The idea that you might have a purpose in life is a sort of daunting one. If you have a purpose it sort of implies that you have a responsibility to get something done, but no one seems to know what it might be. And what exactly happens to you if you fail to fulfill your mysterious and ill-defined purpose? Do you get a do-over? Probably not. It's like having a job where no one will tell you what you're supposed to be doing, but you suspect that there might be a performance review at some point - if someone wants you to get something done, why not just tell you? All questions best not dwelled on too much, but sometimes the mind inevitably turns to these things, usually when one is hung over for some reason. In earlier times this was an easier problem to deal with - if you felt that you were missing something you went and sought out a wise man to provide guidance. Not so simple, today, for a man who lives in a city on the edge of the Rocky Mountains. There are no wise men sitting on the top of mountain peaks in the Canadian Rockies. It gets ugly up there and wise men don't linger on those unhappy little summits for long.
So it was that I recently found myself wondering (while hung over - this whole problem can safely be blamed on Jack Daniels) where one turned for guidance in the modern world. After much careful thought I came to an inescapable conclusion: if you want to find enlightenment and don't care for the idea of journeying to a Tibetan monastery somewhere in the Himalayas - where there are no adequate bathroom facilities and they probably don't speak English anyway - then you must go to Chapters. Yep, that's right, since the decline of western religion this book superstore has become the closest thing we have to a centre of wisdom and guidance. If you don't believe me then ask yourself: who has had more scandals lately, the Catholic Church or Van Halen. See? My path thus clarified, I headed for my local centre of enlightenment with high hopes. I ventured into the sacred halls of learning, striding confidently past all my usual favourite sections of the store - past the business section, past general sciences, straight into the entirely unfamiliar land of the Philosophy section. Things were different here; rather than the usual crowd of technology geeks and paunchy middle-aged businessmen I suddenly found myself among leather jacketed young men with unkempt hair and women with large glasses, even larger heels and a mixture of ankle length dresses and corduroy pants. Everything about them seemed to cry out candlelit coffee shops where world-weary jazz musicians lamented the unbearable burden of existence while patrons espoused theories on the nature of perception and reality. Very near by I could see a pair of stout teenage girls perusing witchcraft manuals in the occult section. They were engaging in a serious discussion on crystals of some sort, partially dispelling the veneer of intellectualism. I felt vaguely out of place with my business school background and well-mannered hair. Fearful that a poor selection would immediately brand me as an outsider if witnessed, I hastily selected a book by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and headed for the checkout, pausing to scowl at the would-be witches and flash them the two-fingered devil handsign in a dramatic, Ronnie James Dio fashion that made them lurch backwards. Enlightenment doesn't mean that you can't be a jerk every now and then.
Excitement was running high as I got my purchase home and began to delve into this new area of interest in search of guiding principals. The initial results were positive, if somewhat unremarkable. I became immediately enamored with Nietzsche's view of the importance of suffering and ordeal; his emphasis on avoiding the comfortable and lethargic and developing through difficult and frightening trials (at least I think that's what he was saying, I was also discovering that philosophers are seldom very straightforward). I had found a philosopher with a world-view compatible with my own! Then the book started to take an odd turn and began to tell the tale of a fictional figure named Zarathustra, a hermit who lived in the mountains and spent a lot of time thinking. Occasionally Zarathustra would decide that he had come up with some stuff worth sharing. He then would wander into civilization to plague everyone with wisdom they'd rather not have had, until eventually they kicked him out of town. Zarathustra kept on the move a lot. Such is the life of a visionary. |
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