91: The Indifference of the Universe

When I look at what people do in life and ask myself why we do them, there seem to be two ansers:

1. the fear of boredom, and
2. the indifference of the universe.

Why do I say things when I'm in conversation with other people? Because I have a viewpoint, and by voicing it I can distract myself for a moment from the intolerable lack of a difference that it makes, cosmically speaking.

Why do I write songs? Same reason.

Why am I writing this? Same reason.

Or maybe not. Maybe I just write because I'm bored. Humans aren't designed to do nothing. They'll do something -- anything -- to pass the time.

But the fear of boredom doesn't explain why we do things that we think have meaning. We do things that we think have meaning because we cannot bear to exist unperceived, to be ghosts, so to speak, who are not acknowledged by anyone and who are unable to manipulate, in any way whatsoever, their surroundings.

I seem to lack the gene which drives people to procreate. I'm told that many people want to have children because they take comfort in the idea that their name or their genetic material will live on after they are gone. I'm told that this is a major driving force in evolution. In that case I must be the evolutionary link that has realized that there's already too many people on the planet, and that has dispensed with the idea of it being in any way significant to have one's name and genetic material keep existing.

But why do children keep saying, "look, mom"? Why do people get married? Is it not in order to have a witness, so to speak? Zaphod Beeblebrox asks, "how do yo know you're having fun when no one's watching you have it?" This is actually quite funny, but it's also true. If I say that I love music, then why am I not content to just play my guitar or my piano in the privacy of my home? Why do I consider it necessary to be performing music in front of others? Why do I go to such lenghts to keep in touch with my friends? Is it all not because I need someone or something to give me the feeling that my existence is not going by completely unperceived, unrecognized, unappreciated?

What have I ever done that wasn't an attempt to get away from boredom and anonymity?

90: crossing a railroad bridge

Matthieu and I kept walking together. At the pilgrim shelter in Santander there had been a "secret" tip tacked on one of the walls, describing a way in which one could save a few kilometers by crossing a river over a railroad bridge on which pedestrians actually weren't allowed. We weren't so scrupulous as to let that law stop us, and we had taken a copy of the hand-drawn map with us to make this shortcut. Once on the other side of the river, I told Matthieu to keep walking if he wanted, because I was going to take a break.

I sat down by the river and soaked my feet in the cold, cold water. My feet were in pain, although it was not as bad as it had been several days ago. All the same, I figured that maybe this would be a way to stop it from getting that bad again.

There was no real road or path here, which was hardly surprising considering that the railroad bridge was not meant to be walked on. I bushwhacked my way through some tall grass and got to a railroad station.

OK, "train stop" might be a more appropriate word. It was a platform on each side of the tracks, with a small building which was closed and did not seem to be used much at all. I tried to make myself comfortable on one of the benches, in another one of my abortive attempts to catch up on some sleep. After a while I heard voices, and looking over I saw Anabel chatting with two other pilgrims on the opposite platform. They, like me, were taking a little break in the shade. Soon they went their way. I grew restless of trying to fall asleep, and went walking as well. I found a supermarket and managed to get some yoghurt and a baguette just before the place closed down. I sat down on the sidewalk opposite to eat.

The day was hot. The sun was blasting oppressively, and the air was wavering. There was not much shade for the next kilometers. It was mostly construction zones. Here and there you could see half-finished rows of suburbia houses, but for the most part it was sand piles and bulldozers. Trucks full of earth or stones were rattling by constantly.

I eventually found a bar and ordered a glass of orange juice. I was practically alone in the place, and I asked the barkeeper if I could receive a phone call here. He said it should be fine, so I placed a call to my brother in Canada and asked him to call me back.

We had a good long conversation. My brother and I are opposites in many ways, and there is always that risk that our talks will circle around the same subjects all the time, those elements in each other's lives which we do not understand. I think he had only recently begun to realize just how deep my anger and depression at being alive really was. It alarmed him, of course, but because he couldn't relate to it, his solution consisted of moralizing suggestions telling me that it is wrong to feel this way and that I can feel differently if I try.

But fortunately there was very little of this going on. We talked as men who are forced to try to understand each other because they are brothers, and not as people who each try to force the other to understand them.

89: Fear and desire

On my last night in Amsterdam before I left for the pilgrimage (or rather, the Grenoble vacation followed by the week in Taize followed by the pilgrimage) I had given a concert entitled "Songs of Fear and Desire". I played mostly songs I had written, and I gave way-too-long spoken meditations in between.

The nature of fear and desire really gripped me. Can these forces be distinguished? When are they good? When are they bad? How much do they really "exist" in themselves, and how much are they dependent on each other?

If someone wants something, is it the desire for the thing itself, or is it the fear of having to continue life without it that motivates him? If a man wants to get married, is he driven by the desire for the woman, or by the fear of being left to live his life without her? Can he even tell the difference between the two? People claim they can, but I am skeptical. It feels to me like they haven't faced the question very honestly.

To me, anyway, the answer is not clear. I can't tell if I want something because the desire is in itself a force, or if I want something because I am afraid of missing out on it.

Unless it is one of the forms of desire we call sinful. I can identify those types of desire as being a force in themselves, quite independent of fear. I can identify when I feel lust, or envy, or avarice. This is desire. When I am tempted to lust after a woman, I do not perceive that desire to be really a form of fear. I perceive the desire to be an actual something.

But when I think about my desire for God, I do not perceive that as a something. It seems to be a nothing that is the negative space around my fear.

Ambition, which is generally thought of as desire, seems to be more of a fear; it is the fear of anonymity, the fear of a life without achievement (or, in my case at least, without some recognition for achievement).

Love, on the other hand, I cannot really imagine. It is an elusive concept to me. I think about people I love, and I find that they are few. And then I wonder what it means that I love them, and I find that I don't have a very clear answer to that question. It has gotten even more complex since I have had a look into the whole emotional mess of what is called "co-dependence", that form of narcissism which passes for love in so many real-life relationships as well as romance novels, romantic movies or pop songs. It gets confusing, and even the "real item", the love that the Bible talks about, does not help me out.

88: Lousy walk out of Santander

The pilgrim shelter at Santander had an early morning kick-out policy. I got out and started walking. There were random arrows on the pavement, leading generally westwards out of the city.

But what a long walk out of the city it was proving to be. Suburb after suburb, industrial sector after industrial sector seemed lined up beside a loud, smelly highway. This kind of walking is bad on the nerves. Not since the last little stretch between Gernika and Bilbao had I had such a dispiritingly urban walk.


There was a shrine beside the highway at one point. I looked in, and underneath a crucifix it had a few words from John 14: "Jesus said, 'I am the way...'".

Now that, I thought, that is something one can meditate on during a pilgrimage. Let's try that as a refrain.

"Jesus said, 'I am the way.'"
"Jesus said, 'I am the way.'"
"Jesus said, 'I am the way.'"
"Jesus said, 'I am the way.'"
"Jesus said, 'I am the way.'"

It quickly became my walking rhythm.

The way I was walking was dirty and smelly and loud. It was not attractive. Jesus is the way. This way? Oh man. What a depressing thought.

Finally the trail bent off away from the highway. It went through fields, and some quiet towns and neighborhoods.



I found a sort of park with a water pump and some benches and I figured this would be a good place to eat breakfast.


While I was eating I saw Matthieu coming up along the trail. He joined me for a moment, I finished eating and we set off together.

87: the absence of good. Or was it evil?

One of atheism's great arguments against the sort of God-figure that Christians have is that there is evil in the world. God is not good enough or not powerful enough to prevent it.

There have always been Christian counter-arguments, of course. One of these says that evil is simply the absence of good; the sun is hot and bright and if there are places that are dark and cold, then that means that they are far away from the sun. Where there is evil, it is because people have distanced themselves from God.

I won't try to consider the relative merits of these arguments. I think you'll believe the one side or the other depending on which conviction you already have about God, and that this conviction will have a lot to do with what you have experienced in life and what you are afraid of.

But the assertion that evil is the absence of good has been occupying my mind. Do we really perceive reality like this? Do we see health as the absence of disease, or disease as the absence of health? Do we see injustice as the absence of justice, or justice as the absence of injustice?

I almost think that we don't see evil as the absence of good. We don't have a clear enough picture of good to think of it as being much of anything. If "good" does not have a palpable reality, then it is difficult to think of anything being "the absence of good". Evil, on the other hand, seems to be very easy to picture as something.

This is more than one of those "half-empty/half-full" questions. The fact is that evil has a more palpable presence, one that we can feel; "good", in comparison, is ethereal and almost unreal.

Brutality is "something". You experience it with your senses, it causes a reaction in your mind and body. The same with tension. But peace -- well, what is peace? Where do you localize it? Isn't it simply the absence of tension and violence?

I can't tell what comfort is unless I ask myself about discomfort; but I know discomfort without comparing it to comfort. Discomfort can be localized. Maybe the chair I'm sitting in is uncomfortable, and I can tell that because of what I feel in my lower back. Maybe my shoes are uncomfortable, and I can point to the exact place or places on my feet where I feel the discomfort.

But what is a comfortable chair or a comfortable shoe? Where can I point and say, "ahh, feel that comfort right there"? Isn't it that I can search my body for feelings of discomfort, and, in the absence of such feelings, can consider the chair or the shoe comfortable?

When I think about people I love, I have a hard time putting that feeling into any positive terms. What do I mean when I say that I love my parents? I mean, for example, that I miss them, that I'm afraid about bad things happening to them, and that I feel pity and maybe anger when bad things do happen to them.

So we got "absence" (the sense of missing someone), fear, pity and anger. How can this combination of negative emotions define a positive emotion? The positive emotion? Sure, the emotions are directed against the circumstances surrounding my parents, and not against my parents themselves. But that is like defining something by what it is not. It is a negative print. It is like drawing a horse by drawing everything around the horse and leaving the horse shape itself blank. You could, in a sense, say that you've drawn a horse. But your horse's surroundings have far more features than the horse itself.

What is virtue if not the absence of vice? When we say "humility", don't we just mean the absence of pride? When we say "honesty", do we mean something active that has its own presence, or are we talking about that which happens when the active circumstance of "telling lies" is stopped? Is "chastity" something in itself, is it a power or a force or anything tangible at all, or is it just the absence of sex? Sex, deceit, pride -- all these seem real enough. They seem like actual things we can do and have, and not like the absence of something. It is the corresponding virtues that seem like absence, like Arctic air far removed from the burning sun of passion. Sure, the air may be pure, but what does "purity" mean if not the absence of contamination?

But how could I be a Christian for so many years and yet not have any clearer picture of Christian virtues than to picture them as the absence of vices which I have a pretty clear picture of?

It seems that many Christians will argue that evil is the absence of good, but will live as if, in reality, good is simply the absence of evil. I am in the same category, but now that I have realized it, it really bothers me.

86: Evening in Santander

I finished my time at the internet cafe. I walked back through Santander towards the pilgrim shelter. As I passed a cathedral I heard the bells ringing and remembered that it was Sunday and I hadn't been to a church service, but it turned out that the bells were not ringing for Mass. It was late afternoon by now. The other churches I passed were not doing anything for the rest of the day either.

I found a public phone and called my parents. Then I walked back to the pilgrim shelter. There was a shelf there where pilgrims had left things behind. There were tents, portable stoves, and other camping gear. I thought of my guitar and how heavy it had gotten after a few days on the road, even though it had seemed like such a good idea to bring it. I could easily understand why someone might bring camping gear, only to abandon it after half the pilgrimage.

I found some foot balm though. It was supposed to help feet that were worn out from walking. I'm not sure how it was supposed to do that, but I figured that it couldn't hurt to try it out, especially since it came in a small bottle that wouldn't weigh heavily in my backpack.

I ate the "pilgrim's special" in the bar just downstairs from the shelter. To my surprise, I was served by the same two women whom I had met in Somo and had asked about the pilgrim shelter.

It was a large meal for a decent price. There was a large screen television showing the Barcelona game. Later in the evening, Anabel showed up in the restaurant as well.

85: The Underachiever, Part 3

For some of us, disappointment is pretty much the greatest pain in life.

Such people are frequently called "pessimists". Our fear of having our hopes dashed makes us wary of having hope at all. We prefer to imagine things to be as bad as they could possibly be, thereby leaving the door open to pleasant surprises but closed to disappointment.

Why do some people achieve a lot less than we think their potential would allow them to? Isn't it because where there is potential there are expectations, and where there are expectations there is a great possibility of disappointment?

People have told me not to fear disappointment so much, but I don't know how that is done. Our fears are usually not so rational that we can simply decide not to have them any more. And that goes for the fears that we know are irrational. How much more for the fears that have a basis in actual experience? The fear of dogs for someone who has never gotten close to a dog is different from the fear of dogs for someone who has been bitten.

It seems to me that the first step in conquering a fear of disappointment would be to learn that disappointment isn't so bad, and that getting your hopes up about things can actually be rewarding.

No doubt there are people whose life experience confirms this, but for some of us it takes great faith to believe that hoping for things is better than not hoping for them. To me it seems that whenever I hope for something (and I mean "hope" in the sense that I have a strong emotional investment in the outcome), I get punished for that hope by having it hurt me.

This is not a good way to train someone in the virtue of hope. It's a way to condition someone to be wary of hope.

Now I don't want to complain about the disappointments in my life, because no doubt it is a very minor pain compared to the sufferings that others have to go through. But even a mild electric shock is an unpleasant enough experience that it can make you avoid certain behavioral patterns that unleash it. Especially if the shock is not accompanied by some worthwhile reward.

As far as I can see, hope sucks. I have a hard time seeing how it is one of the great Christian virtues.