Despair and Coffee Meager existential reflections on the meaning of life, the elusiveness of true love, and the apparent silence God, with cynical humor deliberately employed so I don't sound suicidal. Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 3 954 9 997

Articles from Despair and Coffee

Conceptualizing an enduring love 2007-05-07 22:15:00 When asked to define the nature of love, people tend to reach in many directions for insight, from anecdotal reflection on their personal lives to the larger familial and cultural values they have assimilated. One arrives at a conception of love through analysis and synthesis of his or her own experiences with the ideals that have been gleaned from external sources. This process is both conscious and unconscious in that it is an amalgamation of deliberate acts of reflection and unwitting adoption of values through environmental immersion and observation of what has been modeled by parents and others.Perhaps the most immediately accessible source is popular media. Compelling conceptions can be found in music, film, books, etc., and may be overt or subliminal. At times love, as presented, is utterly self-gratifying, ephemeral, and stems from physical or sexually desires. In other cases, love is depicted as heroic and self-sacrificial, assuming a mythic quality more at home within the fab ...

Suspended commencement 2007-05-05 15:49:00 The bells have ceased their tolling and most of the Dodge Caravans left three hours ago. Another graduation ceremony has passed and several hundred people are now officially (and presumably) launched onto bigger and better things. Those involved no doubt sensed the monumental nature of the event with their family thronging about cajoling them to pose for endless photos. The campus, however, is now barren, the only movement belonging to the few straggling employees removing the decorative banners brought out only for the occasion. The cool gray sky and the calls of birds accentuate the unusual vacancy.I recall watching my family?s minivan pull away after being dropped off my freshman year. I wondered what I was in for and if I had made the biggest mistake of my life. Five years later and this town seems more like home than where I grew up. The irony is that I want to leave this place. Many of my friends graduated with me last year and left. The few who also enrolled in the M.A. program ...

How Spider-Man broke my heart 2007-05-04 17:45:00 Superhero movies are among my guilty-pleasures, right above epic period films. Batman Begins and the first two Spider-Man films are some of my favorites from the genre. I generally anticipate the release of superhero movies for months in advance, with the exception of Ghost Rider and other obscure characters. I?m already stoked about Iron Man and The Dark Knight (the Batman sequel) both coming out next summer. This being said, I couldn?t have been more excited about Spider-Man 3. All of the principal actors returning, Sam Raimi once again directing, villains Sandman and Venom; it seemed destined to be two hours and twenty minutes of web-swinging eye-candy.I was disappointed. Depressed, actually. The 3 a.m. drive home from the midnight showing (which started late and required shifting the entire audience to another screen) did nothing to help my foul mood. The first half-hour is great, seeming to set up an amazing arch for the rest of the movie. Old history is quickly revisited and new ...

The disquieting nature of maturity 2007-05-03 17:49:00 As a child, the young pine forest next to my house seemed an infinite source of wonder and adventure. The trees were slender and dense, careening skyward, their evergreen canopy thwarting any optimistic penetration of sunlight. It was a world unto itself, like Sherwood or Narnia, a place where my imagination was given free reign. I would sketch maps plotting out the beaten trails and the quickest routes to the old tobacco barns concealed deep in its recesses. Entire summers could be spent fantasizing about the forts and hideouts I wanted to build. I was brazen and entered the wood without fear. But when you?re young, that?s also how you look at life, wide-eyed and enthusiast, unaware of the lurking dangers, inevitable pain, and the indifference of the world towards your quest for meaning.I was one of the fortunate few, spared any real trauma or disillusionment during childhood. All too many are exposed to the harshness of life at a young age, sometimes through abuse, neglect, or the de ...

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Apprehension and vocational ambiguities 2007-04-27 22:51:00 Determining my desired vocational course is rather daunting. The ensuing anxiety is surpassed only by the gravity of pledging myself in marriage. I fear becoming locked into a career which I loathe and provides little money to boot. There?s a lot of pressure which accompanies growing older, graduating college, and determining a subsequent course of action. Up this point, my biggest decisions have been selecting a college to attend and to love a particular woman to whom I have since proposed. Both are certainly major and established certain parameters which may restrict later decision, but I had a higher degree of confidence that those were the decisions I wanted to make. I don?t have the same certainty when it comes to my vocation.My unconscious method to forestall this decision has been to continue my education. After college I considered taking a year away from academics, the constant obligation and responsibility to read and write out of compulsion had long begun to drain me. Howeve ...

Commentary: "The Road" 2007-04-27 11:37:00 Cormac McCarthy?s latest work The Road, which was recently awared with the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is set in a desolate and razed America a few years removed from some unknown global calamity which laid waste to everything. Most of humanity has been eliminated and the remaining straglers are left scavengering for food and even preying on the unlucky weakest and less cunning. Yet, this is not ...

Two years, nine months deprived 2007-04-25 14:09:00 The phone on the patio table vibrated suddenly, a brutish staccato shattering his mental reverie. It?s not that he wasn?t expecting the call. He knew it was coming, had been bracing himself for days. Just one of those things which looms menacingly but never seems to fall, hovering indefinitely like a lingering nightmare which one knows, hopes, isn?t real. He exhaled, clutching for his composure, wiped his palms on his jeans and reached for the phone inching its way towards the table edge.?Hello.??Hey, Clancy, it?s me.??Yeah ? I know.? It had been two weeks since they last spoke, well, almost two weeks. A week and five days actually. It hadn?t gone well.?Thought it?d be better to do this over the phone,? she said, pausing as if waiting for his consent, though they both knew it wasn?t a matter of consent. A faux courtesy. He had expected this, with some certainty, but staring down the barrel he suddenly felt weak, removed, like watching a cruise liner carrying one?s family sink from sho ...

How many mornings before thirty? 2007-04-23 18:48:00 ?For even the world?s wisest men have fixed the bloom of youth at about the age of thirty; and when this period has been passed, the man begins to decline towards the defective and duller period of old age.? ? Augustine (City of God, 22.15)Barely into my mid-twenties and I?m already depressed about growing older. I catch myself fantasizing about being a twenty-one year old college graduate taking a year or so to travel and live life. But since I?m three years removed from twenty-one, I feel as if I no longer have the luxury. Though I?ve completed my undergrad, the sheer weight of the thirties bears down on me, as if I only have so long to establish myself before I?m forever pressed down in my directionless state and life solidifies around me. Stuck, an aimless middle-aged slacker with no real job or substantial income.Turning thirty will be major downer since evidently it represents the peak of my prime, that is, if my body and mind haven?t already begun the descent. So, I figure I ha ...

Egocentrism and the myth of happiness 2007-04-22 22:23:00 The basic goal of most individuals is to attain happiness in life; to find contentment and meaning. This being the case, it seems that the bane of human existence is, ultimately, the intrinsic selfishness which drives every person. From the womb one emerges preoccupied with self-preservation and immediate gratification. Babies cry at will demanding attention and sustenance, and only during the infantile period are one?s raw id impulses entertained and indulged so attentively by others. During early childhood this base egocentrism is tempered and refined, mostly out of necessity, and gradually attains higher sophistication through conflict with the demands, expectations, and approval of parents, peers, and larger society, etc. Children are expected to control bowel movements, to refrain from public tantrums, and to go to bed when commanded. Through such conditioning one becomes aware of oneself and others, typically attaining a maturity in which one?s latent and chronic selfishness can ...

Oh Cupid, where art thou? 2007-04-14 14:47:00 Within the last few months or so, several of my close friends have had their respective romantic relationships end abruptly and with harsh decisiveness, the broken engagements a tangible representation of the fragmented people who emerged limping from the rubble. As with everyone, the couples involved had unresolved personal issues and interrelational difficulties, but one would have expected their mutual love to sustain them. Instead, the relationships were brought to a sudden conclusion devoid of any meaningful closure, the shock and pain of the loss and rejection preventing the brutal finality to register. Through blanket denial and desperate hope, one futility refuses to accept what is going down. If only it were a nightmare.In serious relationships heading towards marriage, the course of people?s lives appears to lie somewhat clearly before them. Like driving on a road which extends, vanishing into the horizon, all that is to come can?t be seen, but one knows with some certainty ...

Of roller coasters and elusive things 2007-04-11 16:27:00 A good friend recently told me he believed that the emotional and existential struggles ever-present in our lives to be an inseparable part of the twenties. This was spoken in the hopes that aging will bring stability of some sort; a kind of settling into life. Sometimes this ambiguous point feels unobtainable, as if it is moving away from us at a rate only slightly faster than we?re aging; enticingly within sight yet never close enough to grasp. We set mental milestones, perhaps one of the first was sixteen, then eighteen, later twenty-one, and now it?s thirty and beyond. Can contentment truly be found?The first four years into my twenties have been bittersweet, bringing both the highest and lowest moments of life so far. Ever since thirteen ? or whenever it was that I became aware of girls as romantic and relational beings and desired the companionship of one of those elusive creatures ? my existence has been tempered and defined by encounters with raw emotion and unrequited desire, ...

On college life (or, 'My tragedy so far...') 2007-04-08 21:45:00 Most people as they get older tend to reflect back on the "good times" of their life. Of those times people generally include their college years as some of the best. I doubt that that will be the case for me. The last four years of my life have been without question the most difficult and painful. Sometimes in my retrospection the high points are eclipsed by the ramifications of the lowest points.I developed several providential friendships along the way that I hope to retain for the rest of my life and have many memories of happy spells, yet in general I think about the past four years with sadness. My life has been rather uneventful but marked by regret, broken dreams, the decline of faith, and dashed idealistic expectations. This was particularly and painfully pronounced during college.I wonder what the future holds for me. Will life continue to bring the same? Will I ever be content; at peace? I know that as a Christian, something must be said about finding your identity and conte ...