On Metaphysics and the Mating Habits of Snails

Like the venerable Dylan Kenny, I shall take up my duty of blogging. (As though I needed another excuse to procrastinate writing my essays!)

The applications process puts things in perspective. Alternately it makes me feel that I am better and worse than all the other thousands of candidates applying. One realizes that all of it is not very important in the least. Sure, I used to think that getting into the best college was the summit of life. Now that the rat race is nearing its end, I see that the reality is quite the opposite. Rankings mean nothing, really. Of course, I am still applying. Why? Perhaps it is because of the rankings. But it is also because of a desire to be at an institution of like-minded people, of people interested in and concerned about the world – a place where people are contemporaneously trying to solve the problem of world peace and the problem of ontological determinism. Hence, I slog through the applications – applications that reflect not even the tiniest part of me.

As I sit here by a clear window, I look out upon a snow-covered landscape where everything is beyond me, everything exists absolutely on the other side of the window. It is as though I am watching some great drama unfold as snow falls and birds huddle in dry branches.

Aquinas knew of the ontological good, the goodness of things in their mere being. Yes, I have lived in important places, seen momentous things: a squirrel clambering up a tree, a blade of grass trembling from a single dew-drop, a man strumming a guitar by the side of the road. They are all good, all equal in their being. It is an extraordinary moment when one realizes that a pebble on the shore is as great in its absolute existence as the Parthenon. Some people, however, conclude, then, that the Parthenon is lowered to the level of the pebble. But, perhaps, it is the other way round, that the pebble is raised to the level of the Parthenon. If everything is equal, everything does not need to be worthless: all of it may very well be of infinite worth.

Always, the everyday exists and will exist. But it is by no means commonplace. Emerson says, “The sun illuminates the eye of man, but shines into the eye and heart of the child.” In the world of men, everything is given false importance. The truly valuable things in life are despised, and the worthless things are exalted. It is the child who sees the world as it really is, and, like Milosz, is in “constant amazement.” Yes, there are some strange, exuberant times in life when it hits you suddenly: “I’m alive!” – and then you are, like Heidegger, in wonder at the mystery and beauty of a simple word: "esse."

I shall conclude with a quote from Soren Kierkegaard: “I am terrified by everything, from the smallest gnat to the mystery of the Incarnation.” The mundane, in a Heraclitean flux or a Hegelian dialectic, passes by not in silence, but with “trumpets and zithers.”

And no, this post has nothing to do with the mating habits of snails. Unless in some metaphorical way.