disagree, not just with the illicit drug
use and endorsement of the antimusic genre of “chillwave,” but also with
the idea that life is pointless and has no real meaning. Honestly, a
few years back, I was just like you: directionless, depressed, always
looking for my next “high” or something that would trigger one of my
brain’s “pleasure centers.” Until one day, covered in my own sick and
reeking of liquor and low-end, seed-and-twig-filled marijuana, I
realized I’d had enough. I’d had enough of this aimless life, full of
loose women and cheap thrills. I’d had enough of nihilism and focus only
on the self. I’d had enough of being a non-believer. That was the day I
reached in the bottom drawer of my bedside table and pulled a dusty,
neglected Bible out and started reading. I read that Bible until
everything made sense, and I think it’ll make sense for you, too, Glenn,
if you let it.
Glenn:
I knew this was coming and I dreaded it like I'm sure you dread the
apocalypse or the Blu-ray release of End of Days. There is no god and
my borderline addiction to "ditch weed" provides more meaning than your
holy book. We all walk through the valley of the shadow of death, but when we come out on the other side it's just blackness. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover 666 times and at no point
was I convinced my life had any other meaning than to satisfy all my
carnal pleasures and maybe help people - but that’s just me creating my
own meaning. And before you launch into one of your classic
astrological diatribes, the pretend signs based on Greek, Roman and
Mormon gods do not predict my behavior any more (or better) than my
psychiatrist.
Bryan:
Glenn, if you knew me or my religion at all you’d know that I HIGHLY
frown on astrological divination, sooth saying, reading of tea leaves,
scatomancy, or any other form of occult practice. That said, if you’ve
read the Bible so much, then you’ve encountered the guiding principles
of my life over and over again. But apparently you never truly noticed
them, or else by now you’d know that bothering with trash hash and sins
of the flesh leads to nothing but a life of misery and woe. Tell me,
Glenn, do you know the story of Elijah?
Glenn:
No I don’t know the story of Eiljah. I know the emptiness of looking
for a reason why I’m alive and looking for meaning in my pathetic life.
Do you know the story of Anders Breivik? He was a man in Norway who
was so convinced of the growing threat of the Islamic menace that he
blew up a federal building then went to a teen camp run by the left
political party there and killed over 70 innocent civilians. He was
also searching for meaning because he was raised to believe it exists.
He thought he found it and his killings were the logical conclusion of
this mindset. Please, no more Anders Breiviks and no more meanings of
lives.
Bryan: Well, I do believe that the growing Islamic menace is something we
should all be RIGHTLY concerned about, but that’s for another debate and
another time (and probably another website; no more homefield advantage
for you. I’m thinking stormfront.org). But anyway, I searched for
meaning all throughout that book and I think I finally found it in
Fourth Kings (as in the fourth book of Kings, not Kings that are like, a
fourth a normal size or something). The story of Elijah is one of
respect: respect for one’s elders, respect for nature, and respect for
the possible repercussions for negative actions one may commit. I don’t
see how anyone, even someone as jaded as you, could take issue with a
story like that.
Glenn:
I don’t visit Storm Front anymore. My parents put a Net Nanny on our
computer and the one at work blocks out everything with the word “storm”
in it. I don’t take issue with the story you’re talking about but I
can’t see how it provides meaning in our life. You say your prayers,
you talk about your Bible, you talk about your Kings Chapter 4... well
Glenn’s Chapter 4 (in my self-help book I’m writing to get teens out of
schools and into psychedelic drugs) says there is no meaning in this
life!
Bryan:
Let me tell you a story, Glenn. A story about the day before I read the
story of Elijah. I’m walking down the street, minding my own business,
my bag of Chicken McNuggets in one hand and my huge soda in the other.
It’s my life, my choices, I can do what I want. Or so I thought! As I’m
walking to my home, a couple of kids start making fun of my large gut. I
menacingly stare at them, but it does no good. They keep repeating
their taunts of “lardgut,” “grease keg,” and “smelly old fat fart who
smells like greasy cheeseburger farts” (little did they know they were
nuggets in the bag. NUGGETS YOU FU... sorry). As I kept staring at them,
wondering who would raise such petulant children, pondering what kind
of world I lived in where a man of almost thirty years, with an
automobile in his name and only two past due bills this month would
suffer such nigh-constant ridicule, I hoped for some ill to befall them.
Something that equaled the torment they had caused me: something
merciless, ravenous, and unyielding. I imagined horrors no man would
dare witness: skewerings, flailings, skinnings, maulings. All happening
to these children I hardly knew, children whose home life I didn’t
comprehend, whose own insecurities and fears I would never know. It was
then I decided I needed to run (well, swiftly walk, I had things in my
hands) into my home and start reading my Bible to figure all of this out
(after eating, of course).
As
I flipped through now grease laden pages, and I stumbled upon Fourth
Kings and the story of Elijah, it all became clear. See, Glenn, Elijah
was a man who was suffering from male pattern baldness in his later
years. A man who suffered the insults of children as he walked past
them, the children mocking him for his loss of hair and obvious signs of
lack of virility. Elijah, unlike me, though, was a noble man, and a man
whom God favored. So how did Elijah react? He wished death upon these
children, much like I did. Our story differs here, though: for as Elijah
was a man of God, these children did not suffer the same fate the
children of my neighborhood suffered. Instead, these 42 children were
mauled and killed by bears, never to bother Elijah again. Since that
day, I’ve known my one desire, my one hope: to be a proud man of God who
can summon bears with his thoughts to destroy those children who would
insult my deficiencies.
Glenn:
And I thought I was getting a bit melodramatic by comparing the search
for meaning in our lives to Anders Breivik’s homicidal impulses. If
you were trying to convince me god exists, congratulations: you won.
Now I can say I believe in him but even more strongly believe she will
never give us the meaning for which we so desperate search. But that
doesn’t mean I won’t now begin training my army of bears for when I
inevitable find myself in the same situation as you.
Bryan:
Thank you for admitting defeat! Also, no one TRAINS a bear, Glenn: they
merely deter it from mauling a child for one more day.
I
often sit on a dock, fishing rod in hand and bait on the hook, and look
out across the water and think about the meaning of life. Really it
can be anywhere or anything. You could find the meaning of life in the
second panel of a Dilbert strip or after the credits of a movie like
“Thor.” Today, I am going to try and figure out the meaning of life.
There is little as satisfying as copying a comic onto a flattened piece of silly putty. It is hard to read, but it bounces.
I’m not so sure about meditating, but my mind often wanders when I’m reading one of Dave Barry’s books.
Andy Capp might have been an alcoholic and a poor husband, but he had some great ideas when it came to napping.
I believe in karma, which is why I donate plasma regularly. Plus, I enjoy the extra spending money.
They say success is the best revenge, I don’t necessarily agree, but it is a lot less illegal than murder.
The
Beatles claimed that happiness is a warm gun, but I think happiness is a
warm roast beef sandwich, dipped in au jus and served alongside an
order of curly fries and an ice cold root beer.
Toy Story 3 raises a lot of questions, like do toys have souls.
Life doesn’t get better than eating a Hershey’s chocolate bar.
I’m
not sure about astrology and fortune telling. I mean, my horoscope in
the newspaper is usually correct, but it just seems like a coincidence.
I
asked a bowl of alphabet soup, “What is the meaning of life?” It said:
“AACBLLA.” I don’t know what it means, but that is the meaning of
life, I guess.
