Blog #2: Finding Your Howl

In this blog entry I will be referencing to Jonathan Flaum's Finding Your Howl, which can be accessed via http://changethis.com/.

Finding Your Howl discusses a story about a tiger who is stuck in a cage. The tiger uses his outstanding jumping ability to leap out of his cage, only to find himself landing in another; the cages are lined up infinitely in the tiger's world. Flaum finds this story representative of life's struggles--they eat away at our souls and become a part of us. Though we try to "solve" them, we inevitably fail because we carry them around as if we belong to them. The only way to escape them is to let that part of us die.

This idea is intriguing to me and inspires creative thought, just as many other things I've read or heard have. Perhaps the quote that has had the strongest life-changing effect on me is from the closing scene of my favorite movie, A Single Man:

“A few times in my life, I've had moments of absolute clarity. When for a few brief seconds the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think, and things seem so sharp and the world seems so fresh. It's as though it had all just come into existence.
I can never make these moments last. I cling to them, but like everything, they fade. I have lived my life on these moments. They pull me back to the present, and I realize that everything is exactly the way it was meant to be.”

What initially struck me about these lines was that I knew exactly the feeling the narrator was talking about. I'll never forget the first time I heard these words: I picture myself, mouth agape, consumed by the fact someone else experienced this feeling I felt so strongly about, and they were able to put it much more eloquently, precisely, and beautifully than I had been able to. In that moment, I was sold on the idea that this feeling was something real and certainly significant.

About a month before I saw A Single Man for the first time, in July 2010, I had written in my journal about the exact feeling that quote describes. I was unable to put it into words very well, mostly because of my previous lack of understanding of this feeling. I described it as a "joy for life": a moment when, no matter my problems or anxieties, everything would feel absolutely fantastic. This is correct, but after hearing the quote, I understood that these moments are an escape from the cycle I so easily get trapped in: a cycle of worrying, thinking too much, being too solemn, and not being honestly happy. It speaks to people who realize that life is, in a way, pointless and inevitably going to end. We are the people who get trapped in this cycle, and we are born into a mood of heart-wrenching realization.

It’s because of who I am that the quote taught me so much. It took me until I analyzed it to see that perhaps life is pointless, but there is nothing wrong with that. Things are the way they are, so that means they are meant to be that way; there is no use in worrying or being consumed by your pains. I now know this, but like the narrator, I can't always feel it. The quote is about moments when I can, and everything around me becomes clear as day.

Absolute clarity. If the feeling were to have a name, that's what it would be called. When you feel it, suddenly you’re torn away from the swirling, chaotic contents of your overworked mind that is so consumed by the past and future. You are thrown into the present, and the world around you has never been so crystalline or composed. You feel true contentedness.

I'm not sure why I experience these moments, but as the narrator in A Single Man says, they're enough to live for when you feel you have nothing else. Existence itself is something to be fascinated with and comforted by; the purity of the present is just obscured by our tendencies to hold onto concerns of the past and preoccupy ourselves with thoughts about the future. What we fail to see, more often than not, is that life is happening right now. The world around us, at each present moment, welcomes us with open arms. Because I know this, I know that every anxiety issue, every sadness, and every over-analysis is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. There is absolutely no reason, ultimately, to be unhappy. Life is bittersweet that way, because not only do we not have the capacity to feel this way about it all the time, but because it is closer to its end with every ticking second.

But I believe that if we embrace the present, we are timeless, and therefore our existence is limitless. This belief has fueled my passion for life and creative thinking.