Tuesday
Tuesday dawned brisk, in the low 30s the sky a shade of baby blue. One more day is given, a gift to be lived, and who knows what opportunities will come for appreciation, puzzlement, a tap on the shoulder so to speak, there is more to be learned, much more. As is my habit I have a list of chores which I aspire to accomplish. Some will be “left over” at day’s end, when mind and body resist continued effort. A friend once advised me, “that’s what tomorrow is for, – what you did not finish today.” The statement has been to my benefit for most of my adult life.
I hope to meet “virtually” with a circle of friends tonight. Our purpose is to discuss the ethics of Simone de Beauvoir, a writer and intellectual who worked during and after the WWII years. World War II was a nightmarish time for those living in Europe, circumstances, crucible-like, the matrix out of which came the Existentialist movement, which continues as an aspect our post-modern 21st century ethos. de Beauvoir’s work remains relevant.
The foundational premise of Existentialism, the launch pad if you will of the story-telling, (philosophy after all, is story-telling with a point) is the absence of any “given” essence of human nature, no instruction manual of deportment toward others. To state the matter with brutal clarity, there’s no short list of do’s and don’ts — you and I are free/obligated to improvise, to do the best that we can to fulfill the one life that we are given, with others. Naturally the concluding two words in that rather longish sentence are key, the lynch-pin of the whole matter. It is by virtue of our relationship with others that we become a self, develop a consciousness of what is “good” and what fails to meet the standard of excellence.
Ah, improvisation… That is the challenge, the friction of “reality” that nudges us into a mode of openness, receptive to what we might become as the individual potentially — we could become. What might I become? That is impossible to know, 
something that can only be discovered through my/our work together, those chores, today’s to-do list, and the conversations with others along today’s journey. Life is improvisation; with a generous serving of failure, the opportunity to begin again aided by lessons learned by effort, trial and error…
As a matter of faith, I have to believe that “all will be well.”
The photo illustrates what happened to my copy of the essay that we will use for our discussion of this evening. I tipped over a glass of dark red wine, spilling it onto the annotated text. “And so it goes” with our work, despite our intentions…
Starting over again, wise to take more care with a glass of red wine.
