Candide and Stuff

I have been reading a lot lately. Not just scholarly articles on boys with squirrels, but also novels and other things.

I recently reread Voltaire's Candide. I remember reading this years ago and enjoying the tale of this character whose life is devoted to the optimisitc search for the explanation of the human condition. I reread it now with a more refined understanding of the philosophical issues of transcendental thought, the folly of optimisim, the contradictions of satire and Panglossian idea that "everything is for the best."

This is actually a text that has a lot of relevance to my current life and that of the world around me. Candide's journey, wrought with trial, tribulation, joy, sorrow, love and hate and his journey toward self-awareness and understanding seems very close to my current search for self-awareness and acceptance. I continue to be reactive to the fact that I grew up uncomfortable with myself and being made uncomfortable by others around me. I rarely felt truly at home in my own skin, although I have continued to grow more and more aware of myself as I leave behind my 20s and move into a new decade of my life.

I also find that I tend to question the "reason" behind events in life, even though reason often has nothing to do with it. I fail to believe that "everything is for the best" in a pure sense, although it seems that even when things go wrong, they tend to somehow influence an aspect of life that ends up "right." For Voltaire, Pangloss is as mislead as many of the philosophers of the Englightenment who believed that God existed and as a perfect being, he created a perfect world and was incapable of mistake or imperfection. Voltaire's continual punishment of the main characters suggests that God, if one exists, is (as Jim Carrey put it in Bruce Almighty) simply a "mean kid with a magnifying glass. And we're the ants."

So, I continue my search. I continue to look at my own person - trying to make me better. Better to me, better to others, better all around. And, I continue to deal with my spirituality, which has always been strong, if someone undirected. Who knows...I may find something out there!

Thanks to Dana, who gave me a great book for my birthday that is helping me move from the satirically sadistic world of Candide to a more introspective sense of spirituality...more about that another time, I suppose - still have to finish reading! :)