Gah! I like to expand my horizons and tap into several modes of thinking. I accomplish this best when I'm having an intense discussion (usually at a cafe - always cafes) or when i'm stoned. Now rather than continue to somehow 'shame' myself by positing my lifestyle as some kind of venture into the perverse language of potheads, I plead with you to not stereotype me and seek to understand my concerns with thinking: I fail to understand why now most of us are able to function at all with the understanding of the universe. Bare with me... Reason suggests that since we cannot understand everything and there are simply all sorts of sensations and abilities we cannot experience therefore we should live within our means and continue to thrive with our limitations. Subsequently meeting those limitations and adapting to succeed them. Sure, maybe someday someone could fly or make a head explode with a single thought. But not today.
Okay. Great. Let me get that Americano with some room for milk. I also like a little chocolate sprinkling on there for hints of sugar. I understand we need to 'get on with our lives', ride the car to work and do our jobs and support our family. That's fair, humans are emotional and considerate beings. We keep each other safe.
But I'm losing my point here. I felt I just needed to clarify that the 'systems' we live with are necessary, even if they continue to change/adjust. But really, I'm facinated by the fact that something like this: ......................(See image at bottom of page)...................................... can come off to some people as a "Yeah. I know. So what?" Gah! I can't help but think about how my body is just goo attached to bones, packaged nicely with a conscious.
This feeling was revealed to me when I was about 5 year old. My dad had a convertible and we were living in North Vancouver in a prestigious town called Deep Cove, embedded alongside a mountain on the edge of a beautiful bay. The kind of area that screams the best of Vancouver and even has that refreshing minty air to go alongside the god-like mountains. So driving to central Vancouver required a little trip alongside this mountain towards a bridge that takes you downtown. Now along this road you'd get to see a plethora of interesting sights. To give you an understand of the geography, while you'd be hugging a mountain road you could easily see across the bay towards the 'mainland' (its all connected but the bay extends so far it's almost like it's detached). You'd be so high up at some points you'd see for kilometers. There are massive railway links and refineries. So you'd discover some new attraction everytime.
And having a convertible and no self control when it came to showing off, my father would often take down the roof of the car and gun it along the road at awesome speed. Being 5 years old, this was my first rollercoaster ride. While I changed my mind later, I felt I had very little confidence that we would not (everytime) somehow swurve off the road and plunge to our deaths, hitting on our way an unlimited supply of mother natures most stubborn forestry.
Only at the brink of death do you really think about the value of life. I'd often protest such unsafe driving and demand that my father would stop. Seeing as how he and my sister loved the experience I eventually suffered in silence. But one of those days I have a profound revelation... or at least it was some kind of epiphany. I realized that I was a human living on a particular part of the world and that I could die. You know, existential crisis. Now before you think I'm just waxing my own car with regard to how old I was when this happened, I assure you I'm being as modest about it as possible. My childhood was it's own chaotic set of experiences.
But the thoughts that I felt that day stayed with me. When I'm fixed into routine I often just plug into it. That is, I go with the flow and don't think about... planets, earth, matter, form. But every so often I've become more concerned with my existence simply because it just IS. Questions about why inevitably come, but its more about grappling with existence. It's a truth. I am matter. You are matter. The only thing that makes us distinct (semantics) is the fact that we are conscious of it. When I think about existence I grow curious about that part of your brain that exists to lock out certain things. I read about this a while ago, perhaps some more research is warranted but essentially it dictates what you can handle and what you can't. Without it you'd lose your grip on reality and suffer horrendously as your mode of thinking would deviate grossly from the norm. Poor bastards. This, we'll call it a failsafe, is often broken when people go to war or see something horrific. I'd argue that it could be something astonishing. Anyway. The fact that that exists blows me away even more. My mind is governing my intake!
So here I am. Existing. On the band wagon. Ordering my coffee from starbucks, browsing at new apps on my iphone, thinking about life and the world and the fact that it is indeed very real to me (even if someday I discover it isn't and that consciousness can be extended into forging alternate realities).
Maybe I'm going crazy. Maybe I'm voicing something people have heard over and over again. Whatever. I'm here. Alive and typing to a fake audience. Right now, today, in the infinte expanse of time.... I wonder helplessly about existence and... yet, perhaps....
... like the thrill surfers talk about when they're in a pipe surrounded by energy and motion (called the green room) or the feeling soldiers talk about when they describe being shot at... Even though I was terrified at the prospect of life at 5 years old, I still felt a need to enjoy it... even in my premature pessimism.
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