Posts Tagged ‘definition’

Bodies don’t last forever. But while they do…

Preamble: As Danny DeVito once said to Shaquille O’Neal, “I’ll be short.” And in a similar way I’ll be, if not short, at least concise in this little amuse bouche of an essay seeking to define who I am in this Digital Age of torrential technology. This is a worthy pursuit if only because it’s another 3 hours until lunch and with that kind of existential hole to fill I turn my thoughts unto the nature of me and by extension, the nature of all of us (alright, maybe I won’t be that short, but I certainly won’t be uninteresting).

Amble: It was Socrates who said, “Know thyself.” He said it in ancient Greek so it sounded a lot different back then. But his larger point being that the unexamined life was not worth living. And when I say, “the unexamined life was not worth living” you all think, “Well that’s very true, but of course it doesn’t apply to me. I know what I’m doing. But for other people, whoa, they’ve got some serious examining to do.”

It’s always the other guy isn’t it? God forbid we should be self-reflective and see the faults within ourselves and do something to transcend them other than blithely observe, “Oh yeah…there they are again. Hey faults. What’s up?” How do we square that? We ignore it and kinda blame the rest of humanity for lack of “not seeing things as I see them” or maybe we depend on a God we barely acknowledge to, “Explain it all to me once I’m through with this life.” Some might say there are worse things to procrastinate about than endeavoring to “Know thyself.” And if you’ve ever tried to ignore a kidney stone you know what I’m talking about.

The Thing: In any event, and irrespective of my little indictment of the human race above, I’ve plumbed the depths and shallows of my being. I’ve discovered there are ample areas of shallowness and a few deep pools of cosmic connectivity. My self-definition is influenced by the Digital Age of technology which has relentlessly cascaded upon us like a newly formed and torrential waterfall (not bad writing, eh). I’ve designed this personal descriptor, as a reference book for all humanity. As if there were a dictionary whose content included every earthling who has ever existed, so that if you looked up the meaning of David Hardiman, the definition would appear thusly:

David Hardiman: A human platform streaming original content at no charge to interested end users. A multi-function app powered by both good intentions and bad choices. Like many born of mammalian parents, he’s a temporary flesh puppet occupying a renta-body that’s long, willowy and prone to excessive thinking. While not buying into the foolhardy view of life as pointless duality, he nonetheless contends with it like a parent does with a whiny child – he loves it immensely, but just wishes it would behave. Hardiman lived his life by Oscar Wilde’s maxim, “Life is too important to be taken seriously.”

Also see: Marx Bros, Einstein, Ram Dass, Lennon, Jesus and Steve Martin.