The Tao of the Uncertain

.002

Is There More to Life Than a Good Bottle of Merlot?

I understand what is so intoxicating about the city. Even beyond the fact that it is socially acceptable to order alcohol at any meal, the city makes it easy to be drunk, figuratively, with free flowing ideas, politics, trends, and philosophies.

In the beginning of my time here I fell victim to this drunkenness (of the figurative variety, of course). In a friend’s apartment in the Upper East Side we would sit with our bottle(s) of red wine, a block of Gouda cheese and spend the night philosophizing, and ranting about the downfall of American culture and politics. It was intoxicating.

I thought to myself, “This is what I have been missing in my life.”

Throughout my life I have had good friends with whom I had many good conversations but in comparison to this they all seemed childish. This was “grown up.” Here, we would solve all of the world’s problems with our bottle of wine and large vocabularies.

I would estimate that about 80% of the young people I have met here are from the Midwest. In getting to know many of them, I have come to realize there is one crucial difference between them and I… They left. I came. For them, New York is about escaping where they came from and this intoxication that is so easily found on every street corner makes it easy. You can get lost in the free flowing ideas, politics, trends and philosophies. But for me, I came. I came here for an opportunity, not an escape. I’m not trying to create myself; I am trying to be myself.

At some point during the year, I realized that maybe these free flowing ideas and late nights of philosophizing were something I was missing in my life. However, partaking makes me no more “grown up” than I would be at home riding my bike to a brewery and laughing hysterically when someone falls on their ass. These nights and conversations can be valuable in my life, but a balance between serious conversation and laughing with playful abandon is not only an ideal, it is a necessity.

So now, I must find a way to be drunk not only on wine and philosophy, but in the playful joy that we are so graciously gifted.

What makes you drunk?

Be Drunk

You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it--it's the
only way. So as not to feel the horrible burden of time that breaks
your back and bends you to the earth, you have to be continually
drunk.
But on what? Wine, poetry or virtue, as you wish. But be
drunk.
And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace or the green grass of
a ditch, in the mournful solitude of your room, you wake again,
drunkenness already diminishing or gone, ask the wind, the wave,
the star, the bird, the clock, everything that is flying, everything
that is groaning, everything that is rolling, everything that is
singing, everything that is speaking. . .ask what time it is and
wind, wave, star, bird, clock will answer you:"It is time to be
drunk! So as not to be the martyred slaves of time, be drunk, be
continually drunk! On wine, on poetry or on virtue as you wish.

Charles Baudelaire