What am I doing? This
terrifying question has been haunting me for quite some time now. I have never
thought about what I am doing or where I am going with my life before. I was
simply living, existing with quite arrogant conviction that I am on my way to
there. I always saw “there”. However, now that I think of it, the picture was
never quite clear. It never depicted anything. Rather it was a smudged image of
something. Like when you smart blur a foto in PS almost to 100, or more
accurately, add the motion blur filter to it, so it looks like you are running
towards it. I do, however, recall one clear thing from previous envisions of
“there” – the atmosphere.
In my “there” I was
fulfilled. I don’t know what that means. Being fulfilled. It sounds cool and
mysterious and somewhat wise. It sounds like the “Sometimes running away is the bravest thing to do” poster that
seems pretty damn wise and comforting, but still leaves the “when” open. How do
you know, when is the bravest thing to do to run away? It poses more
questions than answers, doesn’t it! We are not living a single cause and effect
life. We are literally bombarded with little influences all the time and our
actions do not have a single outcome. We influence each other much more than we
like to think. F*ck that kind of wisdom, right! And f*ck people who post it on
Facebook! (I just f*cked myself, didn’t I. Oh well.)
As you might have come
to know, I am a sucker for science. I like facts. I was always intrigued by
nature and its creations, like humans. I want to understand why things are the
way they are, what this tells about our reality, why we do the things we do and
why we react the way we do afterward. I am not so much interested in a personal
view of a subject as I am interested in the essential. I am looking for the
core of how we all are wired - there we are all the same. We are not that
special. No matter how much we like to believe our grannies. We are unique,
that is true (not so much for the identical twins, but they can still live
independent lives) and we are almost a miracle (extremely low chance of
occurrence), if we take into consideration the path of coincidences (or was it
fate) that led to your conception plus the 280mio of fellow fighters swimming with
“you” in the ooze your father blasted up your mum’s pleasure canal. You are
lucky to be alive, says Richard Dawkins, you have a privilege to die.
I should say in advance that I am not trying to justify my couch thinking using scientific facts. There has been a lot of damage done by quasi gurus in the likes of Deepak (I will delve into that next time). I try to do it the opposite way, not always successful, but hey, I am not important anyways. What I am trying to do, is not spreading lies. So I have decided to elaborate on purposefulness. Lets begin with miracle of existence.
I have recently posted
a wiseass status update on my FB page, saying “there is no meaning of life…you
make a meaningful life”. Yeah, I know, I have not specified anything about the
how. Oh, the irony. However, there is a huge difference between “running away
wisdom” and “meaning wisdom”. The latter is based on the facts of science. While
there is in fact no meaning of life, running away, from scientific point of
view, is always good for your health.
(Oh what a nerve, to
say something like that; that there is no meaning of life. How dare I! Boo hoo
hoo)
I don’t want to go
into the details here (there will be time for that too) but if you know the basic
facts about how evolution, genetics and astronomy work and merge their
mechanisms together, you can’t but appreciate the miraculous coincidence of this
existence and its definite demise into absolute stillness where nothing ever
happens, entropy reaches its maximum level and thus erases the meaning of time.
But even before that, way earlier in the time space continuum, the Earth will
be consumed by the red giant our sun will turn into, when it runs out of fuel
in its core. And yet, I am convinced we will not see that day either. We will
destroy each other first. What a purposeful existence indeed!
You see, a conscious man
has created its purpose, giving himself a reason to exist. It has created an
imaginative being out of ignorance. This being is excluded from everything that
normally leaves a trace in this measurable universe. And man (or a woman, for
all of you feminazis out there) is obeyed to serve this entity in order to get
an award after his life (that is only a transition between worlds (oh man! …or
woman!)) comes to an end.
Now it is clear that
God is not necessary for this Universe to work out the way it does, so some
people conveniently renamed it Intelligence. God has suddenly become the author
(the primal cause) of some set of rules, beautifully written equations using
mathematical tools to explain the physical laws whole universe abides by. These
rules were smartly hidden away for us to figure out. The irony is, by discovering and testing these
rules we take away bigger and bigger chunks of the Intelligence. So now these
clumsy mammals are saying we are meddling with wrong things and that we lost
our way. We should, in order to find our way, put aside thinking and rational
thought, because, after all, mind is our enemy. It is polluted and manipulated
and deceived. It is too human, too imperfect. Too feely, feely, touchy, touchy!
We need to trust the (positive?) Energy,
we are all one with nature, and universe takes care of us. We need to become
like cats, like fish … like animals? We need to become organisms that kill and
are killed solely for survival, take care of each other as long as it is
needed, reproduce, eat and shit? We need to let go of precisely that, which brought
us here to this moment and made us able to question ourselves? Wittgenstein
much? Or is it dark ages again?
Oh, we are disappointed
in ourselves, hippy-dippy say. Oh, we are lost. Oh, we live in a society that
is oblivious and apathetic. Oh, we are living in the world of complete control,
where our freedom has been taken away from us, where purpose has been
diminished to buying stuff. Really?
What was the purpose
of a slave in Egypt that was building up a pyramid? (well, Aliens!) Born into
slavery, died in slavery. What was the purpose of an African, bought away from
his tribe, put on a boat to die on the way to a world that would treat him as
an animal? What is the purpose of a Syrian refuge, whose home has been
destroyed and taken away by people who believe in same God? (oh did I just go
there?) What is a purpose of a kid dying from cancer at the age 14? We do not
know, but god has a plan!
We in fact are living
in the most free world, with options people 40 years ago never dreamt of
having. Surely, we are not there yet (where?) but things are changing for the
better. Slowly. Knowledge is certainly the way. And we get that more and more,
faster and faster.
Let’s also not ignore
the fact that we are mammals - conscious, walking mammals. We just call
ourselves humans and call the rest animals. These are man made labels; they
have no value in reality. We are just organisms, nothing more. We are perfectly
synchronized organs wrapped under porous skin, like a sack of potatoes, that got
their nerves wired in such a way so that became aware of them selves - but not of
the processes that are running in the background for the body to actually work
(the twist!). We are machines that took a billion years to come by. We are not
perfect. We are flawed. There are so many things wrong with how our body is
built that, if the Grand Designer came to my studio with a proposition of a man
like we are now, I would laugh him out of my office. There are clearly two
aspects to a man - the body and its consciousness. The body does not need the
mind. People survive even in a vegetative state, leading mindless lives -
sometimes even consciously. But the mind needs a body. Could it be, because it
is a product of it, rather than a reason for it? (oh the twist!)
We – the mammal sacks
of conscious potatoes - have built up a society, made up borders, declared
something as ours all in the delusion that we are the reason all this was made
for. We made our prisons in how we should be when we reach a certain age, what
success is, how we should behave according to expectations, how we should have
sex, how we should eat. For god’s sake, we even decided on what a kind of
delusion is acceptable. Unicorns no! God yes! Leprechauns no! Jahve Yes! No,
Alah! No, Vishnu! No, Gaya! No, Anubis! No, Anubis no! That was a delusion from
ignorance. What about Zeus and Xibalba? Same! Ignorance.
We decided all of this,
just to define differences and importance they have for someone’s personal
interests and gain. We divided us in categories, casts, levels, ranges,
statuses, ranks, roles - defining a purposeful serving to the Grand plan.
People, there is no right
way of how we should be and behave. No one gave us user’s guide at the time of
our birth. There were some attempts to write them down, but they turned out to
be focused on crowd control, they were culture and time based and they were
local, which really does not make them useful. Hitchens said: “Human decency is not
derived from religion. It precedes it.” We can’t possibly know where we are
going. But we feel how we can get there. And this includes human interaction.
We know, inertly, what we can or cannot do. I call it healthy egocentrism – would I allow people to treat me the way I
am treating them? That is all. If an answer to bullying, fighting, hitting,
killing, cheating, emotional extortion, deceit, manipulation, fear mongering, excluding,
shaming, hating etc. is yes, then there is something inertly wrong with the way
you are wired. And that means it is still not your fault. Not at all. If we
were animals without conscience and compassion, we would simply eliminate
everyone that brings disruption to our existence. Or they would eliminate
themselves by not being successful in passing on their genes. (Or not.
Evolution does not pick sides.) But we are not animals without compassion and
conscience. We are humans that forgive and forget, even though we do so out of
fear to put a black smudge on what will come afterwards (no one wants to go to hell or be reborn as a
plant). We should forgive and forget because we would like to be forgiven, and
we surely will be forgotten in time, irrevocably.
I am not saying we should go to “there”, but I like
the thought of world rid of all delusions that have nothing to do with reality.
I know there is no
meaning of my life, personally. No task has been given to me at birth. And no
one has planted anything inside my head that I have to figure out. I could just
be. Like the guy I met in Pairs, whose full existence was centred on moving
from bus station to bus station, not even asking for money, peeing and taking
shit in public, so that everyone noticed him, eating and repeating the process.
Every day. Human existence in its grandeur, people! Where is your purposeful existence
now!?
Asking yourself, what you
are doing, is a futile, stress-causing question that pushes you away from being
happy. Oh yes, if there is anything I would connect with purposefulness it is
happiness (Or is it being content, happiness is overrated!) So the question I
should ask myself is, am I content with where I am and how I got to “here”, and
why (not)? The same goes for you! We can be anything we want, when we want, how
we want. The question, are we content with “there” and how we got to “there”,
still remains as a final judgement. We are the ultimate deciders. That’s a
given. Do you think a fish in the moment of its demise thinks where it came to?
Do you think other fishes judge it for only producing 1 offspring, like Nemo? It
was simply doing, what it was made for. Make sure its genes spred on. What Zen
calls a state of wholeness is actually denying what makes us human. We think.
We thought our way to where we are now. If we were living solely according to
Buddhism we would not come anywhere. We would reject the material world we are
bound to by default. If we had trusted in god’s love and care completely, we
would have not achieved anything. Ironic “thank god” for doubters and
conformists. They were the ones that moved things ahead.
I can easily say, I
don’t know where I am going or what I am doing. I am just trying my best not to
fall so hard, that I would not be able to lift myself up anymore. I choose what
to do, using the information I got from experiences in the past and the feeling
of contentment while doing so. It feels as the most logical thing to do in
order to maintain that feeling. When I say that I feel fulfilled in my visions,
I have no clue of what I am doing “there”. What I am doing now has only a
specific influence to where I am going - am I content? I can always stop what I
am doing, if I am not content. There are no limitations that prevent me from
doing so, only the ones in my head. We set our limitations with morals, duties,
responsibilities, honour, love, system, politics, etc. We are not supposed to
take care of others, family or anything at all. Physically, if you are not
actually nailed to the bed, you can up and leave at any time. We are not even expected
to take care of a sick mother. Evolution wise, there is no need for that.
Mother has done her job, when she gave birth to you and made you able to spread
on your genes. The question is, would you feel content, as a person, if you did
so? Would you allow others to treat you like that? (That is how they get us.) And
even though I have no clue what I am doing in “there” I am pretty sure I am on
my way. I am here now, am I not? Well, this brings me to the next question. Why
now? Why do I ask myself what I am doing now? What has changed, besides the
fact that I have, for the first time ever, the age I have. Was it fate? And why
does it terrify us to amount to nothing, when there is precisely nothing we can
amount to.
Next time. And there’s
that.
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