people.
everywhere i go now i watch people with such a different eye. particularly in NYC, where there are just so many. they move about going to one endeavor or another, all carrying with them the same general makeup, the same parts, the same ticking gears.
and yet they are all so very different. each one has a cloud over there head. a cloud of issues, emotions, opinions, missions, perspectives, and agendas. so many people walk around with a mixed bag of emotion and agenda, that they do not even notice that perhaps they cater towards a perspective that perpetuates their cause.
how else can someone get as angry as most people on this sphere do?
I often think about terror. much of terror spawns from the fear of death. horror often has the characters of doom being those who will bring about your end. and that is terrifying.
but how does that translate when you consider the chances of living over the larger span of time?
wasn't it Fight Club that had the quotation along the lines of "in time, everyone's survival rate eventual reaches 0" or something to that effect. indeed, while people lined up at the movie theater and were engrossed in movie selection and popcorn ordering, i was struck by a thought... most of the people I see will be very lucky if they reach their 80s.
Sure there are average lifespans and ever increasing cures, but the fact remains that people die everyday. we focus so much on the process of dying and the mourners afterwards, but there is little concentration on the entity post-humorously. not memory, mind you, but the actual non-existence. probably because it is impossible to discuss a lack of something so absolute.
so we continue on. some hold on to the idea of afterlife, while others embrace a colder reality of nothingness. the fact is the person will not see the rest of their life or anyone else's. and the rest of us try to picture ourselves hitting 90. and still there is a tinge of terror, but that death is distant, so it can be pushed back, shoved aside, tucked beneath.
I don't know the statistics, but i can say confidently that reaching past 60 is a feat. probably more than 50%.... probably much more. however, when you speak of such absolute consequences, anything greater than 1% is a lot. to have survived the chances, is to have accomplished something.
( looked it up, sweden is 8%, the US is a bit higher: probability of not reaching 60)
but we do not think about that. we walk, and talk, and drive with a cloud over our head. we get enraged by an idea given to us from an outside source, and act on those conceptions and thoughts. rarely do we emphasize the philosophy that we are running on, the questions of sentient existence, or the futility of an individual life.
i was spouting out my own ideas about liberals and conservatives. how most arguments can and should be broken down into a rights of the individual versus the betterment of society. that balance is really what an organism made up of many sentient parts truly struggles with at its very most basic state.
but while making this argument, i suggested that liberals had the society point of view and conservatives were for individual freedoms. this was contradicted. i was out read and outclassed. the very word "liberty" suggests the opposite, does it not? so what am i missing, or have i taken an old point of view and tweaked it just enough to not fit in the round hole it came from?
I am going to get to the bottom of it. i am going to trudge through the old philosophies, some of which i have read and many others i have not. i need to discover the origins of the ideas... and more importantly, the origins of the language used for these ideas.
because, i do not know where i'll be or if i'll be in one years time, but i do know that when I thought the cancer was cured, my cloud returned. it had been there before when I did not worry too much about the outcome, and dissipated when it became obvious that the outcome wasn't obvious. but there it was, hanging there with doubled power when i got the impression of victory.
wasn't i suppose to change? I am sure I have, but not in any way i thought or took for granted. not in anyway obvious way. and now as my cloud dissipates again, i realize again that while the issues are still there, my hunger for them runs at a much different level then before.
blessings and curses all - sometimes at the same time.
2 comments:
blessings and curses indeed... The power of your words here resides for me in the Big question. Why are we here? Why do we exist? Are we as Heraclitus claimed just a infintestimal part of the stream of creation and dissolution that never stops? How do we remain centered and tapped into that source that creates inside our the very core of ourselves the sought for state of peace and joyful experience of every momen as it occurst. While your latter and former discussion tends toward the political, I think the individual must find for himself or herself that source however your frame it, spiritually or philosophically. And that in turn guides the individual... Big questions. Few answers. I come time and again to that idea of the stream of creation and dissolution. Centuries later a little southern lady named Flannery O'Connor battled lupus her entire life and wrote short stories to get through the day. She wrote: "we must celebrate life at the same time that we struggle to endure it." I hope you can and I can and we all can at this moment realize, in fact choose, to celebrate this moment right now. So I offer that up for whatever it is worth. Not curses and blessings. Those are nouns. Verbs are better always! They give us direction on being... So celebrate and endure. Celebrate and endure.
celebrate and endure... i like that. for me the why are we here is a question that should always be pondered but can never be answered, and it is that paradox that leaves us with the need for the next best thing, which is the pursuit of what we decide is our reality, and defining it.
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