Leaving the television screen after a four-hour affair, my brain liquidates to the soup that my mother so vigorously warned me about as a child. Walking up the steps to my room, it’s 1:00 am, I feel hollow. Emptied by the ladle of death, I’m left with a gaping hole in my chest. I write this now in search of an answer to a simple question, what is it that I feel right now? What conjures this feeling of self-disgust? It’s a feeling that I have wasted time. Where subtle anxiety to do something brews yet a knowing that I must instead sleep so that I can do later.
I blame Minecraft for this. Eggs Wars was my demise. “Come on, play. You’ll love it”. I won’t lie, it was pretty great. Fun enough to say I had a good night, my dopamine junkie brain continues to smile through the pain. And once finally leaving the constant stimuli, the rest of my mind catches up. What have you done? How long was that? What about that book you were going to finish reading? Or the paper you were going to write? Where will you find the motivation? What a self-absorbed mindset. It actually assumes that there is something important outside of myself to do. Let me begin with a story:
A bit ago I was on a plane coming home from a family vacation. Staring out the window, as one does not do enough, my eyes laid on a sea of clouds. Infinite from any angle, I was trying to conceptualize just how much I was looking at. How many miles of fluffy write stretched in front of my eyes, I hadn’t the slightest clue. It was not until a plane, which I assumed to be the same size as the one I was in, came into view that I was able to have any type of depth perception. Seeing it as nearly a dot in the sky, I began to recognize the massiveness of this Earth. Probably only seeing a fraction of a percent of this massive planet, the surface area of the clouds I witnessed could have engulfed an entire city. Probably another, and yet another. All in view, I was reminded of a funny fact: we have always been on the same rock. Think of every place you have been in your entire life. Then remember that it’s all contained within the same ball. Pretty massive right? Do I need to even begin with this endless experiment? Infinite in either direction, I momentarily recognized once again just how insignificant I must inherently be.
My time is the time that I have to do as I will. Nobody else’s will. No further plan must be carried out and pursued. It’s strange how important we think we are. How meaningful our moments must be. I don’t think this pertains to everyone, but most people. The full-hearted are exempt. As for the rest, us monsters that lurk in the dead of night, you know who you are. Haha, well you probably don’t actually. That’s how it works. Only a handful of demons are lucky enough to be able to look in a mirror as their hidden form is revealed.
Anyways, it’s not that big of a deal. That’s all I’m trying to say. Trivial it may be, but understood it rarely is.
Calm down, take a breath. Count to ten and close your eyes for a moment’s rest. I can’t make my point more clear, you are not special. If that hurts to hear, well I’m sorry, but it’s something you should know. Your time on this Earth is nothing that hasn’t started repeating long ago. Eventually forgotten, your dust will one day be among the stars. It’s needless to say that everything you make today will eventually wither away.
Some will hear this and proclaim nihilism. They will state how life and death are all the same, and as true as that may be, it’s also such a silly thing to me. Because what the rationalists fail to see is that nothing matters, that includes you and me. Our stress over the lack of purpose, or mind you “free will”, is just a funny game. The intellectual minds state indifference if death were today, but always seem to run the fastest away. Living in the mind, and calling themselves trapped, all I need as a bat!
My point is that as you long for a reason to be, you fail to smile at me. One day a fish swam up to another fish. The fish asked the other fish, “Where is the ocean?”. With a tilt of the head and slightly squinted eyes, the second fish explained, “You are in it”. “No, no”, the first fish began. “The ocean is expansive and beautiful. It has depths that you can only feel and places of paradise you must explore. This is no ocean, this is just water”.
Life is not a journey. Life is a place that you are always in. One where most of us seem to forget its beauty over time. So do as you please, but take it from me, everything is okay. Stress if you wish, or if you can’t resist, but just remember that it’s you who sets the flame as you begin to burn.