by Ben Huot
In Elementary School, I was so bored, as the classes were so stupefied and repetitious, that I daydreamed most of the time. Middle School was a dark time for me, as I had a very painful time getting rid of some huge warts. I also struggled with people kicking and hitting me especially on the bus and in shop class.
High school was a renaissance for me as I had always looked forward to being in clubs. By my junior year, I was involved in Cheerleading, Boy Scouts, Summer Camp Counselor, Explorer Scouts, Catering, French Club, Model United Nations, Speech Team, a Political Club I started, a multimedia CD-ROM project with Sony, Future Business Leaders of America, a student journal, and a number of other ones I cannot remember. Other years I did Cross Country and Long Distance Track instead of Cheerleading. I put as much work into each of these as I was able to with the most time consuming being the Political Club I started, Cheerleading, Speech Team, and Boy Scouts.
At the end of my junior year, I signed up for the military under the delayed entry program, so that I shipped off for Basic Training a month after I graduated from High School. I spent the whole year getting into shape for the Army and reduced my load of activities down to the seven I enjoyed most. Some of the reasons for joining the military were: serving my country, money for college, getting a break from school, and getting experiences for my resume. The military was harder than anything I had done before and I proved that anyone could do it if they put in as much effort as I did.
When I left the military due to mental illness, I went into school right away, but I began writing some poetry about a year through and was inspired by learning about Postmodernism in English Writing class, Chinese philosophy in my year long Chinese literature course, and Existentialism and Ecofeminism in some summer courses. I started out with a Business major, but later switched to Journalism as I hated business so much and was not very good at it. I was always good at writing and so Journalism was a much better match.
Then on December 11th 1999, I was voluntarily admitted to the psychiatric ward of the local private hospital. I did not write for several months afterwards because I couldn't. I didn't know if I could write or understand philosophy again, but I continued to pursue it for a number of months and when I switched to a newer medicine I began to be able to write well again and understand philosophy.
I have studied philosophy, religion, and literature, both European and Asian for 8.5 years to help give myself a multicultural understanding of the Bible. I believe that theological traditions in American culture have kept us from understanding what the Bible is really about. What is really misunderstood is who the Holy Spirit is and how God's Spirit works in the world and in our hearts.
The passages that deal with the Holy Spirit are some of the most cited and the most unread of the Bible. The Holy Spirit spoke through David in the Psalms and through God's prophets as well as in Paul's letters. I have developed a philosophy that combines Philosophical Taoism and Christian Existentialism to help people understand God in a new way that originally comes from Scripture itself. This philosophy is meant to help seekers understand biblically based Christianity better and serve as an inspiration for Christianity starting several hundred years from now.
But I have pursued this as much as I have the ability to and I will need to rely on God to keep this around as long as it is His will to do so. For most people, their problem is ignoring what God is telling them, but my problem is that I take too much of it on myself. I have to realize that God can do any of the work that need to be done that I cannot complete. This is not an excuse to neglect God's voice and fail to do the work he has prepared for us, but there is a balance in God's expectations and I have fallen on the side of being a workaholic.
And the search for rest and my struggle with doing too much is an important theme in the philosophy. My understanding of Chinese philosophy is based on my upbringing as a Confucian scholar, which in western terms would be considered a workaholic. Ironically Existentialism and Taoism have a lot to do with rest and enjoyment of life, but the paradox is that the father of Existentialism, Kierkegaard, worked himself to death.
I have recently had the opportunity to see a number of contemporary Chinese philosophy influenced works of art in a museum near where I live and the common theme is the magnitude of work and the precision involved in creating it. When I compare European art, to Asian art, I laugh because it is so simplistic. But I have also seen the freedom in western art especially the Impressionists and in the work of Picasso.
I have constantly been fighting to save the world since my departure from the military, but I have finally realized that it is ok to rest and that my work is finished.
I had a great break through last night.
I realized that I constantly looked for ways to improve my philosophy and my website in my mind and I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing more I can do with the philosophy. I have just started telling myself that I do not need to solve all the world's problems myself.
I have to wait on God to solve the world's problems in His time. I have gone as far as I can in this direction. I have realized that God doesn't require us to do some gigantic special project and we are only responsible for ourselves.
Just because other people have no vision and are not bright enough to think of anything other than sports, does not mean what I have done is of no value. There is no reason why most people need to understand what I have done. I don't need to constantly improve myself.
It is OK to just enjoy life. If people don't share my interests or values, maybe it is their problem not mine. People being rude to me or not liking me is not always my problem. I don't always need to be the one to change.
I do not need to be able to answer everyone's problems that keep them from salvation. I am only responsible for myself and keeping the right attitude before God.
I don't have to always be learning new things. I don't always have to do everything for a reason. I don't always have to make ten backups of everything I create. I don't have to publish everything I do. I don't have to worry about all the possible bad things people could use what I have created to do.
I don't have to constantly get more talented at everything. I don't have to master every discipline. I don't have to complete everything as soon as I think of it. If something is that important, it will come back to me later.