There’s something liberating about the blank page. The initial thought is to just regurgitate the past; that somewhat odd manner of lingering over it as if it holds an inherent value or impact upon this “now” that I have not, knowingly or ignorantly, granted place, point, and purpose in my being, life, and mind.
I am nearly the official label of “senior citizen” (though I suspect that number may be bumped in my lifetime; also, I reject the implications accorded that “title” in our culture and society, even as I look about and tremble to realize that my rejection no effect upon the world makes).
Not sure I really wanted to know quite so intimately just how shoddily humans treat their elderly. In much the same way that I didn’t want to know it about the little girls, homeless teens, single parents, mothers, the women, the intelligent, the autistic, the depressed, the anxiety-laden, the chronically ill, the wheelchair bound, etc etc etc, et al, ad nauseam, damnation – just how DO we manage to maintain this righteous insistence that we’re “better” at anything that matters more than one another?
I’m so angry that I let myself get entangled in it. But at the same time, I admit, I did it. I kind of have to admit my ownership of myself, it’s the thing that allows me the strength to choose. You cannot choose if you’re still living under the weight of pretending someone else “made” you, or because circumstances “left you no choice”, or any other ways of phrasing that, boiled to essence, is, “That’s hard”, “I don’t wanna”, “Why me”, “It isn’t fair”, “No, you”, and “NOT IT!”.
I don’t think I realized how hard it would be to start saying, “Not it” and I see a ridiculous paradox, unity of opposite, even. I’ve said, “Not it” for many reasons in my life, but it wasn’t until I started saying it ONLY when I was no longer willing to subsume needs for the wants (and needs) of others.
This is why I think Ayn Rand was such a truly broken mind; asserting selfishness is a virtue misses that selfishness is an absolute state (thus, ever out of reach, a metaphysical truth). Just as any “ideal” posited implies a steady state that, literally, is impossible – even within our (effectively) infinite space-time.
A proof on the fragile state of “A human being”:
No movement occurs that is not resisted.
No observation occurs that is not impediment.
Therefore, no existence occurs that is not connected.
Therefore, no self exists that is not connected.
Therefore, no self exists that is not a part.
Therefore, no self exists that is not affected.
Therefore, no self exists that is apart.
Therefore, no self exists.
Selfishness is operating under the erroneous belief that what you do doesn’t affect, change, impact, and matter in the world around you.
Selflessness is operating under the realized understanding that what you do affects, changes, impacts, and matters in the world around you.
Ironic, isn’t it?
People are selfish because they believe their needs and wants are more important than the needs and wants of all that “is” outside of themselves.
People are selfless because they believe their needs and wants must consider the needs and wants of all that “is” outside of themselves.
And yet, given all our science and technology, we still haven’t managed to as much as breathe upon the weight of our collective, cumulative biology, physiology, and psychology as deeply connected mammals within this explosively diverse planet.
We still cannot manage as a species to even agree such a connection exists.
Even as science, neuroscience, and quantum physics reveal in such an astonishing, enlightening, and mathematically possible and probable ways the many proofs that elegantly, organically, and symmetrically testify that this is the way of [it].
I believe, feel, and think that we are but the latest iteration in the agile state machine (not steady, mind you, expect in that [it] is, sometimes, except when it isn’t. But even then, it still kind of is, only it’s all still rather fuzzy as that’s where most of the authoritative, credible folk are busy pacing rooms or having decade long arguments in frenzied chalkboard sessions in some vaunted university (or dive bar), like I would know!) which is but a byte within this quantum machine… all the “existence” we know is but a pulse of perceived apartness, rippling through infinity to find itself and then, be lost.
p.s.: Times like this, I wish I could math. Like, at all. But all my math space was taken by my mind palace. I made it because it was the only way I could get letters and numbers to behave. That’s how I found the pure seed. But it has taken me all my life to find the way to talk about it at all. And, of course, I’m but one thready breathe, finding harmony. Noise in the signal, still signal in the noise.
ObHaiku:
heath
dark as bruise
bloom
p.p.s.: I acknowledge that anyone reading this could be forgiven for thinking I’ve lost my mind. Oddly enough, I believe, feel, and think I just found it. “Eh, potato, potato, tomato, tomato… still don’t get it.” – Hugh Laurie