Keep Your Options Open

I got accepted into the PhD program at IU. I'm "being considered" for financial aid, but they haven't made an offer yet. Still waiting to hear from Michigan, Princeton, and U. Chicago. Duke turned me down (those fucktards).

I haven't decided to go yet, but it's nice to have the option, you know? As my old religion professor Dick Davis used to say, "the central motto of people under 30 is Keep Your Options Open." It was something like that, anyway. This guy also had a cheesy blue trucker-style cap that said KIERKEGAARD on it...ha! He was great.

John Prine said, "Old man sleeps with his conscience at night. Young kid sleeps with his dreams."

I wonder if this ridiculous weight of freedom ever eases up. If, at some point, the options start narrowing, and you aren't burdened by the need to direct your own life anymore.

But, this is the stage of the aesthete, the stage of uncommitment. Kierkegaard would say that the highest value for the aesthete is the interesting, and his demon is boredom. Commitment is the bridge to the ethical stage. Commitment to a wife, to a job, to a house, to a place...that is the ethical life, and it's all most folks can hope to achieve. The highest value for the ethicist is the good. In Either/Or, Kierkegaard presents the aesthete (whose pursuit of the interesting is manifested in his seduction of young maidens) and the ethicist, manifested as the married and respectable Judge Wilhelm. Wilhelm writes to the seducer and argues that his own ethical life is not boring, as the aesthete fears, but rather infinitely interesting, as he explores the viscissitudes of a single relationship with a solitary mate.

On This American Life a couple of weeks ago, a man wrote about his struggles with fidelity to his wife. He describes a conversation with his wife where he says, "you know, monogamy is kind of sad...breaking the rules, being unfaithful, is a big part of the human experience. And if you stay faithful forever, you'll never experience it."

The wife thinks for a while and replies, "yes, that's true. But if you're unfaithful, you'll never know what it's like to be faithful to your partner for your entire life...and maybe that's an important part of the human experience too."

Either/Or. Options close off. As the barber shop sign on 10th st. said, "you can do anything, but you can't do everything."