The Measure of a Life

My thoughts through this year are culminating with a question of perspective, a question of "-isms". Idealism vs Realism. Other isms aside, these would be the main two. I'm an Idealist - but not a pie-in-the-sky idealist. I think I've given ear to plenty cynicism and skepticism to ground my idealism within the boundaries of plausibility.

But you can't deny I'm an idealist. It's what's behind the phrase "livin' the dream!" I oft hear when I relate my life. If I were a realist in the music business, I'd become a lawyer or an accountant. But I'm a performer.

Realism is a hard drink to swallow for an idealist, but it's a healthy drink. Ideally, the two would be 50/50 (like those red and green 3-D glasses); Realistically, naturally, one takes precedence. And that's the bum part of it all. Realism is bound to natural law. It has the upper hand from the get-go. If we lived in Ideality, instead of Reality, then I'd be right at home. Alas, we don't.

Yet, pure realists have got to have it bad, right? Realists don't dream, or dare. Realists don't risk. And risk is everything! How can we live abundantly without risks?

Still, what risks are worthy of being taken? If you risk your worldly possessions, does the import of probability diminish if the value of rewards increase? What is the equation? If you risk your heart, is it justified by being honest to everything you know and feel, regardless of everything else in the matter? If you sit at home gluing the pieces afix for months or years, is that irrelevant in the light of the truth you lived out in your choices? Is that burden you're left with truly worthwhile? How long before the light retreats and the honesty you pursued feels like a betrayal?

Now, is realism the destiny of a level-headed idealist? Don't all idealists who risk and fail receive a cold embrace from cynicism? We walk away either embittered or delusional, right? Or, perhaps, I speak out of cynicism and not idealism, and I'm compromising the integrity of the word itself by being befuddled, as to where I am, at the offset. Cynicism and Realism are not one and the same, and Cynicism and Idealism are not mutually exclusive.

Yet, does my perspective change the truth of the matter? It becomes a different battle: Absolutism vs. Relativism. Is not empirical evidence mere subjectivity with a title approved by academia? Is not objectivity an illusion, a mass compound of the subjectivity of the majority? Or of the subjectivity of the outspoken, at least? Is that not what Bonaparte said about the veracity of the entirety of History? It seems that the Age of Enlightenment has left us knowing less, while we question more. And perhaps that is why so many take comfort in the questions themselves - because we've started asking what cannot be answered.

And then, we are all, to varying degree, influenced by the dominant paradigm of our generation. But that's tangential.

Is the value of a life determined by how long it's lived, how well it's enjoyed, or what it accomplishes? Do we feel we must justify our existence by giving ourselves a cause to fight for? It now becomes another battle: Egoism vs Altruism. If I live sacrificially to benefit others on a large scope, is that greater than if I live simply and plainly for my family and for myself? Maybe that's where a measure of Relativism becomes necessary. Perhaps I am generalizing a matter in absolutes, when it doesn't belong there.

Even still, is the purpose of a life to be understood in terms of its value, in the first place? Is there an interconnectedness between meaning and value? Perhaps value is inherent: it does not need to be sought, it is there. And, perhaps, meaning is not there at all, and cannot be found.

Does this sound like utter ambivalence to you? What are your thoughts?