Sometimes being asked a question can help start the flow of writing. Thank you, anonymous questioner!

I like philosophy, but question: did studying it lead you into and out of the desert? Or does it leave you there? Most of the philosophy students I met in school were sophists, but unaware of it. How have your studies affected how you see and interact with the world?

I appreciate your questions about studying philosophy. Let’s see. I don’t think philosophy itself led me into the desert. Life did. What philosophy helped me do was be o.k. with it. It didn’t give me answers, but it gave me tools. Tools for thinking. The same goes for my theological and other studies, past religious practice, and my current readings in psychology. I can mistakenly think I will get the answers from those places. And I did for a long while. But life happened in the meantime, and when I came up against the unknown and struggles, what wasn’t working any longer had to be discarded. If not, I end up suffering needlessly in order to avoid the pain of change.

I hope I’m not being too vague. The ‘life struggles’ were identity issues, questions of ‘what now?’ after graduating undergrad and grad school, a breakup, etc. When I hold onto beliefs like they are facts, I will run into trouble at some point. I need to be flexible and able to question myself, my beliefs, my motives. But I also don’t want to say there is no meaning, everything’s relative and just made up. That’s a fake easy out. I do want to believe in higher truths, and I find that my life may not be easier but is better when I operate according to them, and I treat others better when I have some higher truths in my life. There are no given answers, I have to struggle with finding my own answers. And I find it important, even necessary, to struggle for those answers rather than 1. simply submit to a given code, be it religious or philosophical, and always try to fit everything neatly into that perspective or 2. not bother at all.

The other thing I can say about philosophy is that I just really enjoy thinking, so studying philosophy was really enjoyable for me. I was born an idealist who loved to get lost in her head, found myself an existentialist in undergrad, and since then life has tempered my idealism to be more pragmatic and grounded. I’m still an existentialist/mystic/poet/thinker type, tho. : ) Oh, I remember writing a paper about Sartre and his concepts of good faith and bad faith, and it turned into a defense of faith in God. The turmoil I experienced that night as an 18 year old was at once both poignant and humorous.

Thank goodness quitting smoking was a higher truth for me!