Shopping for Nonsense Sense

Kurt is filled with purpose to do good and an unyielding wish to do genuine good. To find sense to this nonsense, he goes shopping.

"Put this on," they said, holding up a worn bullet-proof vest, "it will protect you. Like hell it had. First day on the field and he was intoxicated with a long dreaded sense purpose. Kurt had always been a free-spirit, no strings attached type of guy. Thus, he violently despised the solid squareness of purpose. Especially if your purpose was as obviously straightforward yet somewhat vague as the purpose to do good.

Now, Kurt reasoned, there was a vast different between his cursed purpose to do good and his genuine wish to do genuine good. On one hand, to do good, leaves many vague questions unanswered. What is good? Who gets to decide what is good and what isn't? To be genuinely good, however, would be a tid bit more concrete. It is not driven by square purpose, but by genuine goodwill. And if it left any questions, at least it was honest about it. 

It had an appealingly and delightfully open nature to Kurt. His desire to be genuinely good now outweighed the dreaded purpose that now clung desperately onto his life. This is why, upon returning home, he decided to go shopping.

His friend Sophia pleaded to go with him. Now, being a girl, one might believe her desire to go shopping to reflect an obsessive-compulsive need to buy the most fashionable garment of the week. It is not so for Sophia. Not entirely. The obsessive-compulsive need? Yes. To buy the most fashionable garment of the week? Not quite. She was on a The Lord of the Rings proportions quest to meet the handsomest, sexiest, biggest well-defined books. Now, Sophia is a highly respected scholar. A highly respected scholar with a lusty appetite for handsome, sexy, big and well-defined books. 

"I will be genuinely good today", Kurt resolved. Sophia, who at the time had been admiring and mentally flirting with the entire library, seemed to suddenly be very disagreeable. 

"It is impossible," she scoffed "I never thought you a hypocrite Kurt, but then, we all are" she determined, turning and smiling knowingly at a paperback copy of "The Catcher in the Rye". Kurt thought about it and had an idea. 

"Out of the goodness of my heart I will help that poor woman with her groceries". He went over, not expecting a reply. But the woman immediately refused any help whatsoever and hurriedly walked if not ran away like a cockroach who had just spotted a shoe above its head. What a germaphobe, he thought. He glimpsed a small boy near the ice-cream shop. Look hither and behold, Kurt had another idea. He bought the boy an ice-cream cone but as he handed it over, the boy pouted.

"I hate chocolate". Appalled by this unlikely verdict, Kurt asked the boy-judge if he fancied vanilla. The boy did. However, as he came back with the ice-cream, the boy suddenly looked uncomfortable with the offer "Mommy says not to accept food from strangers". 

Defeated, his shoulders sagging, tears threatening to expose his frustration, he returned to the library. Sophia, who had watched both botched attempts, now prepared her bossy I-told-you-so face. 

Kurt groaned, "But I tried!"

"You tried indeed" Sophia replied confidently "but you were not genuine. You did it to show me, yourself, the woman, and the boy. To please me, yourself, the woman, and the boy. We all go home happy right?" she softened her tone considerably after that, her confidence waning into a voracious scholarly curiosity. "Even if you did something out of spite, killed a man, per say, you'd never do it in a completely genuine way. We all deceive and are deceived. To be genuinely good or to be genuinely evil, that is not the question. Nothing is good or evil, thinking makes it so. You should so read Hamlet!" At this she paused. 

"That makes no sense" Kurt concluded.

"True. What you said, that made sense" she agreed "It would explain a lot". She glanced at the books at herself, at the world. It made no sense, yet… it did.