the end is not yet

Nearly two months ago I announced the beginning of my latest tongue-in-cheek endeavour, the Code Project.

I haven't mentioned it since and my tongue has left my cheek. This post is about a matter of great seriousness to me. It goes to the heart of why I live, yet holds the finer details back. This is not a forum for those.

There's been some strange goings on in my mind in the intervening two months. The Code Project did not flounder. I just found it undignified to write in detail about re-reading Lao Tzu's Tao-Te Ching, Epictetus' Encheiridion, Sartre's Existentialism and Kovach & Rosenstiel's The Elements of Journalism. Or about starting Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil.

I couldn't work up the right frame of mind to write humourously about jotting mental maps of all the different ethical systems that I've found some kind of truth in over the years. I was looking for connections and ways of reconciling every system.

It drove me crazy. So I left it alone for a while.

Then one day I sat down and started writing down the principles I believe in. I didn't worry about whether they came from Dad, Sensei John, Lao Tzu, Spenser, Epictetus or my own musings. If I believed it, I wrote it down under a one word heading describing it. I didn't worry about proving it. This was an exercise in organization, not philosophy.

The first draft had more than 20 tenets. Over the course of the last few weeks I've collapsed some together and added others. There are now 16, and they are a strange mix of Taoism, Stoicism, Bushido, the jock ethic, and the villainy principles I came up with for fun. But they hang together in one unified system.

I've also started to notice that my behaviour is changing to reflect these tenets. As if codifying what I believe is as important as believing it.

Some of you may be shaking your heads. Maybe you ask, 'Why?' I really can't answer. All I know is that I can't just be. I can't just let circumstances and whims govern who I am from situation to situation. You scoff, but sociologists have found that's how most people go through their lives.

I know who I have to be. And the Code is the only way.

I'm cringing as I write this because of the arrogance and self-importance these words seem drenched in. Screw that. I am arrogant and self-important. Get used to it.

But this is only a part of what's gone on in my head.

Back in first year of university my friend Jon once asked me why I was so driven with my studies. After grasping for a word, I finally explained that I was there "on a mission." Since then I lost faith in it. With the faith went the drive. That was nearly three years ago.

Something happened last week to change that and I don't even really understand it.

We watched a video in class about war correspondents. I sat watching this very emotional and moving footage and didn't feel anything. On my notebook I had written 'NUMB' in big block letters. Looking at the word, I knew that it was true. I was numb and had been for a long time. After explaining this to Shannon at the bus stop in the rain, I spent the next few hours in the darkest of moods.

Then something happened. I remembered the Code. The mood dissolved. I don't understand how, but over the next few hours the numbness went away. And the faith came back.