The Fire Still Burns: My Philosophy of Life

 This is the final paper we wrote for our English 12 class this semester. It's not perfect, but I thought I'd share it here. It's nice to get a piece of writing out every so often, and this one is a little different from my usual fare. So, here we go.

Loss of empathy might well be the most enduring and deep-cutting scar of all, the silent blade of an unseen enemy, tearing at our hearts and stealing more than our strength~ Drizzt Do'Urden, The Silent Blade.

            On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty, to God and my country, to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, and to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent~ Scout Oath and Law.

           

           When I was asked to concoct a Philosophy of Life, two questions immediately sprang to mind. The first was, “How am I going to do that?” The second was, “Do I even have a Philosophy of Life?” The first question was easily answered, as I write papers all the time and have proven to be at least semi-capable of farting out something legible in the span of a half hour or so. The answer to the second question proves to be more difficult, because I certainly do not want to just crap this paper out without putting any thought into it, and it provides an interesting point of introspection. Of course, everyone should have some sort of philosophy by which they guide their actions, even if that philosophy is not immediately apparent. So what moral code do I, then, live by?

            I equate life to a campfire. You throw a whole bunch of crap into a pile and light a few matches. If all goes well, you get a bright, cheery blaze which keeps you warm through a long, dark night. If it fails, you have a sputtering waste of energy that doesn’t help you at all. What this incredibly forced analogy is supposed to mean is that we are the sum of our past experiences, and each and every thing we encounter in our daily lives becomes, for better or for worse, a part of who we are. In my case, finding a philosophy of life was something I had to discover during my teen years. You know, that dark and dreary time of confused emotions, parents who ‘just don’t understand’, and sappy emo rock music (If you must know, the bands I listened to in my early teen years were Linkin Park, Killswitch Engage, Lamb of God, and Metallica. Try not to judge me).

How anything positive could have come from this period in my life baffles me in one way, but in another it makes a lot of sense. You see, it was during this period of time that I started to come into my own as an individual. I started to finally attempt to improve the quality of my writing (an ongoing process), and began to expose myself to a wider variety of literature, film, and gaming that had up until that point been inaccessible to me. Of course, being in my rebellious teenage state, I often found the darker aspects of fiction to be the most appealing. In fact, I still find these aspects of fiction to be the most appealing. I find that it makes incredibly good reading/viewing/playing to experience a story that makes you think about things. And, as a kid, I may have found this darker side to be a little too relatable for my own good. There are any number of stories that I’ve experienced that I could find an interesting philosophy behind, and even now I hold these stories to be among my favorites.

For example, let’s look at the famous video game series Final Fantasy, or more specifically Final Fantasy VI (any of the Final Fantasy titles could provide some philosophical musings, but in my mind VI’s remains the most poignant). Final Fantasy VI is the rare example of a video game where the villain arguably won. The mad jester Kefka succeeded in throwing the natural order of the world into chaos, destroying a large part of the world and ascending to godhood, ruling over the world for years and destroying pieces of it on a whim. After banding together from across the ruined world, our heroes climb Kefka’s Tower in a desperate dib to reclaim their world. In a metaphor of Dante’s Paradisio, our heroes ascend into heaven, where they hear the meaning of life from the lips of God… but God has the leering face of Kefka, and even as a God, he couldn’t find any meaning to life.

            Or, Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s excellent manga series, Death Note? A series steeped in religious and psychological themes, where a brilliant teenager, Light Yagami, stumbles across a notebook dropped by a Shinigami death god that enables him to kill anyone simply by writing their name in the book. Light then decides that he will use the note’s power to rid the world of evil by killing all of the evildoers, and setting himself up as a God. An excellent story concerning the corrupting nature of absolute power and the lengths Light goes to justify his actions as morally just, the series ends with his defeat, and with death comes the discovery that there is nothing after life. As the Shinigami tells Light at the beginning, “There is no heaven or hell… no matter what you do in life, everybody goes to the same place once they die… death is equal.”

George R.R. Martin’s fantastic A Song of Ice and Fire series comes to mind as a more recent favorite. Phenomenally well-written fantasy novels that are of a quality that I can only dream of my own writing becoming, the series has no qualms about killing major characters, but it’s often easy to tell whose most likely to get axed. Martin’s world of Westeros has no room for the honorable, and it’s is those of morally ambiguous ruthlessness who survive. “You wear your honor like a suit of armor, Stark. You think it protects you, but all it does is weigh you down. You know why you summoned me here. You know what you want to ask me to do… but it isn’t honorable, so the words stick in your throat,” says Lord Petyr Baelish, moments before betraying Eddard Stark.

The DragonLance character Raistlin Majere was always a favorite of mine. His frailty and sickliness led the young wizard to develop an insane jealousy of his fellow men, particularly his twin brother Caramon. This jealousy and feelings of superiority led Raistlin to develop a highly cynical view of life, eventually leading to his own war with the gods in a bid for greater power. Raistlin tells us that “Hope is the denial of reality. It is the carrot dangled before the draft horse to keep him plodding along in a vain attempt to reach it.”

            And so on and so forth. And endless cavalcade of darkness and dreariness. Life has no meaning. It is pointless to hope. People are fundamentally heartless bastards.

…I’m sorry, but I just can’t live like that.

            While it’s true that I find all of these different viewpoints endlessly fascinating, I simply can’t live my life like that. The newfound wisdom I have gained that my child self didn’t is that these people were miserable, and alone. The point of Death Note wasn’t Light’s insane ramblings on the evils of mankind, it was detective Near’s steadfast opposal to this viewpoint, the understanding that Light was desperately trying to justify his horrific actions by placing himself on a pedestal of self-righteousness. Raistlin’s noble sacrifice was more meaningful than his life of bitterness and regret. If there is any one literary character from my childhood I can truly relate to today, it is Drizzt Do’urden, a character who maintained steadfast principles in the face of a society that could truly be called ‘evil’, and whose philosophical musings led to the gem that I began this paper with (and a sign that I am finally bringing this to some sort of point).

            You see, I have not lost my empathy. Throughout my life, I have been able to empathize with the plights of others, even without the kinds of experiences they may have had. I simply cannot close my heart, deaden my emotions to the point that I truly believe that there is no good in people. Even when I was so depressed, so weak, so unbelievably beaten down that I couldn’t bring myself back from the brink, I always had people that were there for me. And that is my blessing. I am blessed with both empathy, and a community to emphasize with. People who look out for me, care for me. My mother and father who sat by me even during my most insufferable periods of adolescence. A group of friends at school to laugh with. A brotherhood of scouts who shared a collection of principles. A girl to be close to. The best friend I ever had, ever since I was a kid, who moved away but never truly left my side. These bonds of friendship, of family, are what fuel my fire in a way the dark aspects of fiction and fantasy never could. I have a great understanding of the twisted darkness that resides in the human heart, but an even greater understanding of the warmth and love that needs no words to describe. All of the people in my life, I love them. I love them for believing in me when I didn’t believe in me.

            So, in conclusion, I still really don’t know if I have a philosophy of life. What I do know is that I am who I am, thanks to the people I call friends. Living for them, by their example, is enough of something to live by for me.

            Softly falls the light of day, as our campfire fades away. Silently each Scout should ask, have I done my daily task? Have I kept my honor bright? Can I guiltless sleep tonight? Have I done and have I dared everything to be prepared?

            Briton’s waters called to me, beneath the summer sky, “Remember well all you have seen, when youth has passed you by.” Said I, “dear waters,” in reply, “Allow me chance to say; though for a time I may leave this place, I will return one day. For here I learned the fellowship the Scouting Law had laid burns brightly as the bonfire around which friends are made.”