Monday, December 20, 1993

3:40 AM
I woke up about a half hour ago and thought, well, I've been sleeping since 8 PM so I guess I've had enough. 


The power is still out - I guess the one good thing about that is that the freezer's defrosting.


Looking back at some of my more recent entries in my log, I've noticed that I've steered away from any heavy philosophical mumbo-jumbo as I used to write in the beginning. I believe it's because the initial sense of wonder is gone and my senses have become used to the environment. Part of me regrets not writing that way anymore, but then again, too much philosophical jargon can isolate you from a lot of people. I see this clearly with Tom [not his real name]. When we climbed the [Zomba] plateau on Friday we stopped to rest by some rocks and he began to explain a new philosophical revelation he had about life being a series of paths on a plane that infinitely stretch to the horizon. Since you cannot explore all paths during your lifetime, you enclose yourself in a dome containing paths having end points and some which continue and escape out of the dome. 


Meanwhile, I was trying to catch my breath.


When I climb a mountain, I do so to clear my head and purposefully avoid thinking of anything. I find I'm doing that a lot, and I'm steering away from grandiose metaphors which elegantly explain the meaning of life. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that my philosophical interpretation of life is essentially not to have one. If you get to thinking too much, you begin to lose track of reality, by that I mean the world in which the rest of the normal population of this planet reside in.


Postscript 2010: I greatly respected the friend mentioned in this journal entry, but honestly there were times when his intensity was so great that I felt awkward being around him. All these years later, I avoid using the term "philosophical" - not deliberately, but probably because life gets in the way. I can't talk philosophy at the dinner table when my children are busy holding in their burps and farts. I go to the local pool to relax, talk to a few neighbours, and read pages of a novel. No discussions on planes of existence take place there, and I'm quite happy about that. My job as a human rights educator prompts me to ask questions concerning the impact of my work and the work of other human rights educators, but when it comes down to it, I don't want to spend time philosophizing on the meaning of my work, I'd rather just do it.


In this entry, I wrongly interpret a reduction in philosophical mumbo-jumbo writing to a familiarity with my environment. You don't need to delve into philosophy in order to have a sense of wonder and an appreciation for your surroundings. You just need to open your eyes. As Richard Feynman wrote: "Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there." Whether those "things" are the beauty of a sunrise, the laughter of children, or the strangeness of living in a different country, our imagination can indeed soar.