The K Files: I want to KNOW

I wish that life could just have left me alone. I was doing just fine, thank you very much. Many many years ago I had a theory of what life was about. Based on "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull", "Illusions", "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", etc, etc, I had an explanation of the Meaning of Life that was comfortable and made me happy, particularly the flying bits.

But then along came divorce and my little theory was blasted to pieces. Nothing made sense. I'd dedicated myself to love, to loving someone and still, my whole world fell to pieces. A friend told me at the time that, really, there's no meaning to any of these things, shit just happens. I didn't like that idea at all. I continued to struggle to understand what was happening to me at the time. But I failed to find any rhyme or reason. Eventually I decided more or less that divorce is not something that needs philosophical explanation, it's just what one person does to another and thus does not fall into the metaphysical realm - although at the back of my mind I have to admit that I thought that was something of a cop-out conclusion.

Since then I've lived my life knowing that my personal philosophy had more holes in it than Granny's old knickers but, frankly, I felt no need to put more time and energy into something that was of dubious value anyway. And the older I've grown the harder that my view on the subject has become. "The Selfish Gene" has a logic all of its own. "Godel, Escher, Bach" puts the case for intelligence as a mechanism. "The God Delusion" summarized quite a few things about organized religion that had bothered me since my confirmation, although I wish to make it clear that there's a lot of stuff in Dawkins book that I didn't and don't buy at all. But still, all this stuff remained nothing more than an intellectual curiousity. Until a year ago. Until the 19th of September this year. Until Kay died.

And now it's no longer a curiousity, now it's a burning NEED TO KNOW.

The basic problem is that I'm not much good at belief. I have spent most of my life building a firewall against it. One of the things that struck me from my confirmation studies all those years ago was that religion is a logic trap, designed to capture and hold the believing mind. And as I learned more I came to realize that this is what most religions have in common. Sometime ago I read some interesting articles around the theory that certain sorts of ideas are in effect viral in nature. Like computers viruses, they are in fact packets of information that can infect a host, modify the hosts operation and replicate themselves. However, at the deepest level of my nature, I'm allergic to any form of outside control, as I'm sure that my dear wife will confirm. To me belief is the equivalent of opening up ports in my mental firewall, that will then expose me to the possibility of being infected with a 'religous' virus that will change me in some Orwellian way and will result in me losing control over my being.

The consequence is that I have therefore viewed everything from a minimalist, Occam's Razor, point of view. Concepts such as "The Selfish Gene", etc, have always seemed to me to be eminently sensible and complete descriptions of the world, anything beyond being speculation, ie the domain of belief. In the summer, when Hawking announced that he didn't need god to explain the creation of the universe, I appreciated his point. However, I also appreciated the rebuke from Jonathan Saks, who said that religions don't concern themselves with how the universe was created but with why it had been created. I can see both points of view but I didn't need either of them: it doesn't surprise me that there's no trace of god in the creation of the universe because there's no trace of god anywhere else and mankind can continue to seek explanations for things for which there simply may be no explanation.

But then Kay died and everything changed: there is nothing more that I want than to KNOW that Kay is with me and to KNOW that I will be with her again. I can't bare the minimalist view that Kay was only the sum total of the atoms in her body, arranged in a certain way according to the rules of genetics. I can't cope with the idea that all that personality, that gaiety, that originality, that beauty has dispersed and left nothing behind but echoes in our memories. It FEELS SO WRONG, but unfortunately that doesn't make it wrong, it only makes it the simplest explanation. But still, I don't want the simplest explanation anymore, it is not adequate to my perception, to my need. I want to KNOW that my Kaytje is still there. Of course, I can't know because if I could, Hawking would have found god in the creation of the universe.

I have been hanging here for weeks now (I started this blog entry ages ago). Desperate for Kay. But knowing that there's no evidence in the rational world that can sooth that desperation. No way of knowing whether the Kay I sense in my thoughts, have heard talking to me four times, is actually Kay or merely the cunning operation of a subconscious that has evolved elaborate ways to dull conscious pain, to offer hope, to ensure that its host carries on operating.

And then while driving to work a few weeks ago I was caught by the lyrics of a song by The Script, "Science & Faith":

Tried to break love to a science
In an act of pure defiance
I broke her heart.
And as I pulled apart her theory
As I watched her growing weary
I pulled her apart
Having heavy conversations
About the furthest constellations of our souls. ooh
And we're just trying to find some meaning
In the things that we believe in
But we got some ways to go.
Of all of the things that she's ever said
She goes and says something that just knocks me dead.

You won't find faith or hope down a telescope
You won't find heart and soul in the stars
You can break everything, down to chemicals
But you can't explain a love like ours.

Woohhhh
It's the way we feel, yeah this is real.
Woohhhh
It's the way we feel, yeah this is real.

I tried pushing evolution
As the obvious conclusion of the start.
But it was for my own amusement
Saying love was an illusion of a hopeless heart.
Of all of the things that she's ever said
She goes and says something that knocks me dead.

You won't find faith or hope down a telescope
You won't find heart and soul in the stars
You can break everything, down to chemicals
But you can't explain a love like ours.

Woohhhh
It's the way we feel, yeah this is real.
Woohhhh
It's the way we feel, yeah this is real.

Of all of the things that she's ever said
She goes and says something that just knocks me dead

You won't find faith or hope down a telescope
You won't find heart and soul in the stars
You can break everything, down to chemicals
But you can't explain a love like ours.

Woohhhh
It's the way we feel, yeh this is real
Ooohhhh
It's the way we feel, yeh this is real

--

Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place for Kay? Perhaps I need to look into the place where our ability to appreciate art & music comes from? The place where we feel love? (Though my rational mind just whispers in my ear that perhaps these things are just artifacts of our complex minds, the consequence of having achieved a certain level on cognitive complexity).

I don't know. The only thing I know for certain is that nothing about the loss of Kay is emotionally reconcilable with the Occam's Razor view of our existence. No explanation that I can accept feels right.

So what does one do with a mind in this state? Inured against belief. Desperate to know the unknowable.

I so miss Kay, with every beat of my heart, with every microsecond that passes, with a burnished undiminished pain that will never die. I so need to know that she's with me. But my mind is being extremely uncooperative. How does one find a way through this to the peace that is necessary for life to regain any kind of quality? To knowing for certain that in some way Kay is always here?