Sorry I didn’t post last night. I got into customer service purgatory with my antivirus provider. Oddly, I didn’t have to wait on hold at all; it was the actual work that took forever. Of course I had to yield personal control of my machine to some guy in India, which I wouldn’t gladly do even if he were in Minneapolis. But I’m pretty sure that if I’d tried to follow instructions to do it all myself, I’d have ended up just running to Micro Center and buying a new computer.

The Sensation

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about my post on The “Lover’s Concerto” music clip. I’m still watching it – not as many times a day, I guess, but it never fails to run a semi-physical thrill through me, along the shoulders and up my neck to the brain.

I’ve had such reactions to various things in my life – often to music (“The Theme from Exodus”, Roger Whittaker’s “The Last Farewell”). Sometimes to art, such as a painting of a Viking ship in a history book my folks bought us once. Sometimes to books, like a couple of passages in The Lord of the Rings. Sometimes to scenery – my favorite was, and remains, a day when the sky is a leaden blue-gray but the sun shines brightly through a gap onto the trees and grass, so that they glow against the iron background.

If I had to explain my life – the choices I’ve made, the successes and mistakes, I’d say that my lodestar has always been an impossible beauty. One that can never be attained in this world, but that can never be forgotten either, that drives unending effort for something that I know can’t be completed, but which for some reason does not make me despair.

And I don’t think I’m alone in this.

Dreams

It would be pretty arrogant to think that this feeling made me special. I think most people have such dreams and goals, in various forms. They could impel one person to be a great painter – to crystalize for posterity a vision in their own head. They could impel another to be a great athlete – to attain that perfect “sweet spot” where body and spirit are one and amazing things become a simple arc of grace. They could impel another person to build the perfect car engine, or to calculate a more elegant mathematical proof.

Responses

It seems to me there are three ways people respond to this kind of transcendent yearning:

One is to give up. Some people cannot or dare not follow their dreams. They lack the courage, or they have responsibilities or limitations that leave them no scope for dreams. Some of these are bitter; some are resigned. They may be fine and admirable people who put others above themselves.

Others forsake father and mother, wife and children, for the sake of the (metaphorical) kingdom. Some people are willing to live their lives in poverty, to turn down good opportunities or relationships, in order to pursue their dreams. They are admirable in some ways, but may be miserable and inhuman people in their relationships.

This kind can be divided, I think, into two subspecies.

One is the success. He or she is much to be envied, unless they spoil it for themselves, which isn’t unusual.

Another is the partial success. This kind lives a fairly normal life, but makes time for their dreams. These are often the best of the group, because they take into account other people’s needs and wants.

The last is the failure, who is frustrated and retreats into bitterness. Such people can be the worst human beings in the world. Lenin and Stalin, I think, were such people – driven by an original genuine care for the poor and a sublime dream of a better world. But their method for attaining that dream did not, and could not, work. They would not accept their failure, though, and so had to punish the “wreckers” who must surely be sabotaging their perfect plans. The failures generally manage to make life a misery for all around them. The devastation is only limited by their relative power.

Somehow I have managed to wander from a Motown song to international politics.

Time to start the weekend, I think.