Worn Warriors

A group of philosophers assembled around a large table. Secretly keeping tabs of “won” arguments in the exchange of ideas. Overtly engaged in discussion. But why?

Heard, compatibilism is popular in current academic circles. The idea that free will and determinism are compatible. I believe, continental and analytic philosophy are compatible. Nexistentialism is willing to look at everything, and employ a mathematical, linguistic approach, amongst other things.

Am I too old for this, I wonder. All this training and seeking with physical gusto. I mean, ancestors died at this age quite naturally. After decades of hard physical labour on the fields between stones. And now, in my early forties, I decide to pursue ACTIVE enlightenment!? It’s a paradox. I am a living, training, dying paradox.

I do like to explore moves my ancestors may have made, in exploring their potential body as it exists within mine. And the body begins to tell stories of times immemorial. Stories language can’t capture. Or can it?

Another philosopher, who is taller than me, stared at the top of my head as we stood face to face, making a last comment before leaving the “small meeting room” of the public library.

Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me. Despite my thinning hair complex. I lost most of it after my second child, who I breastfed for five years. Why would it grow back after making a third? After a cumulative nine years plus of producing milk. I know a genuine philosopher is naturally curious. I had gazed at his receding hairline earlier. Identifying him as a middle-aged man. There is a fancy name for hair loss: alopecia. I learned it years ago when a Black Congress Woman came clean about wearing wigs. She dropped them and confidently sports a bald head now instead. I’ve asked my lover many times when he’ll buy me a wig. He always says never. That I’m beautiful just as I am. He is kinder than what society’s beauty standards have imposed on my mind. All the pretty, sexy, gorgeous, alluring, attractive, noteworthy, normal people have plenty of hair according to these standards. And they’re young, slim, curvy in specific places, wrinkle free, spotless, tight, and and and. As a triple postpartum mother, I don’t correspond to current society's vain expectations. Sometimes I felt genuinely embarrassed about my condition, deficient. Like motherhood and aging are bad things? What can I do? Not look the part? It is the wiser route to accept myself as I am “naturally.” I still struggle with it, unfree from social conditioning as I am. And yet, my homeliness is a protest against the limiting beauty standards of the times. Which are always changing anyway. My ugliness is a rebellion against the idiocy of vanity.

What a horrible thought to be without questions, the philosopher said as he walked away. Indeed.

Thank God for Philosophy!

Image: A.I. @NightCafe