Brief thought on Aristotle's Ethics book 1

     To anyone who is trying to regularly check this blog in its adolescence, I apologize for posting another entry so swiftly.  Also, thank you for reading!

     So my incredible friend Twigz and I are on a personal quest to read "The Great Books" following their 10 year track.  So far we have read a little of Plato, Aristophanes, and we are now on book 1 of Aristotle's Politics.  But our pervious reading was of Aristotle's Ethics (book 1).

     Now, if you are looking for a good summery of this reading I would suggest looking into Twigz's blog, because he is documenting in fine detail what we are covering in our readings.
What I am just hoping to cover in this post is just a brief thought over a small segment in book 1.  And I must apologize a head of time for this being such a weak thought, I'm afraid it is nothing too deep or insightful.  But since I have this blog, I figured I may as well post it and have you make of it as you will.

     The other night as I was laying in bed attempting to fall asleep, I couldn't stop my mind from wandering.  I couldn't help but start thinking about how wonderful a moment I was caught in.  There I was, laying back to back with my beautiful wife ( +Hannah Dégallier ) listening to her sleep and for some reason I was completely over come with joy!  How would I describe this moment to my children one day?  How would I describe this moment to anyone right now?!  I couldn't help but think back to this reading of Aristotle's.  He was trying to discover in this book 1 what was the supreme Good, and how that Good was happiness.  But later on in his writing he tried to make the debate that you couldn't truly evaluate a person's life as a happy one until they died!  Now, while this might immediately catch you funny, he says you can't say that they had a Good and happy life until it is over because you never know what is coming next.  You could have everything one moment and lose it all the next.

     While I think Aristotle has an interesting point, I had to take myself a small step further.  In this case of laying next to Hannah trying to fall asleep, I was happy!  It was Good!  But that instant died.  We move along in life linearly and we don't get to go back to change or re-experience.  Every waking moment we have, essentially, dies immediately after that encounter.  So can't we justly evaluate these passing moments as good or bad?

     I wonder what Aristotle would say.  I do think it served as a good reminder to me at the time though to enjoy the 'dying' moments that I'm encountering.  I currently live in an area where I know no one, I have no money left because I have no job, I have very little to occupy my days because of both of these perviously listed things........ and yet....... here I was, just laying in bed, thoroughly enjoying this moment passing me by, with my sleepy wife, who loves me!  I'm still happy!

     Like I said...... nothing too deep this time, but I still have 10 years of these books to read!  So I'm sure I'll conjure something up eventually!!!  In the mean time, please leave me your thoughts and check out Twigz's blog on our progress through the Great Books!
http://blackbirdwinona.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/unrobed-and-unadorned-thoughts-on-lysistrata/

Solo Chicago venture

       The other day I decided to take an adventure. Not the sort of glorified vacation as to the likes of +Jarrod Tembreull or +Luke O'Neil, but a reflective solo adventure none the less.

       To those who don't know me, I tend to lean more on the introverted side of the social scale. Even growing up in Winona, I really don't think it was even until college that I really began to get out on my own. So as you can imagine, moving into the near suburb of Chicago has been difficult for me! So on Thursday, I decided to push myself on a little challenge.

        

       I haven't really gotten out much since moving to Oak Park.  Despite what I just got done saying up above, I don't think it has so much to do with me being introverted, but more because I have no money.  I think I'll be writing a different post about that later, so moving on, I just haven't gotten out much.  But Thursday I just had enough.  I've been wanting for weeks now to take a solo trip into downtown Chi-town while Hannah is away all day in surgery, but I just haven't found, in my mind, the "right" day to do it.  Thursday was the "right" day.  It was beautiful outside, it had been dawning on my mind all morning, and the main deciding factor, was that I had spent the whole day killing flies in my apartment.....  I have NO clue where they were all coming from, but by 4 o'clock, and after killing my 16th fly, I had to leave.

     After giving my phone and computer a few more minutes to charge, packing my bag, and filling my water bottle, I was off!  I walked the 2 blocks down the road to the Green Line and jumped on.  While approaching downtown the train conductor came on the loud speaker reminding everyone that this train was only going through the Loop, since it was rush hour.  I didn't think much of it because I was going to get off on the 3rd stop after entering the Loop.  What I failed to realize, and what the train conductor failed to mention, was that during rush hour they did in fact only go around the Loop and not out the other way but that they also entered the Loop going the opposite direction than usual!  

It's hard to explain the thoughts that were going through my mind at the time when we got to this first stop that I wasn't expecting, only because I made a silly mistake, and immediately after doing it I realized what I had done wrong.  I decided to get off on that first stop, and I don't know why, because right after I got off it was like the clouds parted and I suddenly realized what an idiot I was for doing it.  The train was just going to keep looping!  I could have still made it to my desired stop if I would have just waited longer.  So after standing there for a few minutes, I just decided to walk.  This turned out to be a fine thing anyway, because by the time I was passing the stop I was initially going to get off on, I saw people that I was sitting by walking off the platform.

     The rest of my time I spent trying to walk to the water front.  This ended up being a little farther than I had expected, but it really wasn't that bad of a walk.  My original plan was to go sit on the beach for a little while, but by the time I made it to the beach it was completely packed, and since I hadn't thought to bring a swim suit anyway I didn't feel like parking it on the sand.  Instead I found a path that lead me out past the beach.  I walked all the way out to that point and watched everyone out on their boats and read for awhile.  It was about as halcyon a place as you can find in Chicago.

    Not that I needed this adventure to discover this, but I am really not meant for the city life.  The whole time I was downtown I felt rushed.  All the waves of traffic, people driving not caring that you are walking by, and just the sheer populous!  Its just not my cup of tea!  Don't get me wrong, I think its going to be an incredible experience to live here for the next year, and I like Chicago well enough for entertainment, but I have no idea how people live here their whole lives.  

    Over all, I enjoyed myself well enough and made it back home safely.  It felt good, surprisingly, to get out into the big world alone.  I'd easily admit that I've enjoyed myself much more when I've gone downtown with +Hannah Dégallier and other friends, but I felt like it was a noteworthy experience none-the-less!

First Post

Hello there world,

    Thank you first of all if you are indeed taking the time to read this blog!  I'm not entirely sure where this "blogging" is going to take me, but I am hoping it will all be worth not only my time, but yours as well as a reader.

    I feel that a brief synopsis of my current life would be appropriate in beginning this blog.  While many others I know are traveling the world or beginning new adventures in life (+Jarrod Tembreull +Luke O'Neil +Paul Warneke, +Chris Bullard, the beautiful Wagner goons), I too believe I am involved in many new adventures!  As I'm sure everyone who is reading knows, I'm recently married to +Hannah Luedtke, the love of my life, I have moved to Oak Park IL, and I am applying to dental school.  These are all things that I believe should be documented, and hopefully beneficial for others to read about in their own lives.  

   I've always enjoyed the idea of sharing my thoughts with the world.  I have personally always enjoyed reading the writings of people like C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien writing to friends or simply just writing down their thoughts.  But, seeing as I have no to little aspiration to be published one day, I see blogging as a public journal a great way to share my experiences and thoughts.  If anything, I believe a blog is a more appropriate place to share my life than on a status update on Facebook!

    Please stick with me while I experiment posting a blog.  I'm still not entirely sure what I'll be doing with it, but then again, I'm also unsure about life in general.