It’s a simple enough question, “Why do you get up in the morning?” Yet it is not simple to answer. The knottiness of the answer is naturally not any restraint or irresolvable impediment to do so. We all do it. Eventually. Rather it is the peculiarity and variety of answers, many of which are seemingly blunt and uninteresting or too vulgar and bawdy to bare repeating. It is nonetheless upon examination a complicated issue, one which merits at once both intellectual, poetic, philosophic and natural reply. Some reasons however tend more to the psychological vein and they can paint a very sharp or austere image of a reluctance to remove oneself from beneath the covers. One recalls for example the likes of Søren Kierkegaard, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Camus and the theatre of the absurd.

According to Albert Camus, the world or the human being is not in itself absurd. The concept only emerges through the juxtaposition of the two; life becomes absurd due to the incompatibility between human beings and the world they inhabit. This view constitutes one of the two interpretations of the absurd in existentialist literature. The second view, first elaborated by Søren Kierkegaard, holds that absurdity is limited to actions and choices of human beings. These are considered absurd since they issue from human freedom, undermining their foundation outside of themselves.

The absurd contrasts with the claim that “bad things don’t happen to good people”; to the world, metaphorically speaking, there is no such thing as a good person or a bad person; what happens happens, and it may just as well happen to a “good” person as to a “bad” person. Because of the world’s absurdity, anything can happen to anyone at any time and a tragic event could plummet someone into direct confrontation with the absurd.

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We were 12 at table last evening.  A dinner in the country. A dinner with old friends. Each of us had a longstanding relationship with one another. Some of the relationships literally spanned a lifetime. Certain of the relationships were romantic; others pragmatic; some professional. Others incidental. The distinguishing characteristic of blending young and old at the same table for the same meal at the same time is indeed singular in my dining experience. It is a feature characteristic to last evening’s host, one which he has oft repeated. And once again it worked! I attribute the levity of the evening and the social skills of the children to their historic involvement with adults from a young age. The contribution speaks to reciprocity (and certainly at times accommodation) but on balance it instills what is assured to be succinct, entertaining and memorable.

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We shall retire deeper into the country late this afternoon and direct ourselves along Upper Dwyer Hill Road onto McCaffrey Trail in the Village of Ashton for a festive family muster at my erstwhile physician’s country seat.  In reflective anticipation of the event during the early morning hours today there was thunder and lightening announcing the arrival of warmer air, humidity and sunny conditions to complement the foregathering. It shall no doubt include a ritual plunge and refreshment in the swimming pool in the meadow before dining.

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On a Friday before the start of a long weekend (Labour Day), it is our customary habit to remain in situ. We haven’t the urge to join the anticipated throngs on the highways or elsewhere as they traffic from one place to another. It does besides seem usefully compromising on our part to avoid adding to the circulation if we haven’t any present need to do so. Nonetheless I cannot deny the pleasure I derive from recollecting the exuberance once associated with September 1st. It always heralded an excitement as we launched into another Indian Summer and the innumerable pastimes attached to the upcoming autumnal season.

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Gawd!  It really happened.  A complete lapse into that once unthinkable paradigm; viz., a Seniors Moment. I hadn’t a clue to whom I was speaking!  That is, I mistook the person to whom I was speaking as someone else entirely. Unhinged I had continued the vacuous conversation (with all the unwarranted conviction of certainty) for an eternity before suddenly perceiving my foolish error. I had even remarked how svelte he was looking.

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You seem to have our political system all figured out.

I do see a several flaws which after a more thorough investigation on your part might lead to a better understanding of what has always driven the success of our great nation.

Free Enterprise & Limited Government are two for starters.

Individual dignity, self respect & ambition is lost under the guise of equity.

I invite you to study CA and determine if handouts; free drugs; homes at corporate expense and no jail time for robbing & smashing businesses (which puts good people who provide jobs or services and who contribute to society out of business) would be welcome in a community near you?

Socialism (equity) has never succeeded at solving societies problems, at least in my limited study of history.

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Remarking upon the end of an adventurous day is not entirely unlike the welcome ceremony of brewing fresh coffee. This is particularly so as I am now curiously accustomed to having my roasted bean narcotic as a relaxation in the late afternoon rather than in the morning. The intellectual equivalent of percolating an evening reflective summary may in this instance be more accurately stated as filtrate (as in “liquid passed through a filter”) or even transude (basically, “to gradually sweat through pores”). Hear me out. After having had a sleepless night, and having forcibly ejected myself from the lair prior to 7:00 am in anticipation of the early morning arrival of our housekeeper, then thrown ourselves onto an equally abrupt collision with Canadian Co-operative Wool Growers in Carleton Place (in search of white woollen socks) followed by a perfunctory perch at table in the clubhouse overlooking the first tee while putting on the nosebag, it has been in all an exhausting commotion! And this before I relate the toxic circuitous drive into the city to collect an article from Mountain Equipment Company fettered by endless construction for the LRT (Light Rail Transport), boundless highway construction and unspeakable urban building expansion.

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Labour Day has forever been a winning holiday. When I attended prep school or undergraduate university, it heralded the start of a new academic and social adventure, a punctuation of each year of my teenage life; and at law school it announced the peculiarly emblematic entry into my twenties at age 21. When I was working it afforded a break from what had traditionally been a complex and arduous summer. And now that I am past all that it marks the beginning of autumn and the end of a ravishing summer.

It is however impossible for me to overlook the colourful recollections I have of Labour Day on Cape Cod in Provincetown, Massachusetts. To this day I can recall my first sight fifty years ago of the towering sand dunes at the end of the Cape as we at last digested ourselves from the enclosed tree lined pathway along the rib of the entire Cape leading from Barnstable to Herring Cove Beach in PTown. It was magnificent! Its white shifting purity along smoothly sculpted mountains of sand, reflecting the yellow tinges of the setting sun, inviting the uninitiated spirit to a new world.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned the hard way that there’s no going back.  I refer naturally to the mistaken inclination to revisit the past as though it were possible. It constitutes one of the few things I accredit myself to have learned and profited from; that is, leaving the past where I found it, flavoured perhaps by occasional reminiscences, but otherwise in the envelope where it is kept safely.

For now instead I have the decided pleasure to stare upon an exceedingly luxurious almost unbridled field of greenery, wavering in a comfortable wind along the river which ripples in sync. And listening to my favourite cocktail jazz music. It borders on irresponsible pleasure, having hitherto fulfilled a day of passable dynamism by tricycling to new heights (literally: my endurance now allows me to press the pedals up from the river to the top of the adjacent compass overlooking the spread below); and of course afterwards motoring along the country roadway surrounded by corn stalks, windows down, thoughts percolating and wandering as aimlessly, nowhere to go, nothing to do. We have lately consecrated a number of absorptions, some in, others out. The clarity is positively invigorating!

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Classifying the pursuit of happiness is, at least for those of us in Western society (commingled as we are with the vulgar preoccupations of commerce and retail) frequently confused with making money only. Of late, the allegedly constitutional entitlement has been asserted beyond this token boundary and interpreted by some (specifically Trump supporters) as the legal basis for civil war and insurrection against the current American government as though it were responsible for the economic failure precipitated during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is however an argument which by any characterization or enhancement is no more persuasive than “Love thy neighbour”.

Love Thy Neighbour refers to the Biblical phrase “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself” from the Book of Leviticus 19:18 in the Hebrew Bible about the ethic of reciprocity known as the Golden Rule or the Great Commandment.

The pursuit of happiness (like the love of our neighbour)  is for each of us very much a personal undertaking, not one predicted by religious or ethical mandates nor by any governmental or political limitation of Thomas Jefferson and his cronies in 1776 or whenever; nor by Donald J. Trump at present.

Pretty much all of us are familiar with the phrase in our Declaration of Independence that asserts that every person possesses three inalienable rights – “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. But what did “pursuit of happiness” mean to Thomas Jefferson, who used the phrase, and his contemporaries, who embraced it? The phrase actually meant “the pursuit of a meaningful life”, of a life that provides a person with a sense of satisfaction that what they are doing is worth living for.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If, as one might reasonably assume, each of us wishes to live freely and happily, then one is led to enquire, “Who or what is going to stop us?” If you or I were among those commissioned to draft the Declaration of Independence (announcing our liberation from British dominion) then one might plausibly conclude that the recognized obstruction was government (oddly, the very thing we were then in the process of formulating for the initial colonials and their protection). Even if one were reluctant to imbue government with the quality of beneficence, I think it is sadly an inductive leap beyond imagination (except perhaps among some questionable Trump supporters) that there is a “deep state” or treachery among the currently elected officials. While the prediction is not entirely implausible in rogue governments of third-world countries (such as Turkey whence the term “deep state” derives), once again I believe it to be otherwise a heinous jump into the mist more probably calculated by people like Trump who are overtly unhinged. If there is any political corruption at work I believe it to be the Republicans themselves who, to their eternal ignominy, continue to support a leader of their party as a leader of their country as a leader of the world who is clearly incapable.

The government does not have our best interest, they are supposed to work for us. They are taking advantage of the hard working American people. During this Covid pandemic, many people have lost their life, a loved one, jobs and homes. We can’t afford to keep letting this happen. Many people are worried on how they are going to pay their bills, take care of their family. Is society going to go back to normal? Has the American people forgot what our constitution stands for? We do have our rights and if we keep letting this so called government take over. We will not have a constitution. Our rights are on the line. We need to take a stand and defend this beautiful country most importantly our constitution.
The deceleration (sic) of independence says we have the right to overthrow our
Government. It says we not only have the right, but we also have the duty to alter or abolish any government that does not secure our unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Americans have many rights and we are watching the government take everything away from us. We deserve life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. We are Americans. We will not be controlled. We will not stand down.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

But I have allowed myself to infiltrate the private affairs of another country; and, possibly unwittingly to offend my American friends. For this I apologize.  My intention from the outset was to ruminate solely upon the pursuit of happiness, not upon the political misinterpretation of the Declaration of Independence. I fear however that any attempt by me at this point to regain your unfettered attention, unqualified by equal vociferation, would be futile. Regrettably the current larger significance of world peace, dignity and exemplification far outweigh whatever petty commentary I may have regarding the philosophic pursuit of happiness.  Indeed it is upon candid reflection not entirely uncertain that my own views of happiness (however scurrilous they may be) have been trumped by the greater issues at hand. Perhaps the rebound from this match is best left, for the moment at least, until a further time wherein the matters of metaphysical absorption are more tolerable and convincing.

Though you may have been spared the indispensability of preparing for anything in particular, though the day may have yawned to a state of aimless indolence or leisurely gravitational distraction, it is on occasion nonetheless an elegance of thought and entanglement to capture a moment alone. I here speak of the private reflection upon life; what less magnanimously is labelled armchair pettifoggery (that doubtful privilege of the unemployed). Contrary to Jean-Paul Sartre who said in “Huis clos“, “L’enfer, c’est les autres“, I have developed instead my own analysis of the obstructions to existence. Nor, might I add, do I embrace the conclusions as either trite or deceitful. I am not motivated by escapism; rather by scrutiny and dissection.

The play begins with three characters who find themselves waiting in a mysterious room. It is a depiction of the afterlife in which three deceased characters are punished by being locked into a room together for eternity. It is the source of Sartre’s especially famous phrase “L’enfer, c’est les autres” or “Hell is other people”, a reference to Sartre’s ideas about the look and the perpetual ontological struggle of being caused to see oneself as an object from the view of another consciousness.

This philosophic view of ontology is all very well.  But for me it is like Sartre’s premise; namely, mere entertainment. It overlooks what I consider the elemental feature of life; namely, not the way others see us but rather the way we see ourselves. Make no mistake, there is nothing charitable about this conclusion.  It isn’t intended to deflect or reflect anything external.  It is instead provoked by the inescapable conclusion that our ideal characterization exits only within us. Any attempt to collaborate or compensate, to muddle or illuminate one’s thoughts is useless without introspection and definition.

Ontology is the philosophical study of being. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it. To articulate the basic structure of being, ontology examines what all entities have in common and how they are divided into fundamental classes, known as categories. An influential distinction is between particular and universal entities. Particulars are unique, non-repeatable entities, like the person Socrates. Universals are general, repeatable entities, like the color green. Another contrast is between concrete objects existing in space and time, like a tree, and abstract objects existing outside space and time, like the number 7. Systems of categories aim to provide a comprehensive inventory of reality, employing categories such as substance, property, relation, state of affairs, and event.

It is for example not uncommon to blame others for one’s own afflictions.  The capital of course is limitless; the boundaries are spatial; the classification and ornamentation  are inexhaustible. But such absorption is commensurately wasteful.  First and foremost is the annotation that the sterility or fecundity of others is irrelevant. Even if one were to persist to adopt a convincing logic of cause and effect, the consequence (even if irreversible) does nothing to alter the resulting state of one’s being. In short we haven’t any profit (either good or bad) from the conduct of others. Granted this recognition may contribute to a distance between oneself and others; but as far as the estimate of the quality of that abstraction, it amounts to little more than a trace of colour upon the distant image. If by contrast the coalition is otherwise remarkable or agreeable, it similarly makes no sense to attribute any of that to oneself. The only remaining ingredient upon the distillation of the commonality is one’s own inevitability.

My apologies for speaking as though I were an academic.  Philosophy is such a challenging enterprise, exacting as it does a measure of logic both deductive and inductive though all undeniably hypothetical. Indeed I do in fact consider it a privilege to have retired to the country “with my book and my bottle”. Like it or not the alternative is disparagement or qualification of some degree. Wanton self-aggrandizement is naturally an unfavourable resort. The objective is to awaken each morning with a hope of accomplishment. The derivatives come from abroad, the anticipated “seasonal mists”, the transition of the crops, the hopes and dreams of travel, the cultivated expectations of pleasure and despair.