The world is a funny place, isn’t it? Who could possibly come to terms with this level of perpetual chaos?
One glance across the mad spectrum of current events may lead one to believe the human species is on the brink of self-annihilation… again. Endless fabricated wars and fomented conflicts, cumulatively terrifying, yet utterly fictitious viral outbreaks, mounting “science” (and arsonists!) offering evidence our planet is perpetually suffering and dying; more apps and devices than there are humans, more and more technology that aims to fix and “improve” you, an endless supply of fake money (debt is money), collapsing empires (and medicine, education, industry, finance); emerging trillionaires, more government than ever before, more societal fractionation and political division than ever before; sex, sexuality, gender, and race are all up for grabs, and another false-flag, terror-inducing event is just around every corner.
These are the big ideas floating around in the modern era. What’s it all about? Does anyone really know what’s up?
Does anyone really care? Sure, we care about what we care about, in our own little bubble-reality ways; from our unique perspectives, based on our own perceptions of the world around us. But beyond our precious, fragile identities and egos, does anything truly matter to us?
We employ a myriad of changing beliefs and values. Is that enough? Does it give us enough fuel to weather the inevitable storms that are upon us? If the privileged few who seem hell-bent on sucking the life out of everything that is good and sacred and beautiful about this place are able to keep poking and prodding and playing us against each other, is that enough?
I wonder. Of course, I may be entirely wrong about my perspective on these things. Regardless, it’s difficult for me to observe the apparent craziness and chaos of this present moment on Earth. It seems there are a lot of agenda-making, narrative-framing, reality-distorting machinations operating all around us. For some, it’s easier to avert their eyes, and to carry on ignorant and unaware. They’ve established meaning, purpose and function. Life is fairly linear and somewhat predictable. For others, that’s an impossibility. It’s the old red-pill, blue-pill scenario; once you’ve seen things from a certain angle, you can’t ever go back.
Regardless of what we deem to be true or not, it’s absolutely critical to our wellbeing that we remain flexible to a point, to allow for the surprising, unexpected and unpredictable — whether they be “good” or “bad”. Life is an unmitigated mess at times, but from what I’ve experienced in my short time here, that’s really the whole point.
. . .
From the moment we emerge out of our mother’s womb, we’re exposed intensely to this reality; we’re dowsed in bacteria, fungi, microbes, electrical fields, atmospheres, and everything virtually invisible to the naked eye that we’d surely die without confronting from the get-go. We’re bawling with our entire body as we take our first breaths, stunned, shocked, blinded by brightness after being both liberated and irreversibly torn from the safety of that remarkable sea that sustained us from within a woman’s belly. All was one, and then it was two.
These bifurcations of unity and stillness continue for the rest of our days, in every aspect of our lives. We learn left and right, up and down, right and wrong, true and false; we learn what resonates and sings to our souls, and we learn what offends our sensibilities and sensitivities — and then we re-learn them over and over again forever.
We have a waking life, and we have a dreaming life, with the fickle factor of time thrown into the mix to obfuscate and obliterate our perceptions, definitions, and expectations even further. Aren’t they both real?
How remarkable is our mind, and our consciousness (tangible or ethereal)? We may indeed feel trapped, forced to pursue a certain track of cause-and-effect after the alarm wakes us, while on the other side of the veil lies an infinity of potentiality. But what if we have that backward? Why do we tend to throw away our capabilities and capacities, known and unknown, based on the frivolous notions of those who came before us? What do they really know about anything, anyway, except what was gleaned through living a life of hazards, lessons, and learnings of their own?
The layers keep piling on, and through the process we develop and construct an identity, while forging a personality, meaning, and purpose. It is truly a whirlwind of chaos and creativity, ebbing and flowing, jarring and jolting. Of course, it seems reasonable that we were born with a certain set of notable factors and elements, some of which were perhaps borrowed from a previous life, or our parents — or perhaps of the truest rarity, it may be our very first time here. Imagine.
The simmering stew of raw and untamed creatorship can and will overwhelm us at times, as life frequently gets “too real”. But until we’ve had an assortment of bumps and bruises, we may believe just about anything someone tells us to believe. It’d seem rather wasteful to spend too many of our days in such a stagnant, predictable place.
Eventually, some layers harden, offering, at least momentarily, a modicum of psychological or emotional protection. Many, many others simply fall away, or get lost in the endless shuffle of what matters now, and what does not. We watch and learn, we mimic and discern, enduring and generating billions of changes in every little moment, a torrent of vibrance and color and subtleties of imperceptible activity, presenting somewhat plainly as our actions and choices.
We awaken each day, until we do not. And then?
. . .
No matter the era, generation or millennium, life has in store for us an enormous array of paradoxes and conundrums, challenges and accomplishments, failures and successes. Some lives are incredibly short, while others could indeed become interminably long. Whether it is we who ultimately decide when that time comes, until then, what remains of a day, of a moment, defines a legacy. One cannot adequately reflect upon that which was not attempted.
Go out and do it for real. Watching life scroll by in split-seconds on a social media platform can’t possibly be good enough for you. It’s terrible for your attention span. It’s riddled with ads. It’s controlled by an algorithm whose only goal is to keep you staring at the screen. It’s superficially interactive, inciting or inspiring momentary outbursts and comments, likes and shares and all of that nonsense — but nothing about that medium is actually and lastingly contributing to the world. How much of it will last beyond your lifetime? None of it will be remembered, nor become something to tell future generations much about.
You know nothing about a person, place, or thing until you hear it, see it, smell it, taste it and touch it for yourself.
Then, and only then, can you ever hope to own your piece of the chaos.
Solvitur ambulando
PC: Merlin Lightpainting (Pexels)