With graduating from school, going through a short limbo where I was neither a student or a “real person,” and then starting work, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about who I am, who I was, and who I will be. I’ve been talking to Pete at length about “transcendence”–reaching a new level of interacting with both the outside world and ourselves. We’ve come to the unsurprising conclusion that everybody is at their own stage of intellectual, emotional, and physical development, and as you grow you realize what really matters in life–what you want to get out of life. You also realize what doesn’t matter and what you can sacrifice without batting an eye.

I had a talk with Nate about materialism, another major aspect of life. It is a longtime staple of religions to denounce the importance of material possession. From Christianity to Buddhism, a major tenet is that when we die we take nothing with us. The most devout in both religions live their lives without owning anything, because there is no spirituality in possessions. Our talk consisted balancing rejection of the significance of “things” with our common personalities of “power-users.” We both derive happiness from having things that work exactly how we want (like Macs, iPods, etc.). We invest in expensive things not to communicate status, but to enable us to work efficiently and happily. I haven’t concluded whether this is the right way to look at it, though.

I have realized that I spend almost no time alone in my life. I spend all day at work surrounded by other people; I go out after work to coffee with friends; I come home to a house full of roommates. Barring all those interactions, I spend a lot of time using the computer, dicking around on facebook and IMing friends. Between all of this, the only time spent alone is my half hour reading before bed and my commute to or from work (during the latter I get to enjoy the delightful presence of the other drivers, as well as the less than intelligent banter of various radio personalities). When I came to this realization (which happened sitting at my desk at work), I decided to take off for lunch looking for something to do while I simply enjoy my thoughts. I happened up a grave yard about a mile from where I work. Walking around there was an enlightening experience, because a graveyard is the ultimate expression of solitude: you are surrounded by monuments to people who can never provide companionship. What caught me off guard, however, was how graveyards are also the ultimate expression of eternal companionship. So many of the graves, as is normal, were for couples who were buried side by side. Sometimes entire families. It made me consider how much security one would have, knowing that even though their spouse had died ten years earlier, they would still be buried side by side and physically (and thus metaphorically) be near each other forever.