Waiting for Godot

Sit back in your chair. Preferably your computer chair. Scan the internet for news of the world, or your part of the world, or maybe your own neighborhood or block. Just scan. Let the headlines form sentences or phrases they report. Is this a description of your world? Or is it foreign and distant? Are you intrigued by the headlines? Will you, do you, read deeper into the stories?

Regardless, what is your impression of the events of the world? Are you restless? Maddened? Piqued?

I scan the headlines several times each day. If an item interests me, I read on. Internet headlines are copious these days. You can’t escape them unless you discipline yourself. I’m hopeless in this regard. I subject myself to headlines. Yesterday, I subscribed to several daily postings from the New York Times. I chose the publication because it appears to be the daily newspaper of record for the entire nation. No other paper even tries to do this. The Chicago Tribune has demoted itself to a pickled version of Chicago news, and maybe the same for the state of Illinois. It lacks Midwest regional impact. The LA Times seems more worldly, but it too, pales when compared with the New York Times. Even a comparison to the Washington Post gives shade to the other two tribunes.

I say this for the record because it seems that the news business has been reduced to a game of who writes the more alluring headlines. Even the Washington Examiner engages in this, and they aren’t a true news organization in the first place. But their headlines entice!

Writing this blog has been and remains to be an exercise in making sense of what we take as modern-day life. It looks for topics that requires thinking. Even more, pondering. The simple is not so simple; it is complex and more meaningful if we allow it to be. Yet, taking topics of discussion from the daily headlines most often does no good. It is like Waiting for Godot. A play of nonsense yet deep meaning. And of course, Godot never arrives, and the reader eventually wonders if there is even a Godot in the first place.

Is that all there is to life these days? Are we playing games with topics, meanings, events and such to give the impression that we are living meaningful lives? If the substance of the topics is not dealt with now or ever, then what meaning do they contain?

Like Godot, perhaps life is noise rather than substance? If the banality of humankind is its meaning, what then is the philosophy of existence?

The mind shudders at such drivel. Surely, we can do better than this?

October 17, 2022

 

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