develop a personal philosophy of life

atlas shrugged and the fountainhead changed my life. after reading i became deeply enamored with ayn rand – her philosophy, her writing style, her intellect, her passion. never before had i connected on such a deep level with fictional characters and their struggles…which knocked me slightly off balance, considering i have little in common with a railroad executive or an architect or a russian-born writer living in another time. but i felt their fire and their resolve in my very core, exhorting myself to turn page after page after page to continue living in their world…among those who made me feel proud to be human.

i don’t know exactly what i was expecting when i picked up ayn rand’s for the new intellectual, which sets out to explain her philosophy, objectivism. but after about ten pages or so, i suddenly realized that i simply couldn’t buy into everything rand thought and wrote. my admiring gaze transformed into a critical stare that began to qualify what she was writing as the by-product of a temporally and culturally prejudiced, overly idealistic and blatantly bigoted philosophy that could never be truly realized. this sent my brain into turmoil, as i wondered how i could so firmly support and appreciate her fiction (ergo, her philosophy) and yet be so firmly against some aspects of her worldview (ergo, her philosophy).

wtf?!

i think i find most philosophies basically worthless in a strictly pragmatic sense, which is why i took issue with rand’s objectivism. though i agree with the basic tenets of many philosophies (read: zen buddhism, socialism, objectivism, capitalism, existentialism, etc.), i think they can never be truly realized in the world as we know it today. to reach their fullest potential and ultimate goals, they can only be fully implemented in a vacuum; there can be no preexisting conditions or assumptions in or about the world or its inhabitants. and the problem here lies in the fact that our planet is not a vacuum but an interconnected web of life with a extremely long and complex history, one that cannot and will not be changed to accommodate any given philosophy or system at any given time.

what philosophers thus demand is an absolute permutation of the world to incorporate some system of thought/belief that they deem to be right for every living being on earth.

on a theoretical level, i love immersing myself in questions of the bigger picture. but having arrived at the aforementioned conclusion, i don’t know how to continue this quest for knowledge and fulfillment. i’ve looked for answers in so many places, listened to so many voices, and sought out so many truths…i am beginning to wonder if truth is just as subjective as experience. if that is the case, then perhaps this quest is all for naught. on the other hand, some might say the quest itself is what ultimately provides fulfillment.

twenty-two years and i stand at a point of deep-seated conflict. not quite a crossroads, where i’m standing is more like the middle of a mountainous forest; i could take many trails to many destinations from this point. but plagued by irresolution and disquiet, i see little beyond the precariousness of everything around me. where am i going? where have i been? who dictates my direction? why does it matter? to whom does it matter?

i suppose these are questions i should ask before pronouncing judgment upon their answers.

sometimes i think that the only person with whom i can truly be honest is myself. i feel like what goes on inside my head is the only substance that defines me, and while i try to clarify exactly what that is for the sake of my sanity and my happiness, i feel it is exactly what separates me from the rest of humanity. but i guard my thoughts and feelings and desires. my head is a citadel, and keeping it protected guards the rest of me, too. i suppose honesty scares me because it leaves me naked and vulnerable.

but i won’t call what i feel right now loneliness, because i don’t sense a negative quality to my solitude. on the contrary, it is quite comforting knowing that i fully accept these thoughts and convictions and words and phrases and pictures…does that make me antisocial? perhaps, since i accept them collectively as mine and mine alone. i once thought that it would be my life’s goal to find the person in this world who thinks and believes and dreams as i do, and that we would walk hand in hand in a world that sees things so differently that it would be nothing short of bliss once we found each other. but now i am beginning to think that that person is an impossibility, and the very best i can hope and dream for is someone with whom i can be completely honest. but i also think that i will never find such a person, as long as i don’t allow myself to be honest with other people.

it’s always like this: i see the solution behind door #1 but i consistently open door #2 because it feels safer, only to find that i have simply left the solution behind.

i just recently finished reading ayn rand’s the fountainhead, and it’s left me with a ton of questions…though not about the story or even necessarily her philosophy. first, background: i tried to read the fountainhead a couple years ago, got about half way, and then left it to sit on my shelf. it was from this first attempt that i found a quotation that stuck with me and echoed in my head: ‘throughout the centuries there have been men who took steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.’

so when i started it again this summer, i was determined to finish it. i didn’t know that this quotation was from the fountainhead, though i suppose it makes more than perfect sense. in any case, my questions now lie in my personal philosophy of life, because ayn rand threw a big curve ball at me when she successfully argued against selflessness and proved the necessity of the ego. wtf?

now, this bothers me because i have spent much time and effort in learning about buddhism and eastern philosophy and religion…which most definitely expounds the value of selflessness and altruism. and it’s not that i feel like all that was for naught, or that i completely buy into rand’s philosophy or even buddhist philosophy for that matter. but it is annoying that this goal is that much further away, now, since the consequence of all this is the need for more searching.

i’m beginning to think it’s inevitable that this quest will not end until the moment i die.

it occurred to me while sitting this morning that if one needs proof of the interconnectedness of all things on this planet, one needs only look as far as the breath. in zazen we’re told to concentrate on the breath and, well, it’s not very easy. today i tried very hard to concentrate only on my breath, and suddenly i realized that everything on this planet shares the same space, but even more than that, we all affect this same space. let me explain – when we breathe, we are affecting the air around us, the subtle ephemeral currents of air dancing around our bodies. thus, the simple spontaneous act of breathing unites us all in a shared space that we all simultaneously affect.

sometimes i wonder if i am drawn to buddhism simply out of a great disdain for modern capitalist society. but then moments like this spring out of nothing but my own heart and mind, and i begin to think the truth may be closer than i think…