Where Have You Gone, Joe Philosophy?

Somewhere along the way this week, I lost my ability to be philosophical.
 
Well, I shouldn't say I lost it.  I should say it went into hiding.  I peered inside myself and it was gone.  Briefly, it's absence made me feel a bit crazy.  Shortly though, I realized I'd just have to tease it out.  I played its favorite movies, thinking maybe it was hiding behind my eyes.  Perhaps the chance to laugh at its favorite comedy or cry with its favorite tear jerker would make it want to come back to the surface.  But there was no stirring, no sign.  I listened to its favorite music, thinking maybe it hid in my ears.  Could these tunes of mirth or significance rouse it to action? It seemed not, as still silence greeted me in return.  I even tried to dance it out, thinking perhaps to hide properly it had spread itself so thin over bones and muscle that it could only be spurred to action through movement, through physical release.  Still it was nowhere to be found.
 
At wits end, I talked to people about the loss of my philosophical friend.  "If I can't be philosophical, how will I balance out my emotions?"  My best friend in NC, my sister, my best friend from Deis, each had a similar message.  "You rely on us."  "We'll be philosophical for you."  "We'll be the voice of reason."  It was then that I remembered.  Reason can't be lured with imitation of life, bottling and selling of emotion, plated echoes of reality.  It is lured by reason.  Just as we are comforted by other people, so our inner sense of rationality, of reason, is comforted by the echo of the reason in other people.  My ability to philosophical popped back up when it saw it had others of its kind to talk to, to hang out with, to have solidarity with.
 
Which is all a long winded way of saying, whatever you're feeling - talk it out.  Through discourse, through debate, through camaraderie and cohesion - there is where you will find your comfort.  There is your solace.  There is your purpose.  Put away your movies, music, television.  In others, our energy and wholeness is restored. 
 
Funny paradox that the presence of our six billion should be both a terrible strain on our planet and simultaneously a consolation to us as individuals.
 
"Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people." - Albert Einstein
"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." - Mother Teresa