jonesenstein

7-16-01

Monday, July 16, 2001
It seems that I’ve been trying to think of the
meaning of life a lot lately, and although I know that I
will never find it, I also know that that doesn’t mean I
should stop looking.
I was thinking about it all day today. How God
fits into my life, how love fits into my life, how the
world fits into my life….
Matter of fact, I was watching Six Feet Under last
night (excellent show, by Alan Ball, writer of the best
movie of all time: American Beauty) and there was a part in
there where Claire says something along the lines of “I
want my life to mean something. I don’t want to get a good
job to make lots of money to be a good consumer.” Then I
thought: Wow, that’s basically what life boils down to.
And that got me ta thinkin.
And then I thought about George Carlin and how he’s
right in almost everything he says, and how he doesn’t want
to live in the world either (he doesn’t really. He’s a
stand-up comic). But, he says, that one has to participate
at some level.
And then I thought about Tool’s lyrics to Schism:
Find the beauty in dissonance. Which I thought about for a
long time. Thinking about how someone could find beauty in
that, about how the internet is making everyone become
recluse, about how technology in general is making everyone
communicate more but become more superficial and not really
talk to one another.
And then I thought about a quote I use to live by a
few years ago (maybe only one year ago, I can’t remember
the last time I thought of it): “There is infinity in
everything, and beauty in forever.”
Actually, that’s not the quote, but I think my
paraphrase of it is better.
I remembered the meaning of this book. I
remembered the meaning of it all. It’s not to try and find
a meaning to life, it’s about trying to find who I am.
After that, meaning will fall into place. I started this
book thinking that I would somehow become a better person
for it, but in reality, I’m just getting as superficial as
everyone else, and I hate it. I’ve been getting more and
more grumpy lately, more and more lazy, more and more
bitchy. “Find beauty in everything.”
As I remembered that, another song by Tool came on
called Lateralus. It was at the part where he says
something like, “Follow the spiral to the end, you may just
go where no one’s been.”
I am meant to make something new. I am meant to
change something, to make someone better.
I know I’m meant to see infinity in everything, and
ride that philosophy till I can’t ride it anymore. Maybe
I’ll see something no one else has seen.
Maybe I’ll see myself.