On Life's Perceived Materiality as the only Condition of Existence
noviembre 19, 2017
So I have been thinking about this for a while... I still haven't managed to fully put it into words; it's a work in progress.
Something that overwhelms me, constantly, when studying pretty much anything, is the variety and sheer volume of philosophical/lifestyle input available for one's considering. Dozens, hundreds, even thousands, of thinkers have gone and written about how they thought life was best led.
And most of the time, each and every one I've studied has made me go, "huh, that makes sense".
I am actually working on a short story that slightly touches upon this subject, but aside from that it's something that not only concerns me but keeps coming back to me. The question of how to find the best way to live one's life, if there is such a thing, and if it is a duty to look for one or make one should there be none... It haunts me, at times.
Truth is, I do not quite believe in a superior force, or a design, or a destiny, or a purpose. To come to this realization in my teens was both liberating and terrifying. When I'm on a plane and there's turbulence, I wish there was someone I could pray to but I can't, because I simply don't believe in it. And so I keep moving from "life makes no sense but that's okay so I might as well enjoy it" to "life is the pursuit of happiness" to "but that is only shallow escape from life's innate and inevitable pain" to "because life means nothing it is better to not do anything and just not care" to "even if life does no mean anything I can make it meaningful" to "should I make it meaningful?" and then backwards and crosswards and any possible way. I never settle or anything.
Should we marvel at nature? Or at human prowess? Should we accept human ethics, or admit that we are but animals with a seemingly more complex system of organization? Should I focus on making contributions or on making myself happy? Is there time to do both?
Is a life well spent one extremely short and fast or slow and long? Is smallness really praise-worthy? Should we shoot for greatness? Is there really an answer? (The answer to that last one is probably "no"). And I go back again, thinking that I should do whatever I want because there is nothing to life beyond that. Yet the question remains: is there really nothing else that I should be doing?
One life seems tremendously little for someone with so many interests, so responsive to every stimuli. It's terrifying, knowing that you should be happy with the decisions that have made you happy while at the same time you cannot help but wonder if there isn't something else you should, or could, might, be doing. I once was told at a bookstore that they couldn't believe that all the books I was buying where all for the same person (me), since they were too diverse. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, (and so they told me), but being interested in so many things when your time is so terribly limited takes a toll on one's psyche. (Again, am I to focus on something and make it the center of my life, or am I to be a renaissance human and try to explore everything?) It feels like, aside from being a reader and a writer, too many other personalities have been fit into one human, who cannot help but lead only one life, even with as many ramifications as mine.
It's not something I will ever make peace with, I think.
Nonetheless, after countless of consideration time, I think, after all, for me it boils down to materiality.
I am here (or at least, I feel like I am here, for those skeptics out there).
I have five senses and a multitude of emotions that go along with them, and I feel my heart beat faster when I walk a city I love, when I listen to a beautiful music piece, when I read a carefully crafted book, when I dance to my heart's content, when I eat something whose texture and favor are just the right amount of everything, when I write and listen to the ticky-tic-tac of my keyboards (and then reread that and, by miracle, think how I've done an adequate job), when I go to a museum that is in itself so beautiful and holds so much beauty and emotion and everything is so overwhelming it reaffirms that I am here.
Then, I know that I'm alive. And it doesn't really matter if it's escapism because isn't thinking the highest form of escapism? To live in another world of ideas, constantly pondering "the real questions", it seems to me avoidance at its finest. Is it really "I think therefore I am" rather than "I feel therefore I exist"?
By this I don't condemn thinking, how could I? Too often I have found myself living inside my own head, imagining, thinking, remembering, creating. It seems like the most claustrophobic yet open space. I can hurt myself, true, but I can also save myself there. No one else can harm me. It is me and only me, with myself.
But imagining is not creating. Creating is executing imagination. And hence we go back to materiality.
I think shallowness is important, because we are shallow in nature: we often see and hear before we touch, we smell and observe before we eat, we touch and see before we read. And it's important to experience that materiality because deceitful or not, it's the only thing we truly have.
And so when I walk listening to something I love I also try to see all around and smell and touch a tree or two; even if I know I will eventually return to my head, at night, and think, it is important for me to know that there is a material plane of existence outside that infinite box that you can call mind.
In the end, our bones subside, and with that all that is our cognition. But, nonetheless, someone will receive all those books I bought so long ago and had always been so excited about.
That is a little bit of how I feel life is.
Pun intended.
Hello, I'm Roxie!
0 comentarios