Thoughts @ 31

Turned 31 a couple hours ago. Some nice plans for the b-day: a show - one of 4 in a week(!), a planned "craaaazy" afterparty.. rehearsals, friends, music. stuff I like.

Had written a post on my 30th which I'd evidently forgot to publish (a little late now, so.. never mind), but in it I tried to describe major changes from the previous year, or just stuff that was on my mind at the time. Let's have a go this time round! So:

The first major change this year was the regular exposure to what had previously been relegated to a status worse than "false" - it had been plain uninteresting to me: religion. Nope, still the same atheist I've been for a while now, but found religious people, as well as the bible, interesting, for the first time. This through a group of friends who meet round the "parshat shavua" once a week, which I stumbled on pretty much by chance. Rather than being the pathetic-bachelor club I suspected it would be, all awkward and transparent, it proved to be a remarkably varied, interesting and intelligent group of people.

So first of all, I was making new friends. This on its own was a novelty because, though I hadn't thought about it, my core group of friends had remained staunchly rooted in my high-school years and my musical exploits. That was it. So the dynamics of becoming friends when you're older, more self-aware and more self-defined, proved interesting on their own. Won't bore with details.

The second aspect of these meetings, as I mentioned, was that religion as such suddenly became interesting. For one thing, just the wildly varying shades of observance and strictness, a terrific quality in Jerusalem, was fascinating. People modern in every way but...; people who look more closed but are actually budding open-ists; and of course people who just genuinely are who they are, different from me in some ways and so similar in others. Combined with this culture of ours, this man-made tradition that for me contains so many clues, pointing at a melting pot of historical circumstance, human psychology, economics, politics and, well, more human psychology, it becomes quite fascinating. The religious text we cover each week with tremendous variety in approach and appraisal, is in itself fascinating for its own circumstance and, yes, its constant drawing power. So that's one thing that's changed.

What's stayed largely the same is the existential realization that hit me so strongly just one year and two days ago. What are we doing here and, more importantly, what am I going to do about, remain in one way or another a preoccupation informing a lot of my perceptions of this world and my life. I'm fascinated by people, what drives them, their follies and their genius; but in all this I still can't formulate a cut-and-dry path that feels right for me.

Something that emerged a little more strongly this year was the focus on the individualistic (as opposed to the universalit) viewpoint. Anyone who tries to hammer out a single, one-size-fits-all doctrine for living - or what is "right" - will earn my immediate suspicion. We are all different people, with very different needs and even basic characteristics. There are totally different mentalities, interests and perceptions amongst people. The breakdown in cultural narratives (believe it or not, I'm not a sociology major), something that always felt a little bit of a shame, now seems more inevitable and plain sensible in today's world. Like it or not, we're no longer the small, nomadic tribes we once were. In fact, every nation on earth has gotten a little too big to be held together by cross-cultural dogma.

I don't say this angrily or with a chip on my shoulder. I'm not trying to violently tear down anything. I personally am not in any way a misanthrope - on the contrary, outside of some private music, pretty much all my lasting, deep enjoyment or contentment comes from people. So it pains me a little when these statements get pigeonholed and somehow make me out as a contrarian, rebel or heretic. I'm just saying - blind beliefs don't work for me. I'm trying to improve our collective future just as much as any socially-minded believer might, in saying these beliefs have to be tailor made. I'll cringe as much as anyone at the shallow, materialistic mentality so often on display (anyone seen the tv-series "Mechubarot"? kvetch kvetch kvetch! geez, when did whine replace personality?) but I'm a firm individualist.

Relationships? Mmm.. Had a few nice shorts, but if we're talking about thoughts and realizations, let's see... what's new, what's new.. Nothing, I think. Just as mystified as ever. Probably a bit more confused, if anything. No sweeping statements or ideas to be made this time around.

And another random update for posterity - this year got me more intellectually interested in trying to characterize and correct the tremendous amounts of plain bull in common economic, social and political thinking. I'm not talking about our leaders - everyone knows what they're full of. I'm talking about regular, otherwise intelligent people: I'm plain bewildered by all the hip-shooting, snap judgment, opinion-as-fact, dramatics-as-evidence, revisionism for its own sake, conservatism for its own sake, and willful ignorance of counterarguments that I come across in ordinary, web-bourne and face-to-face conversation. It's like "reasoning" isn't even in the lexicon...

Mood-wise it's been up and down, but at the end of the day, I'm still more up than down. Thank ? for small pleasures. ;)