As I was walking out of class this Friday afternoon I crossed across the library lawn through about four different frisbee games and countless blankets strewn across the grass. I would have thoroughly enjoyed it, had I not just exited a philosophy discussion about the futility of all our actions towards happiness. Yeah, rather depressing, but mentally invigorating too. That contrast, of feeling utterly lost and sad and of seeing countless college students seemingly perfectly happy simply to be in the sun and to be with friends, threw me for a loop. Ignorance is bliss. I thought, maybe being a philosophy major won't be as much of a happy trip as I thought. But then I kept thinking (as is my wont, and often my downfall, though this time happily not so), and I realized that I would much rather approach happiness having gone through a genuine philosophical breakdown, having been depressed and disaffected with the mundanity of life, than to revel in an ignorant happiness born from willful blindness. Why I prefer that, I don't know. But perhaps it is because I feel like there ought to be more to life than happiness, that our goal ought not to simply be happy but to genuinely human. Or to genuinely try to understand what it means to be human. That's such a presumption, I know, to say that there really is more to life than pleasure, but it feels to me a better representation of the complexity of life, of suffering and its meaning, than to just be happy happy happy.
Okay and to those readers who skipped that last paragraph due to it's tediously long discourse, a short recap of my week: Monday through Thursday, classes, slacklining, frisbee, studying. Friday some friends and I went down to the river and swam a bit, then I headed to the co-op to do a little journaling. Friday night (which I guess was last night; I'm not used to writing this on a Saturday night) I went to Trout Fry, which was really a fun experience. To those who don't know, Trout Fry is an annual party hosted by the Pi Sigs, a frat that was once chartered by Luther but has since lost that charter. Anyway, it's a big get-together off campus at a campground, and in years past there have been kegs provided at the party for people to drink. This year there has been a lot of attempts by Luther administration to get Trout Fry shut down, mostly because it has been a den of underage drinking and some pretty heavy partying. So they didn't have kegs, but the party went on anyways. I won't go into why I think Luther is being ridiculous about this all, because this is in fact a Luther-sponsored blog, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed Trout Fry. And I am definitely going to go again next year.
And now it's Saturday night, and I am at Magpie's, a coffeehouse off-campus. For some reason, it closes at 10, so I have to be out of here in about four minutes. I got a lot of my homework done, and I think I'm gonna head back to campus to hang out with friends tonight. We'll see what happens. For some reason, lately I've been really enjoying my alone time. I know I talked a little bit about that in my earlier blogs, but the solitary bug has infected me anew with the warm weather. I wrote extensively in my journal about why it's important to have alone time, and I think my next blog post I'll write a little about that. For now, I've gotta get out of here.
Take it easy,
Danny
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