Killing a Philosopher-King

I’ve always held cynicism to be the fetid stench rising off of a dead and rotting soul.  Some philosophers might argue that a sense of wonder at the world is, by definition, devoid of wisdom; some people, far smarter than I, might argue that without information tugging on your hand, that you are surely lost.  It is entirely arguable, maybe, that only children should possess such wonder; only those under the protection of some caretaker, or guardian, or closely-vigilant parent; some might argue that such a wonder flees when this grown child is made adult by being thrown out with the bathwater.

Cynicism is, in and of itself, a rigid, tensile carapace protecting the soft underside, the vitals, the viscera.  We are dually blessed and cursed, I think, with the shrill objections of our conscience, prodding us, mapping our courses and forcing our hands.  We are stalked by our misdeeds in the spare moments of the day, foiled by an inability to wrap ourselves in the comfort of constant action, plagued by the inner-demons waiting in the vacancy of idleness, deserted by economy of emotion.  The heavy mantle of leaden confusion smashing down and smothering a flowerbed; the wide-eyed and dreamy, starry wonder in the world unraveled and poisoned by an inability to divorce thought from action.

To not want to know is the height of fear; to embrace ignorance is to cravenly embrace its comfort and protection.  Choices are made in anguish, uncertainly; even when offered cake or ice cream, might I not wonder how good the cake might have been, even as I eat the ice cream?  Might I not question the wisdom of my decision?  You cannot hide from the stern admonishments of retrospective fate; you cannot run from the broken, disproven notions you once held about yourself.  It is a true crisis of conscience when you marry enjoyment to remorse, and it is doubly bad when you kind of, sort of want it to repeat itself.  It is a tragedy when you can’t savor that enjoyment, and it is doubly bad to think of a wonderful night as anything but wonderful.  It is all so selfishly human.  The overripe, citrus orange of life is, upon closer inspection, actually a sprig of winter bittersweet.  Is there no penitence lest it be public?  I don’t know, John, but I do know that we all hang for silence.  You can see a long way from that gallows, all the way back through human history.

We’ve no right to think that we know anything, and to invoke an old existentialist, we are left alone, without excuse.  Perhaps, unencumbered and unprotected by a carapace, my skin will thicken, harden, and I will wear my underside like a gleaming suit of armor.  Perhaps I will evolve into something chameleon-like, and safely hide in my surroundings, kept safe in the towering cowardice of anonymity.   Forward, forward, always forward; Up, Guards, and at ’em.  Opportunities foregone always portentously promise of either self-recrimination or of the smug self-congratulatory; opportunities pursued usually promise the same, if only accompanied by knowledge and the confusion that it inevitably spawns.  I regret nothing except that I cannot live in the few kept memories, them that flashbulb in the black, wherein consequences and consciences and the unblinking devils of thinking were a world of bottles away.  That wine and that night held enough truth to kill a philosopher-king; hips may confound, but they never lie.

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one who makes things beautiful  Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth!  I do not want to wage war against what is ugly.  I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse.  Looking away shall be my only negation.  And, all-in-all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a yes-sayer.