#1 New Beginnings

New Beginnings. To start off with, I don't even know how to structure this. I'm not sure if I should blog once a day about my listening or if I should blog about each individual episode. As I write right now I feel that once or twice a day would feel less formal, less like a review of each episode.

The last thing I want to be seen as here is a critic. I think what is more important is what I feel about the show as a whole and the experience of listening to it from the beginning. This then will begin the informal nature of this blog. Once or twice a day, on days I can listen to This American Life at all, I'll write about things I liked or didn't, and also the feelings I had about stories, contributors, episodes or simply concepts.

The first thing I have to say actually comes from Ep. 2 (Small Scale Sin) simply because it has to do with the nature of how I may have hypothetically procured the older episodes of the show. Let's say that, hypothetically, some years ago I was at a university where if you were on the university's network, you could get access to a massive file sharing network at fast download speeds. Let's also say that for the sake of argument that maybe I wasn't the only student there who was a fan of TAL who desired to have all the episodes just a click away on my computer.

So here I was—hypothetically—listening to Small Scale Sin (Ep. 2), and in a way I committed a small scale sin to obtain that very episode. Sure, I donate to TAL every year and I wasn't taking money out of Ira's pockets, but they do charge $0.99 on iTunes to download each episode. Now, I wasn't going to spend over $400 to get them all, but I did spend the $2.99 to buy the android app for my phone.

To tie this to Small Scale Sin (Ep. 2), hypothetically, had I downloaded those episodes that way, that would've been "stealing" nearly $400 that Ira, Torey Malatia and all the other producers and contributors to TAL earn and deserve. And I began wondering, as Fred in the opening story did, whether or not that was enough to send me to hell. Now, something you have to understand—which I'll go into more detail about later when I get to the episode that caused me to believe this—that I don't believe in hell.

In this case it was more of a "If hell did exist, would this be enough to send me there?"

That thought eventually brought me full circle to the large story of Ep. 1 (New Beginnings). In this story, Kevin Kelly decides to live his life as if he would be dead in six months. I found myself wondering how I would feel about my life if I were to die right now. Well, really if I were to die slowly enough to know I was dying, not be able to stop it and have the presence of mind to contemplate my life all in those few remaining breaths.

This is something I've thought about before, but this time is was like the car ride scene late in the book/movie Fight Club. In the scene, Tyler Durden is asking members of Project Mayhem what one thing they wish they would/could do before they die. He then turns to the Narrator and poses the question to him. Facing opposition to his query, Tyler simplifies the question to the Narrator as a Mack truck is bearing down on them, "If you were to die right now, how would you feel about your life?"

This scene goes on to be one of the most powerful scenes in the book and movie, but that question alone is—I think—evocative to us all. Aren't we all trying to live our lives so that at the moment of our death or upon reaching the afterlife, we will feel good about our time here? Is that the meaning of life? Is that why we are here in the end?

It is, after all, pretty egotistical to think of life's sole purpose as being there to make us feel good about ourselves once it is over. However, is it that much of a stretch from the concept of Karma? Of sin?

What about people my age and younger yet? How can we be expected to feel like our lives were complete as Kevin Kelly was trying to do. He quest was to use the time he had to give away most of his possessions and live so that his life would feel complete before he died instead of having the finality of death finish writing his story for him. In the end, he went to bed one Halloween fully prepared to die—his life story was written and complete.

However, the next morning he woke up. In one of the most moving and powerful moments I've ever heard in radio, Kelly struggles to even get through the sentence as he describes how he felt that morning when he awoke to his new life. On his fourth or fifth attempt he manages to control his emotions long enough to explain that it was like having a fresh life to live. It was as if he had completed the "old Kevin Kelly's" life and now the "new Kevin Kelly" was being born, fresh into the world. He was without blemish because his old "incarnation" had righted the wrongs of his life.

He was free now to be or do anything he wanted, knowing that he had given himself a chance to start over as a better man. Earlier in the story he talks about how just the concept of having a future is inherently human and that without our hopes and dreams about the days, weeks, months and years to come, we lose some of what makes us human.

To me, this couldn't be more true, nor could it have been proven any better than by his "rebirth." His ability to put his old life to rest and start anew isn't something unique to him. This is an ability we all possess in our lives. At any moment we can look in the mirror, decide what we don't like about what we see in ourselves and in our hearts, and we can change it.

Humans are the embodiment of the mythical phoenix. We are the bird that dies, burns, and then rises again from those ashes. Each of us has that potential in us. All we have to do is have the courage to light the match.

(In this post: Episode 1: New Beginnings and Episode 2: Small Scale Sin)