9/26/14
Aboard DL 437. En route JFK-SLC
“All was well.” With those
three words (the last three words of the Epilogue of Harry Potter and the
Deathly Hallows), J.K. Rowling packed in more meaning and powerful writing than
Stephanie Meyer managed to do in 4 books of the Twilight Saga. When I think of my life 19 years from now (19
years being the time that elapsed between Voldemort’s death and the Epilogue),
all I want is what Harry had in that scene.
He is happily married bringing his two kids to school and all of the
troubles of his past have disappeared.
I
can just imagine a Travelogue entry dated 9/4/33 with a byline of, say, “Nadi,
Fiji.” The entry would end something
like this: “I always save the second to last Cuban of a box for some special
moment (keeping the last cigar as a souvenir of the box). This box had been a wedding present from my
brother, and I smoked most of the box within the first year of our marriage,
but I had been saving that last one for quite some time now. I had assumed it would be for the birth of
our first kid, but the folks at the cigar store had given me a box for that
occasion, and I chose that one instead.
Sitting on the beach, watching my family frolic in the Pacific, as the sun
was starting to set, seemed the perfect moment.
I took a sip of my water bottle, the same water bottle my mother so
heroically shipped to me in Israel two decades ago, the same water bottle that
had been to all 50 states and well over 100 countries, and I lit up the
cigar. All was well.”
Most of that passage would make perfect sense
to anyone. However, that last sentence
has no meaning unless it is someone who knows me, someone who knows all the
pain and troubles with which I have dealt in the past 10 years, the past 27
years, even. Likewise, only someone who
had read each and every Harry Potter book could possibly know how much meaning
was packed in those last three words.
While I am far from achieving that utopian future of the “19 Years
Later” entry that I just envisioned, as I was walking back to my apartment on
Wednesday after I dropped off my bike, I knew that all was well. I am very happy with my life now, far happier
than I was in Carcassonne 12 days ago.
All of my doubts and fears and stresses that I experienced as I turned
27 have evaporated. I know with absolute
certainty that this will be a trip that I enjoy. Yes, it will be exhausting and strenuous and
stressful, but the enjoyment value of this trip to Utah and Idaho will be far
more than my trip to Catalonia and Andorra.
When I left two weeks ago, it was, “I’m so jealous” or “Have fun in
Spain.” Today it was, “Why are you going
to Idaho?” or “I’d say have fun, but I don’t think that’s possible in Idaho.”
After going a month without my sleep machine,
it was finally starting to catch up with me.
The first two weeks I gave it up I slept fine, if fitfully. However, I started to notice that I was
getting more and more tired and having trouble focusing as the day went on. When I got back from Spain, it started
getting worse. I’d wake up constantly in
the middle of the night with a very dry mouth and needing to take an Official
U. When I was using the sleep machine,
I’d typically sleep through the night, not getting out of bed until I was ready
to wake up. The past two weeks, I do not
think I have slept through the night once.
I had been sleeping with a constant source of humidity entering my nose
for 6 years now. Of course I would get
dried out without that source of humidity.
Then, I would drink the water, which would lead to the Official U
(taking an unofficial U, no matter how tired I am in the middle of the night,
was simply not an option). That would
lead to more water. It was a vicious
cycle.
I went from having no problem to
waking up at 7 AM and being alert for the whole day to oversleeping, waking up
past 8 AM, and getting tired by early afternoon. Last night, I realized that not having the
sleep machine was no longer an option. I
slept great. I may have woken up briefly
once in the middle of the night, but I didn’t wake up dehydrated or in need of
an Official U. More importantly, I was
alert all day until I left work, and I got a lot done. However, across the board it was a very
unproductive day. Between my boss’s
daughter being there and the owner and HR manager not being there, it is safe
to say not much work got done. I did
what needed to get done, in spite of the noise and commotion. It was great to feel focused and alert
again. There was no stress or worry to
distract me from my work, and I was as productive as I was when I work alone on
a Saturday.
I had my pre-departure lunch
at Hop Won, finished up what needed to be done, headed over to the cigar store,
said my goodbyes, and took the car to the airport. I got two more proposals done in the car and
got to the airport with plenty of time to have some wings at Buffalo Wild
Wings, as I tend to do when I fly out of Terminal 4, which I have done four
times in the past 3 months. Their
buffalo wings are little too spicy for my palate, so I considered getting the
medium hot, but the menu said the honey barbeque was about as hot as the
Buffalo wings but had some sweetness to mellow it out. I chose wrong. I should have just gone with the medium hot. The great thing about Buffalo wings is that
they’re so spicy that they knock you out, making you feel both full and
tired. These honey barbeque wings did
neither. We were soon boarding, and I
tried to sleep when we took off, but I think the Diet Pepsi I had with my wings
effed that up. Unable to sleep, I
decided to write this entry, which I will now close, as my battery is about to
die. I have some more thoughts about
this “All was well” theme, but I am still working on them and need to save
something for my Salt Lake City entry tonight.
Salt Lake City, Utah
I had been intending to write a personal journal entry when I got to
Boise on what I call, for lack of a better phrase, “hometown love.” Quite simply, it is about rural towns where
people live there their whole lives and fall in love with and marry their high
school sweethearts. I started a new
personal journal, since the name of the old one, Who is John Galt?, is no
longer fitting due to my rejection of certain principles of Rand’s. My mother is fond of saying that she doesn’t
like Rand because she tries to rationalize emotions. I rejected that rejection. Now, I am starting to see the merit of it. There is no doubt that people feel irrational
emotions, but the question is whether or not act on emotions you cannot
rationally explain. My father would say
that our emotions are rapid judges of what is good for us or bad for us,
telling us what we want far faster than our rational mind could do. Rand takes a similar stance. The issue becomes what happens when we feel
an emotion we know to be irrational.
Take, fear, for example. Everyone
has their phobias. For me, it is small,
fast moving objects. For someone else,
it is crowded elevators and subways. My
rational mind knows that a falling leaf or a piece of cotton blowing in the
wind cannot hurt me. Does that stop me
from being startled when I glimpse it out of the corner of my eye? No more than it stops this other person from
waiting for the next elevator or subway when he it is too crowded. His rational mind should know that the
consequences of giving in to this irrational fear (being late to work) are
negative. Unlike someone who is afraid
of death and takes stops to avoid dying.
That is rational. Death is a bad
thing.
Anger is another great
example. If someone does something that
makes you angry, and you act on it irrationally, no good can come of it. If someone punches you in the face, you have
every right to be angry, and you should respond in kind. You should punch him back. If someone pushes the wrong floor on the
elevator, you should not punch him in the face.
That would be irrational. I do
not think any of my readers will disagree with my assessment that acting on
irrational negative emotions is a bad idea and that trying to rationalize those
emotions is very beneficial.
Now, let’s
examine the positive emotions. There is
only one that matters: happiness. I
explored the idea of “irrational happiness” en route to Narita 4 months
ago. The solution I came up with was
that irrational happiness was something that would make you happy in the short
term but unhappy in the long run. The
arguments of my parents fall apart there, as well. My father’s argument of trusting your baser
instincts fails because otherwise there would be no argument against
hedonism. I would get great happiness
out of eating a bag of Oreos or a quart of ice cream. Why then do I not do it? Because it would make me sick, gain weight,
and have all sorts of health problems if continued in the long run. My mother’s argument fails for a similar
reason. I know exactly why the sugary
treat would make me happy. Our body is
designed to treat the sugary taste buds as pleasurable. Nabisco and Haagen Daaz have spent absurd sums of R&D money to
figure out exactly how to best please those taste buds.
Okay, granted this is a silly example. Love is a much better example, and it is
where their arguments hold merit and where Rand’s falls apart. In order to prove my point, I must first set
the stage. After I landed in SLC, I was
a little hungry. I got my car, got on
the road, and decided to stop somewhere.
That somewhere wounded being a 24-hour burger joint. Now, Reader, imagine you are hometown girl, a
waitress at a burger joint, it is 11 PM on a Friday night, and a young man
dressed in a suit walks up to the counter and orders in one breath, “A bacon
cheeseburger, no bread, please.” You smartly
call out, “Now that’s a man who knows what he wants.”
Now, Reader, imagine you are a world traveler
in a very happy relationship, a relationship that made you finally realize that
all the definitions of love you had considered for 27 years were completely
worthless, that you had finally realized six weeks ago that you had it right
when you woke up the last morning of the Olympics 6 months before that after a
very strange dream about Lucy Liu, which left you thinking, “Maybe love is just
about wanting to hug someone and never let go,” that trying to force yourself
to love someone because she reminds you of some character from a book written
50 years ago was stupid, and you hear some hometown girl smartly call out, “Now
that’s a man who knows what he wants.”
What do you do? You smile at her
and answer, “I sure do.” You say that
because you know it will make her day.
You say that because you have finally realized what you want in love and
life. You say that because your doubts
have vanished. You say that because it’s
true. My high school self simply defined
love as being unable to focus when you’re in class with your crush. During the dark times, when I thought I would
never fall in love again, I tried to define love as an emotional response to
beauty. When I rediscovered Objectivism,
I used Rand’s definition of love as shared values and mutual respect. Once I realized that mental attraction alone
was not enough to build a relationship, I realized that Ryan was right. Love is about the chemistry. It is about the interaction of Style. It is about those things you cannot put into
words. When he first offered that definition,
I rejected it as merely another form of attraction. I thought of my 9th Grade crush,
the way that she would stand up and raise her arms in their when she was happy
about something, the way she smiled. I
knew that that crush was irrational. You
cannot build a relationship with someone based on those mannerisms, no more
than you can build a relationship based on shared philosophical values.
I then got closer to the mark. It was not about Style. It was about the interaction of Style, just
another way of phrasing what most people cause chemistry. By this definition, I was able to incorporate
my father’s views a little better. You
can instantly know if you have chemistry with someone, far quicker than you can
rationally identify the reasons for the chemistry, but chemistry is rational in
the end. All of these definitions I had
utilized since high school, they were all based on rationalization of
emotions. I still rejected my mother’s
view. However, there was something
missing. It is not enough to simply be
physically, mentally, and chemically attracted to someone. You need passion. Passion is not rational. By its very definition, passion is
irrational. You cannot force yourself to
feel passionate about someone simply because your rational emotions tell you
that she would be a good fit.
In order
to want to hug someone and never let go, you need to feel passion, and that is
impossible to rationalize. That was
where my mother finally got it right.
When my father first saw my mother, he was instantly attracted. He saw a pretty woman with intelligent
features, someone who would be a good mother to his young son and, in the
future, to me. His emotions were ahead
of his mind, but his mind quickly caught up.
I do not know what passion they soon felt for each other, nor do I want
to know, but I know that, if they had not feel passion for each other, I would not
be writing this entry.
Reader, I have
spent almost an hour writing the thoughts that went through my head while I was
waiting for my burger, when I saw a group of these hometown kids standing by
the cash register, two of them coupled, holding each other. I knew that these were people who never once
considered Rand’s definition of love, who never once doubted love to be
anything other than chemistry and passion, that those two kids did not want to
let go of each other, and I was happy for them.
They did not feel doubt, and, for the first time in quite a while,
neither did I. All was well.
I ate my burger outside in the parking lot,
not finishing the fries, and I put the container in the back seat of my car,
not seeing a trash can anywhere. I heard
a voice ask, “Sir, do you have any leftover?”
I was not going to eat the fries.
It was such a simple request, so I gave him the box and told him there
were some fries left. He was so happy to
get that little bit of food, and, for the first time in 7 years, giving
something to a stranger made me feel happy.
I headed to my hotel, checked in, and got ready to smoke my pipe. My computer was dead, so I had to charge
before I could write this entry. I
filled up my Ardor, got settled outside, intended to smoke it for about 30
minutes on the balcony before I wrote my entry, but the computer was slow to
charge, and it started to rain. Sleeping
outside was not an option, nor was finishing the pipe out there. The balcony was adjacent to the bathroom, so
I moved inside to the bathroom, put towels by the door to my bedroom and the
adjoining suite, used the outlet in the bathroom, and proceeded to write this
entry, which I will now close so that I can publish it and get some sleep.
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