Doing The Best We Can...

So I'm waiting out the writer's strike by catching up on all the TV shows I watch on DVD (bonus: no commercials). Given how little time I have to watch TV, this strike could go on forever and I'd still have shows to catch up on. I recently watched the "Mr. Eko" episode while watching Season 3 of Lost. When Eko was a kid, he refused to confess his sin of stealing food to feed his hungry brother. And, true to form, years later, he still refused to confess his sins. He concludes that he did the best that he could under the circumstances, as if that was enough to justify all the bad things he's done (and he did some pretty bad things).


I haven't trafficked anything illegal, or murdered anyone, and yet I have a very hard time accepting that doing the best we can is good enough. Looking around at people in the court system these days (Robert Pickton comes to mind) I can't help but think there's got to be some standards. I mean, you can't just brutally and coldly murder innocent people and say, "I did the best I could." Where do we draw a line in this sea of moral relativism? Or is that like trying to distinguish the peeing and non-peeing sections of a pool?

The difference between people like myself and Robert Pickton is intention. I always have the intention of doing the right thing, whereas he's a sociopath with no moral compass. I don't know if what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions is true. A Muslim colleague of mine describes asking for forgiveness as being the sincere intent not to do the sin again. It's the sincerity of the intent that counts, not whether or not we actually do the sin again. The problem with intent is that the only being that can judge the sincerity of our intent is thought by some to be a figment of the imagination. And for those people who do believe in this being, judgement comes only at the end of our lives. So where does that leave us? How do we as a society judge those whose intent we can never know?

Maybe the point is that we shouldn't be judging as much as we do. Maybe we shouldn't freak out about every little stupid thing that other people do and even more important, maybe we shouldn't freak out so much about every little stupid thing we do.

"I ask for no forgiveness, Father. For I have not sinned. I have only done what I needed to do to survive. A small boy once asked me if I was a bad man. If I could answer him now I would tell him that when I was a young boy I killed a man to save my brother's life. I am not sorry for this. I am proud of this. I did not ask for the life that I was given, but it was given nonetheless. And with it I did my best." Mr. Eko [Lost]

Zen and the Art of Solitaire

I read the first 2 chapters in the book The Joy Diet by Martha Beck. Essentially, I couldn't do the first thing on the diet, which is nothing, so I didn't consider moving on before I had mastered the first step. I never thought it would be difficult to just sit down and do nothing, but it is so ingrained in my Protestant-work ethic body to always be doing. So I found a compromise, and it's working well for me.

Solitaire. It's something many people would consider a waste of time, a mindless activity to pass the time. However, I have discovered life lessons in this simple game. First of all, it is statistically impossible to win every game. Although no statistics currently exist for the game, I know from experience that you can play a game without moving a single card. That's just the way the cards are dealt. Sometimes, that's life. We are dealt whatever cards we have in life, and sometimes, we just can't win. The nice thing about life (and solitaire) is that sometimes we do win. Solitaire may be just a game, and it's easy not to take it seriously. Life is not a game but sometimes I think we take it too seriously. Knowing that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose should help us keep things in perspective.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston Churchill

Loving Life and the Food Network

I used to think that to live a really full life meant you had to live, well, a full life. Every minute should be doing something, not just anything but something meaningful. Thus hours were guiltily wasted watching TV (except the Food Network-hey, even in the Sims you can gain cooking skills by watching cooking on television) and playing Solitaire. I would ask myself when I was going to write that novel, or do something useful.

I picked up The Joy Diet by Martha Beck the other day. The first step in the joy diet is to do nothing. Since I couldn't very well do nothing, I gave up after the second chapter (truth: why couldn't I do nothing? well, I think I've already explained that). I liked the idea of the book but its practices I wasn't quite ready for yet. I did, however, realize that this may be the only time in my life that I can play Solitaire without interuption and I have come to enjoy it as rather a Zen activity. So I'm halfway there.

My favourite chefs on the Food Network are Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver. Aside from their cute (but vulgar) British accents, one of the reasons why I adore their shows (and dislike so many of the celebrity "chefs") is because they have a lot of passion for their food. They care about quality ingredients and doing things right.

Then, it hit me: loving life is as much about filling every single moment with activity as loving food is about shoving fistfuls of food in your mouth. Loving life is about passion. It's about savouring moments, whether it's solitaire or the next great novel. It may be bitter, it may be sweet, it might leave a nasty aftertaste in our mouth, but if we're going to live it to the fullest then we should make every effort to relish every thing that comes our way. Isn't that what zest for life is all about?

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."- Benjamin Franklin

"All miseries derive from not being able to sit in a room alone." Pascal

Or What's a Heaven For?

The original name of God, the 4 Hebrew letters yud-hey-vav-hey (YHVH) is very special. We have long since lost the ability to pronounce it and instead use words like Adonai, Yahweh, or Jehovah. I am happy we have lost the ability to name God. In being able to name something, we are given power over it. If you think of all the stories like Rumpelstiltskin, Betelgeuse, and others that exist in other cultures, you will see what I mean. God has always been above definitions. In Exodus 3:13-15, we are told the story of Moses at the Burning Bush talking to God.

Moses said to God, 'So I will go to the Israelites and say, 'Your fathers' God sent me to you.' They will immediately ask me what His name is. What shall I say to them?'

"I will be who I will be" replied God to Moses.
[God then] explained, 'This is what you must say to the Israelites: 'I Will Be sent me to you.' '

God then said to Moses, 'You must [then] say to the Israelites, YHWH the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, sent me to you.' This is My eternal name and this is how I am to be recalled for all generations.

[http://bible.ort.org/books/pentd2.asp?action=displayanchor&pentid=P1595#P1595 accessed May 10, 2007]

Humans are thirsty for Knowledge. This might be Knowledge about God, Truth, Beauty, basically any Ultimate Idea. We are, of course, starting with the premise that these things exist, which is a pretty big presumption. The difficulty with the search, I have discovered, is that once we define an Ultimate Idea (and in my mind, all these Ultimate Ideas represent the same thing), it ceases to be Ultimate. Definitions are limiting and they give us power over the thing named. Ultimate Ideas are limitless and omnipotent.

At this point, one might ask why bother searching if the answer can't be found. My answer to that existential question is that the end does not justify the means, but the end is the means. The more we learn, the more we realize there is to learn. Perhaps that is why the universe is expanding.


"Don't search for answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer..." Rainer Maria Rilke

"A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" -Robert Browning