March 7, 2022
Et iterum hodie. And again today.
I woke up at 6:00 A.M. this morning and looked through the window of my bedroom. The sunrise was small and the world was quiet. The colors of the sky were a mixed shade of blue and pink. A few clouds were like the rosy-fingers of dawn in Homer’s Iliad. I stopped my alarm and checked the weather: high of around 80 degrees, overcast, wind throughout the day.
I got up from bed, brushed my teeth, and put on sweatpants and a t-shirt. I walked downstairs before everyone else woke up, made myself a cup of black coffee, and went outside to sit on the patio in the backyard with a pile of books: On China by Henry Kissinger, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson, Decoding Reality: The Universe as Quantum Information by Vlatko Vedral, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands, The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think The Way We Do by Erik Larson, and Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants by Mathias Enard.
I sat and read while facing the Sun, which was slowly rising between the angled slant of the roof of our house and the branches of a large tree in our backyard that were waiting to give birth to a new season of leaves. I like to do this in the morning when the weather is nice so I can bathe in the warmth of the Sun, the star at the center of our Solar System, and get dose of healthy nutrients from its light. I read for a while, mostly On China, and was both fascinated and horrified by the tales of a young Mao Zedong and his rise to the leadership of China in the 20th century, that bloody and majestic century which built the world we live in.
I’ve been reading books for years. Whenever someone asks me why or when I started to read so much, I can never tell them exactly. It started sometime during the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school. I had recently quit pairs skating after winning the U.S. National Championships a year before. I guess I figured that since I had reached the peak of an physical sport, I achieved excellence of the body, and therefore should next pursue excellence of the mind. It wasn’t as simple and logical as that, but that’s generally what happened.
I started pairs skating when I was ten or eleven years old, four years before winning the National Championship. At that age, I was too young to know that some people in the world have mean and weird ideas about men doing that sport, but I would soon be introduced to those evil parts of our humanity, to the useless cruelty of people who waste their lives hurting others. It was an extremely rough and violent time for me. I was bullied a lot and mostly exiled by my schoolmates. Some would call me gay or a “homo” because they thought it was an insult, but I didn’t really mind that. I knew who I was. I had several girlfriends during my time at the rink and a basic confidence in myself from being an athlete on the rise toward national success. Looking back now, it also doesn’t hurt to know that some of my worst and most aggressive bullies are now either in jail, drifting around, or just generally wasting away. What did hurt though was the isolation from others, the humiliation, and the loneliness. That was what broke me as a kid. But in the deepest depth of the darkest day, I faced a choice that would shape my life: I could either succumb to the pain and evil of the world or I could overcome it, strengthen myself, and help make the world better. That’s a long way of saying: maybe being an outcast in the world at such a young age led me towards that universal refuge for wayward souls in books.
Anyways, an 18th century C.E. British politician once wrote: “A little thing sometimes produces great effect, an insult offered to a man of great talent and unconquerable perseverance has in many instances produced, in the long run, tremendous effects.” Let’s see how I do.
I checked the time and realized I would be late for law school if I didn’t leave soon. I rushed to get dressed in somewhat formal clothes and ate breakfast after my daily fast (two eggs with pepper, two pieces of sourdough toast with Irish butter, a salad with tomatoes and olive oil, Greek yogurt with granola and raisins, and an apple). In the car, I listened to a podcast by an economist about the problems of the Social Security system in the America and their possible solutions.
Schedule: Property Law, a two hour break, then Constitutional Law.
During the break, I read some of Edmund Morris’ biography of Ronald Reagan, a former President of the United States of America, called Dutch. I thought about the fact that before we developed the technology to instantly communicate with each other around the planet, the only way we could talk to someone was to slowly and physically write letters and then send them through a mail service. I think the daily practice of writing letters is what made the writing of the past so clear, so organized, and so beautiful—so Hellenic, I guess—compared to the writing of my time. With modern texting, the English language is becoming lazy, full of idioms and metaphors, and lacks the profundity of the pre-Internet writers. Moreover, with the ability to instantly search and find any information that we might need or want, our ability to think about the world independently and intelligently has weakened also, which makes our writing weaker too. Maybe I am being cynical. Maybe I am saying the world is so when only I am so. The only way to not be so is to improve my own thinking and writing and then share it with the world. That’s the only way for a lot of things, thinking about it.
Classes ended. I learned about the unenumerated fundamental rights protected by the Constitution of the United States of America, specifically: reproductive rights, id est, the right to procreation and abortion.
On the way home, I drove along the highway with the windows down and enjoyed some of my favorite weather: gray overcast skies and a warm wind, the calm before a storm.
Home. I helped my Dad clean up fallen leaves and branches in the front yard. After, I went inside and exercised by lifting weights. During, I realized I started too many books and needed to finish some. Then, I criticized myself for choosing to read distracting books, books which will not add new knowledge to my mental model of the Universe for me to use in the future and are not directly relevant to my short-term and long-term goals. Then, I questioned whether writing in this diary will become a habit (Is it another distraction? Am I wasting more time?). Then, after remembering the biographies of FDR, Mao, and Reagan, I thought about what source-material the historians and biographers of the future will use when they write about me, or rather, what source material I will leave them. Then, I criticized myself again for entitling myself to history’s recognition when I haven’t done anything worthy of recognition. I only read books, study the world, prepare myself, and plan for the future. I have not, yet, taken action.
The only thing standing in my way is myself. I must “be strong and of good courage” as God commanded the ancient Kings of Israel to be in the Bible. The courageous will to act. A benevolent strength. To put down the books and go out into the world. To step onto the stage of history and become a protagonist in the grand story of humankind in the Universe.
Et iterum cras. And again tomorrow.