I’m ready to write! Oof, well… maybe not. (That’s what I wrote in my journal assuming I was going to talk about something, but then something else happened in my mind. So, I wrote what you see below.)
In a moment, just one, a fear shoots through my mind. Quick enough to feel, but not long enough to understand. So a question emerges. Where did that come from?
Maybe there is no source. The fear is simply there, and then it is not. No origin, and no end. Simply moving through my body, to my thoughts, translated into my words and recorded into my notebook. For me, it has a beginning and end, but maybe it itself does not function in such a way.
And it must be real. How could it not? It shapes my reality. It makes my reality. Is it… my reality?
Well, it has to be manifested by myself. If not the version of myself that I identify with, it is at least from my human. Same as when pain shoots up my nervous system as I stub my toe, a similar process must be true as fear travels through my brain. From its point of origin, the fear instantly travels outward and eventually goes through my thoughts, and only then does my ego process it.
And so can pain act the same as fear?
Think of it as a raindrop falling into lake water. Just one little drop into a body of trillions. Its ripple affects everything, but only the closest lake water notices. Only the lake water next to the fallen ball of water moves as a tiny little ripple emerges out and around the point of contact.
Drip.
And you would think that the lake would slowly fill. But it doesn’t. Instead, the muddy lake bottom from below absorbs its eldest drops. Moving lower and lower as new drops emerge, the ground consumes the old lake water into the Earth itself. For nothing is truly lost, only moved.
Drip. Drop.
My thoughts take the ripples and call them their own. But this is flawed. For when only a sliver of the water calls itself the lake, is to say a smartphone is merely a flashlight. A car is only a radio. And a house is only the kitchen.
So as my thoughts take in the fear, they assume they alone have felt, dealt and moved on from the sensation. Never questioning its origin, and never questioning how far its ripple reaches. They don’t notice the foot twitch as fear just as quickly brings shock throughout the body. They don’t see their own eyes widen ever so slightly for just an instant. And they don’t catch the sight of the man behind them fall back so insignificantly as his body reacts to the fear it just saw in another.
Drip. Drop. Splash.
Where does it come from? How far does it go? Is it my reality? And if so, where is my reality?
Add something they like to say. “Your life is without worth if not for what you contribute. Oh young one, you shall learn… blah, blah, blah. Elder knows best”. Ugh, what if I don’t want to add?
Well, that’s selfish. You must add.
I must?
Yes because if nobody added then what would we do? What would we do without the farmers producing the food we eat? What would we do without the doctors making sure our bodies function well? What would we do without the janitors cleaning the halls? What would we do without the…
Okay, okay. Well, what if there are other ways to add? What if the things we produce are not the limit of our worth. What if I simply existed and gained worth from helping relationships.
So be a therapist!
Well, I don’t want to be a therapist.
Why not?
I don’t want to just help random people mostly incentivized by money. I want to help the people in my life who are asking for help, not paying for it.
Okay, so what then?
I want to star out of my window.
Um… okay? Well, we can work with that. You can record it, or write about it, or take a picture of it, or talk about it.
Yeah, I could… but I’d rather not.
Why?
I just feel the moment will be ruined because it is impossible to experience when we consciously record. Whether that recording is through writing, thoughts, talking, etc., we are taking the time to pause the present to address it at that moment and explain it… except as we pause for reality, it doesn’t pause for us. Therefore, it continues to move just as it was. And even if we could find a way to record without it being conscious, it just wouldn’t be the same.
You sure it wouldn’t?
Of course it wouldn’t. You are not in my mind, you do not see what I see. You just see what you see and it’s impossible for you to see anything else. My mind’s array of emotions, feelings, thoughts, logic, and experience must be simplified to such a pathetic minimum for me to reduce it to my limited English vocabulary. And then as I use this old as time tool to transfer my thoughts, I have to hold myself back from shaking my head as you attempt to ingest my words. And in this pathetic attempt, you take my words and attempt to integrate them into your expansive, complicated, intelligent, ever-changing mind.
I see.
So what’s the point? Why can’t my experience just be mine to hold onto and then nothing more? Why must I make it something everyone likes, everyone relates to? Because in truth not everyone will understand my experience, just as I will not understand theirs.
Well, it sounds like you could be a motivational speaker… or like a philosopher.
I guess, but that’s just because of what I was talking about then. And it’s already said, so we can’t go back. I can’t just recreate things in a desperate attempt to restate the idea that already flew in and out of my head.
I mean, you don’t have to repeat yourself. It just seems like you have a lot of things in your head that people may want to hear.
Maybe. I don’t know. If they ask, or if I feel like talking, I’ll see if they care. Or maybe they’ll have something to say instead of me. If that’s the case, then it’s my turn to listen. But I guess if I am a “speaker” then I won’t be doing too much listening would I?
Probably not.
Yeah, probably not. Well, I’ll pass on that as well then.
Okay, listen. You need to add something. Anything. You’ve got to contribute. If not for humanity, for just yourself. Everyone wants to just walk around doing as they please, but the bottom line is that those wanders will eventually get hungry, and tired, and cold, and hot, and thirsty, and so on. And if nobody is preparing for that, or at least have the knowledge of how to fix those issues, then there is nothing those people can do. And as free and open their lives will be, they simply will not be able to sustain themselves. Do you get what I mean? We need to keep adding so that we survive. And once we survive, we can consider living.
Hm, that makes sense. But is adding really enhancing our ability to survive? As we add CO2 into the air from fossil fuels, are the rises global temperatures going to increase our chances of survival once the polar caps have melted and the 2.75 billion people living in coastal areas are forced to relocate? As we add to the list of endangered species, are our chances of survival growing with a less diverse amount of animals to be able to continue the circle of life… which we conveniently pulled ourselves out of, yet still consume the benefits? And as we add our fucking waste into our landfills and oceans, do we ever once consider that the production from raw materials, to consumer goods, to leftover junk is a line instead of a circle… and last time I checked, lines have a start, and an end?
Well, not all adding is good.
Hears what I think. We should contribute. It would be unfair and probably impossible to try not to. But why is it segmented? Why is contribution broken up into such isolated, finalized parts? Why must a farmer only make food? Yes, it’s efficient. I get that. By the time we learn to be a doctor, it will take many years until their utility from work has compensated their time learning and training. But we can do it faster. Especially with new ideas and innovations on how to transfer knowledge, we can do it fast. And cut through the crap. How much do engineers really learn as undergraduates that carry into their careers?
I guess I know where you’re going with this… but it just sounds unrealistic. Plus, weren’t you against adding anything?
I’m against “adding” being the only thing of defined worth. I think there is so much we can and do contribute on a daily basis, but it’s not really seen as anything significant. It’s just seen as volunteer work or being a good person. And honestly, most of those activities are just met with stigma and/or skepticism. So they really aren’t as accepted as they first appear. And is my view of the world unrealistic… well, maybe. The thing is we don’t know until we try. And it doesn’t have to be everyone. Just a sample. Think of it as an experiment. A test of what society and structured humanity could be.
Well, that could be your contribution! You could add to science.
Yeah… I’m sure I could.
Alright, halftime is over! That took forever. I swear if Tom doesn’t get his head out of his ass this half I’m gonna lose it. Hey, I’m gonna grab a beer quick, you want one?
