Boethius and the Beach

So I have spent the last week, and will be spending the next week, with my family at the beach.

It's been fun, stress-free for the most part, and a good chance to catch up with my numerous siblings, who have done a little growing up since I moved out. Talking to my oldest sister about relationship issues, for example, is a new experience, but not an unpleasant one. It's interesting to see what kind of personalities they are developing as they mature. (if you can call moving into the teenage years maturing; for many people it seems to be the opposite!)

One thing I have always liked to do at the beach, which I do not see many other people doing, is going out and fighting with the surf. By this I mean getting out into the water where the waves are breaking the roughest, and struggling to hold my ground against every one.

It's endlessly fun (for me, at least), and a good allegory of life, I suppose. You discover different kinds of waves: tall, perfect crests which can be dived through; low, foamy waves which tickle as they pass; deceptive surging waves which look like mere swells, but then suck the sand out from under your feet and push you over. With this knowlege comes the strategies for dealing with them: Some waves you can let crash against you without being driven back, some you can dive through, some you had best swim underneath to avoid being swept off your feet and deposited nearer the shore. The allegory occured to me this time, but really I just enjoy it. It's probably not difficult to analyze this and make judgements on my personality, but I'll leave that to the interested reader...

Apart from fighting waves, getting a tan via repeated minor sunburns, burning my eyes out due to the glare and wave-stolen sunglasses (only cheap plastic ones, not to worry), and enjoying fresh seafood on a daily basis, I have been doing a bit of thinking, and reading.

The other day, I had a chance to sit out on the deck overlooking the ocean, and read a large chunk of one of my favorite books, the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. I won't go into the details of either the book or the philosopher here, (you can probably wikipedia that if you're interested) but it was definitely an enjoyable experience. My mind gets cluttered with all the excessive stimuli our hyperactive media culture subjects it to on a second-by-second basis, if I let it get to me, and occasionally it needs a bit of clearing and straightening out, to remind me of why perspective is so important.

The time away from my (former, as I prepare to depart for Taiwan in less than a month) job and routine has caused a shift in my perspective. I had expected it, but was nevertheless surprised when it came. It's so easy to get stuck in the routine of our lives that we forget the real world is all around us every day. Having broken out of this routine, I find myself noticing that reality is, well, real.

As Christians, we believe in some things that we can't see, and as people living in these times, we see many things that we must not believe. For me, this does not result in so much of a blurring of the line of what is real and what is not, as a lapse of perspective with regard to the relevancy of that question. Because I know that what I see around me is no more real than some things I cannot see, and because I believe that many things I cannot see are vastly more important than what I can see, I do not always attach enough relevancy to those things I can see. I forget that God has placed me in these very real surroundings, surroundings that existed in one form or another since He created them through Christ, for a reason. What surrounds me is not all of reality, but it is nevertheless real, and should not be ignored or pushed aside. Perhaps I am a bit too platonic about these things, attaching more significance to the unseen archetypes than their real counterparts that I interact with on a daily basis, sometimes without noticing them much.

-One exception to this, by the way, is nature. I have always been acutely aware of the beauty of the natural world, and am thankful that God has revealed Himself to me in this way. I cannot see a sunset, or a mountain range, the blue morning sky, or the waves breaking on the shore, without sending up a silent thanks to God for placing us amid such beauty. He pronounced His creation good, and though it is now fallen and corrupted, it yet retains the shadows of its former perfection.

But now it is late, and I think I will go and play Final Fantasy with my brother. It has occurred to me that perhaps a large majority of our entertainment (games, movies, television, etc) consists of constructing a hypothetical scenario with a system of relationships and rules, and dealing with the consequences of these. I wonder what that says about us as a culture? Does it make the Enemy's job that much easier when we are constantly immersing ourselves in alternate scenarios instead of focusing on reality? Is it so hard to deal with this life that we must create fictional realities to escape from it? Or are we just too lazy or fearful to fix the problems in our own lives, so we escape to other places to evade them?
Something to think about, anyway... time to end this.

-Joseph