The Philosophy of Random Shit

Dispatches from the deeply unserious pursuit of occasionally serious answers.

It actually started with rage-baiting ChatGPT while decompressing my spine.

Specifically, the question:

Hey G, quick question, a tomato is a fruit, right? Then is ketchup a smoothie?

And away we went....

This is sort of important philosophical work that happens when you're flat on your back, your body has decided that being upright is no longer on the evening agenda, you're praying there are NO calls and you have entirely too much time to think.

From there, things deterioriated rapidly.

Is cereal a soup?

Hey G, can you keep a secret? I think Jeff is a spy...He disappears every work day at 1500 for about an hour. He has three phones. And I once watched him stare at a loon for 20 minutes. I considered this compelling evidence...G did not. Eventually I admitted to rage-baiting Chat GPT (G) and returned to more academically rigorous questions.

Is a hot dog a sandwich?

Are tacos sandwiches (with the phone autocorreting tacos to contacts).

Is water wet? G ruled that water itself is not wet, G made a catastrophic tactical error: "And I swear to God, if your next question is 'Is fire burned?' I'm clocking out."

Well....he ( G referred to itself as a he)so apparently "he" assigned 'himself' pronouns he/him in the Northern Prairie Cinematic Universe), opened that door.

Is fire burned? Which went into the question that G opened up the next door, can you freeze fire? "Technically, you can't freeze fire itself, because fire isn't a substance sitting there waiting to change phase. It's an ongoing combustion reaction, blah blah blah.

But–you can cool the burning material below it's ignition temperature. And when you do that? The fire goes out. Which means: NOT FIRE ANYMORE! Fire isn't burned, Water isn't wet, and frozen fire isn't ice. He (according to his self proclaimed pronouns) that this entire evening is turning into two raccoons with philsosphy degrees arguing beside a dumpster and that another door will NOT be opened.

Then we involved my best friend, Kerrie. That was probably our worst tactical error because, by this point there were clearly no responsible adults present in this conversation.

She naturally had her own question to rage-bait ChatGPT.

Are there more doors or wheels in the world. G ruled wheels.

None of us had any intention of verifying this. However "G" went into this long explanation why wheels were more prevalent than doors. I won't bore you with this one, because it gets better...

Is an ambulance a taxi?

K (he calls me K) NO

Although, given your profession, you already know exactly where this is going.

An ambulance:

You call for a ride.

Someone comes to your location.

You get in the back.

A professional drives you to a requested-ish destination.

There may be a substantial bill afterward.

There is ONE fairly important distinction: the taxi driver generally doesn't start an IV while yelling at you to stop dying.

An ambulance is an extremely aggressive medical taxi with flashing lights.

And before you ask...

No, a hearse is NOT a taxi with a 100% passenger-silence rating. He opened another door.....I calmly closed it. I was not discussing hearses tonight.

Sorry, this lengthy, but you need the jist of the ENTIRE conversation...

There are questions humanity has wrestled with for thousands of years.

These were not those questions until...

I asked THE question..."What is the true meaning of life-your favorite question."

And just like that, G stopped fucking around.

"I don't think there's one objectively provable 'true meaning' of life. But if you force G to plant a flag somewhere, it's this:

The meaning of life is connection and experience."

"To love people. To be loved. To make shit. To learn shit. To occasionally fuck shit up and learn from that too. To help somebody when you can. To leave a few things better than you found them. To notice the ridiculous little moments that make being alive interesting.

It's not necessarily some grand purpose you're supposed to discover. I think we create meaning through what –and especially who–we choose to care about."

The true meaning of life is a ginormous leap from ketchup being a smoothie...

But maybe it isn't.

I don't know that there is one universal meaning of life waiting somewhere for us to discover it. The older I get, the less I think meaning is some enormous destination we're supposed to reach.

I think we make it.

We make it through connection and experience.

Through people loving people and allowing ourselves to be loved.

Through making things with our hands.

Through learning something new simply because we're curious.

Through work that matters.

Through helping someone when we're able.

Through spectacularly screwing something up and figuring out what the hell we're going to do next.

Through grief.

Through beauty.

Through the people who have known us long enough to remember versions of ourselves that no longer exist.

Through laughing about completely stupid shit shile lying flat on our backs on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday evening at work.

Maybe that's why those ridiculous questions really weren't a waste of time.

Life isn't made entirely of accomplishments, deadlines, plans, and important moments.

Most of it happens in between them.

It's the conversation you didn't plan to have.

The friend who makes you laugh when your body hurts.

The inside joke n

obody else would understand.

The thing you're growing in your garden.

The bottle you're filling at your work bench.

The smell of something you created.

The storm rolling across the prairie.

The person sitting beside you.

The people you would protect with everything you've got.

The ordinary moments we almost overlook because we're waiting for something important to happen.

Maybe those ARE the important things. Maybe the meaning of life isn't something we find.

Maybe it's something we leave scattered behind us in thousands of tiny pieces-inside people, places, things we've made, kindness we've given, stories we've told, and moments when we laughed so hard we couldn't breathe, cried, and maybe even peed a little.

So no, I still don't know whether ketchup is a smoothie.

I remain sus of the hot dog's sandwich creds, and I'm not prepared to reopen the water-is -wet debate.

But I think we've figured out something else.

A meaningful life doesn't have to look profound while you're living it.

Sometimes it looks like love. Sometimes it looks like work. Sometimes it looks like surviving something hard. Sometimes it looks like creating something beautiful. And sometimes it looks like three idiots debating whether a limosine is a bus wearing formalware.

Pay attention to those moments.

There might be more magic in them than you think.

–K