For Erin!

During many recent conversations, it has become rather apparent to me that we all have developed some sort of working philosophy through which we deal with the surrounding world. This philosophy extends from the most basic daily needs, those of food and sleep etc., to the realm of theology. It’s glaringly apparent to me that, whether formally recognized or not, we have all elected a sort of scheme.
Most of the time, I don’t think we bother to ask whether or not is a very good scheme. We shrug our shoulders to new ideas, well assured that ours have accounted for everything. We’ve somehow made sense out of the inconsistencies and irregularities; an occasional anomaly never gives rise to second thought. But our philosophies, the ones by which we live rather than the ones which we espouse, are bad not because they can’t account for everything. That, I’m sure, they have assuredly accomplished by some skewed method. They’re bad because they aren’t rooted in anything save self, all the time acting like a rather inefficient vice grip whose aim is to extract some small amount of self-gratification.
We then find ourselves rooted in a nonsensical game, becoming indentured servants to the first philosophy that grants us some faded pleasure. We are like men who set up camp beneath a slow fruitless trickle, all the while failing to explore and discover a nearby abounding river. The sad trail that follows is one of adaptation, a reorganization of the fragmented pieces of life to suit our certain failed scheme. It is only a matter of time before the parts of our lives become institutionalized, regulated, scheduled, and bound moors of our badly chosen philosophies. Should it occur to us in our occasional misery, when Time slows and our clenched eyes open, that we might have failed to conduct an adequate search, or that somehow our search was tainted? Why, of course not. For we are all philosophers of the highest caliber.
Luckily, the Great Philosopher is also Redeemer, Lover.

SHEPHERDS
Clinging like sheep to the earth for protection,
We have not ventured far in any direction:
Wean, Child, our ageing flesh away
From its childish way.

WISE MEN
Love is more serious that Philosophy
Who sees no humour in her observation
That Truth is knowing that we know we lie.

SHEPHERDS
When, to escape what our memories are thinking,
We go out at nights and stay up drinking,
Stay then with our stick pride and mind
The forgetful mind.

WISE MEN
Love does not will enraptured apathy;
Fate plays the passive role of dumb temptation
To wills where love can doubt, affirm, deny.
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.
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TUTTI
O Living Love replacing phantasy,
O Joy of life revealed in Love’s creation;
Our mood of longing turns to indication:
Space is the whom our loves are needed by,
Time is our choice of How to love and Why.

From For the Time of Being: A Christmas Oratorio
-W.H. Auden