I had a life changing experience today.
My car shit the bed on me the other day. We had to have it towed to the gas/mechanic station down the street from my house to get it fixed.
When they called today to tell us the car was ready, I put down the Chinese philosophy book I was reading, put slippers on my feet and went with with my dad to go get the car. I thought it'd be in and out so I saw no reason to put on shoes, heh. My dad is friendly with the men who work there, so they were talking while my dad filled out paperwork and I sat in a chair in the corner, and one of the men asked me if I'm in school and I said yes. He asked me what classes I'm taking, and I told him.
Turns out that this man (I forget his name) has a degree in philosophy(also, a relative of the owner of the gas station has a PHD in the field which I found neat). He asked what type of philosophy I'm taking and I told him that I'm currently studying existentialism and phenomenology.
We got into this fucking intense discussion of phenomenology, talking about Husserel and the concepts of time, history and perception. I used the term "collective mind" in the wrong context and he straightened that out for me. It progressed into talking about Hegel, Marx, Nietzche, Noam Chomsky, Chinese philosophy, Indian philosophy, existentialism, a priori vs empirical things, reason, politics, and more. I said, "it's all so crazy. The sheer enormity of it all is overwhelming sometimes but it's something that realy speaks to me, something that I enjoy attempting to understand", and he agreed.
I asked him, "so how did you end up working at a gas station?" He chuckled and told me that he was unemployed for 5 years after earning his degree and that it's tough to find a job in the field. I was like, "yeah that's what everyone tells me but, honestly, I'm not concerned with making a lot of money. I study philosophy because I enjoy it." "exactly", the man said. He told me that I could definately go into law or journalism with philosophy, then we talked a bit about politics and political philosophy, about Plato and The Republic. He told me to stay away from politics, and I laughed, then he said some things about psychology that I can't remember right now, but probably will later and then look into.
He told my dad (who sat there grinning the entire time and after two failed attempts at getting in on the conversation admitted that he had no idea what we were talking about but liked hearing what we had to say, heh...actually I had a nice discussion about political ideology with my dad this morning, but nothing like this.) that I'm a smart girl, and I beamed. He said that he enjoyed talking to me, and I was like "I really enjoyed talking to you too. Everyone else is always like, 'I don't care' or 'what the hell are you talking about'."
What the mechanic said next was the thing that will always stick with me:
"I know exactly what you mean. It's so rare to have the opportunity to talk to someone who knows where I'm coming from, who sees significance in these things, sees connections. Philosophy is very lonely and will drive you crazy, but it is incredibly rewarding."
Somebody gets it. Oh my fucking god, somebody GETS IT. You don't understand how much this means to me, how trapped in my own head and despondent and directionless I had been for so long.
For so long, I've felt like I was crazy and utterly alone save for artists/authors/muscians whose work most people don't choose to grasp the significance of. Since beginning to study existentialism and phenomenology in depth, it had become almost too much for my soul to bear. It's all so intense, so heavy that I feel spiritually weighed down. The reason I put this LJ on hiatus was because my repeated attempts and failures at articulating my thoughts and relating to people were adding to my sadness. There's so much more to me than loving bunnies, possessing big tits, crushing on cute actors, using the word "like" way too much, and the knack for always saying the wrong thing; I spend so much time thinking about so many things, but most of the time I have this listless and defeated attitude, like "why should I even bother trying to explain anymore, nobody understands." Speaking to this man assured me that there are people out there who go through what I'm going through, and helped me decide to follow my intuition and let my mind do its thing. In short, it's okay. I'm okay. I always get my gas there so maybe we'll get to talk again.
Who could have guessed that it would be a Lebanese mechanic to point me in the right direction and reassure me that I'm not as alone as I had believed.
***As for this journal, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it...I'll comment here and there under this username, but I went and bought another paid LJ account so I want to start using that regularly.