Quick Thoughts on The Symposium

I just finished The Symposium by Plato last night. It was probably the third or fourth time I've read it in my recent (and slow paced) journey through all of Plato's works. I've taken notes in my notebooks that will eventually find their way on to this blog in the future, so I won't spend too much time here other than to give my overarching thoughts on it. Here is what I wrote on my Goodreads page: "In the Symposium not all speeches are equal. This is one of my favorite dialogues of Plato, but surprisingly not because of Socrates. Aristophanes' speech about the fantastically weird original humans and Alcibiades' drunken entrance are exceptional pieces of literature - humorously and babbingly brilliant". I'm not going to add much more to this here, but I read this book again, even though I had read this particular dialogue in two or three collections of dialogues earlier because I wanted to reread the speech of Aristophanes. I don't know why it is so fascinating to me. It could be that it's just so odd I can't help just be attracted to it.

Two verses from Acts 3

I've been rather neglectful of a number of things in my life recently. I've been intellectually, spiritually, physically and creatively lazy over the past few months. This is nothing new - and it tends to coincide with dips in form in my struggles. This in turn creates tension in my marriage, putting more pressure on my inability to overcome my baser desires and intentional forgetfulness. That in turn, makes me a bit depressed and I turn to my well worn stress relievers putting more tension on my marriage and the carousel continues to spin faster and faster, sucking me in deeper and deeper to the middle and everything seems to get worse and worse. And so on and so on. But, if I push through and am not intellectually, physically, creatively or most importantly, spiritually lazy than none of this happens. Mistakes are still made, but these are incidents rather than cycles.

I often work in platitudes or hastily announced, unachievable goals. This drives my wife insane and sets me up for failure. I'm trying not to do this again. I've ran or worked out the last three days, finished another book (40 of my 60 goal this year) and read some from Acts last night. I'm hoping to just make incremental progress this week and work on creating a more virtuous circle rather than getting sucked into the aforementioned negative merry-go-round. But - as you can see, that last sentence is rather close to a hastily announced, unachievable goal. Is it my own personal jargon? Who am I announcing these platitudes towards? I think I'm only saying them to ease my own unrest. But, I digress.

I read the first three chapters of Acts last night after finishing The Symposium by Plato and reading 20 pages of Ulysses by Joyce. It took me nearly a month to finish the Plato piece (which marks my intellectual laziness as of late). It will take me longer to finish Joyce (which is because it's a gargantuan 700 plus pages and difficult to read). But, two verses stood out to me from Acts 3.

Acts 3:16

"It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him".

I'm not sure that I'm ready or willing to call my self-inflicted frustrations a disease. It's more of an issue of will. But, there is definitely some healing that needs to take place in me. Whether it is biological or spiritual in nature is a question of semantics. There is something broken inside of me. And it struck me that my spiritual laziness is leading me to reject complete healing. What also struck me about this verse is that faith comes through Jesus. In order for man to have faith it must come through Jesus. It isn't a strength of a man reaching out to Jesus, but rather Jesus preceding the faith that the man can have. So I prayed for that faith that comes only through Jesus last night and I echo that prayer again today.

Acts 3:26

"When God raised up His servant, He sent him first to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways".

My struggles are my struggles. They have impacted my social life, my career life, my physical life to an extent, my spiritual life and my love life. To be blunt, they have sucked. Yet, I derive a weird pleasure while going through them. I know it's wrong but I do it anyway for the moments of escape they provide. However, this verse jumped out at me because I never thought of getting out of these struggles as a blessing. I just figured when I grew out of this struggle that I could return to a sort of base line normalcy. I now see it - when I am turned by Jesus from my wicked way, I won't be returning to some base line normalcy, but an elevated state of being blessed.