Desperation

We may starve for truth, for clarity, for meaning, for purpose, and we may do everything in our power to attain it. 

But seldom is truth something that is waiting for us to do something to reveal itself, as if it was merely a lock awaiting a key; rather, it follows its own course. Sometimes, in the incomprehensible course of the universe, truth is not meant for us to seek nor to attain; sometimes, it just finds us, for whatever reason, and for whatever cause.

Natural and artificial

It may seem rational to justify the overly high standards of modern dating culture—the preemptive raising of “red flags,” absurd and arbitrary perfectionist demands in physical attractiveness, characterological traits, and for the entire dating process from start to finish to be free of discomfort or strife. Many still seem to justify it as natural, framing it as a cold calculation innately wired into our biology as a means of carrying out natural selection—to find the best possible partner for reproductive and generational success.

But all too often we forget that within our modern world, very few things we do are natural. There are a myriad of tendencies within our biology that are ultimately counterproductive to our success within a system that is inherently artificial. Natural selection simply doesn’t work the same way it used to; if one of the main purposes of society is to ensure the safety and prosperity of all its constituents, the implication of this is that the majority of those with seemingly undesirable traits can and will pass on such traits. 

We’ve already decided within the construct of society that basic human decency requires that we are patient with one another, that we help those that can be helped, that we build one another up even despite our deficiencies; we’ve decided that survival of the fittest isn’t an ethical strategy—that it isn’t acceptable to just leave homeless people to perish and rot on the streets; we’ve already decided that eugenics is wrong—that we shouldn’t kill off everyone that committed crime or those with a mental illness. If we can agree on this, why do we persist in our hypocrisy? Why are we shocked or aghast when we discover that someone has some degree of undesirable traits? Why do we suddenly turn a blind eye to our responsibility as human beings when it comes to choosing a romantic partner?

To fall

I haven’t fallen in love in a long time—just a little bit over three years, to be precise. Even though I’ve been incredibly diligent in honing my self-awareness and emotional maturity after all this time, I still don’t know. 

I just don’t know. 

At moments I still feel as though I’m still constantly on this verge of falling in love, still wavering on the same precipice, strewn with the scattered, lonely fragments of broken hearts and memories, equally harrowing and fond. And I feel as if my heart will inevitably end up tumbling down this cliff, and into the abyss of the unknown, devoid of reason, filled with mystery, lurking with terror, abounding in beauty. 

At any moment, for any reason, by any avenue, I foresee love.

Right to the beautiful part

Right to the heart of the matter

Right to the beautiful part

Illusions are painfully shattered

Right where discovery starts

In the secret wells of emotion

Buried deep in our hearts

— Rush - Emotion Detector (Neil Peart as lyricist)

In the midst of mind-numbing vapidity and inordinate amounts of gale-force nonsense that characterizes so many aspects of modern life, the temptation might be to retaliate by rushing into the things that impart a profound sense of fulfillment within us—the things that we feel give our life meaning and purpose and a reason to live. 

But lest we become excessively far-sighted in our outlook, neglecting the seemingly mundane, the rote activities, the everyday minutiae and the obscure details that in reality constitute the majority of the experience of life. Let us instead remind ourselves of the corporeal—we can be starved of purpose just as much as we can be starved of food, we can thirst for meaning just as much as we can thirst for water, and we yearn for love just as much as we yearn for rest. The desire for one or the other should never be in imbalance.

Discontent

For every day that passes in this momentous life of mine, do I not have good health? 

Do I not bask in the luxuries of clean water and gourmet food? 

Have my hands not found something that brings joy to my heart?

Have I not unchained myself from oppressive shackles of emotion?

Why, then, if I have nothing more I could possibly ask for in this peculiar existence, do I inundate my consciousness with discontentment?

Chaos

As much as we try to psychologically detach ourselves from the inexorable chaos outside our perception, as much as we try to understand—meticulously peeling away at the seemingly innumerable number of layers of reality that constitute an ultimate truth—there seems to be nothing more undeniably real and irrevocably true than our feelings and emotions. 

The pure, unfettered joy of eating when famished, drinking when parched, resting when exhausted,

The warm comfort of a mother’s embrace, 

The relentless gravity of a lover that tugs upon our hearts,

The searing pain of burning hot oil splashing onto our skin,

The visceral panic when a large animal charges at us, 

They are all but atoms, scattering haphazardly in space.

They are all but players in this nonsensical game we call life.

But in that moment before our minds can rationally justify how we feel, we are one with the chaos.

Indispensable

If we believe that human character is static—that there is an innate, inextricable, and unchangeable trait that exists within all of us that predisposes us to good actions or bad actions—we need neither patience, humility, tolerance, nor forgiveness.

Otherwise, they are indispensable.

Self-awareness

I’m an acutely self-aware individual, though often to a fault. 

While self-awareness and mindfulness are indispensable companions within our journey towards what modicum of free will that actually exists, there seems to be some inherent magic that exists within pure, unadulterated experience of life—untainted and unfettered by skepticism and doubt, without this constraint straining against the chains of our conceptions of right and wrong, bereft of reason yet abounding and immersed in feeling. 

In the same way there is a universe of truth to be found in thought, I simply cannot deny the existence of any less truth to be found thoughtless.

Lessons learned

Humanity’s collective internalization of lessons learned is akin to a glacier—a gigantic heterogeneous mass of ice, snow, water, rock, and sediment—inching along month after month, week by week, and day by day, moving so slowly that its progress is virtually imperceptible. 

However, many of our individual lessons learned are far more akin to an avalanche—a torrent of snow tumbling down a mountainside at staggering volume and dizzying speeds.

When there were hundreds of millions of people who lost everything in all the horrific wars of the last century, why do we in the present day lay complacent? Why do we continue to perpetuate hate, intolerance, and violence in our world? Why are we so ambivalent about the nature of right and wrong, when for those that actually endured such tragedies, would not have an inkling of doubt? 

It seems as though many of those lessons are simply lost generation after generation, but it’s clear, when we look at the progress of human civilization at the macro level, it’s clear that they aren’t simply lost. It may be that the vast majority of lessons are indeed lost, and what few remain are those resilient enough to impart some degree of knowledge or imbue some form of wisdom into our collective consciousness, 

It is also another conundrum entirely if we question the value of collective progress; we already seldom ask ourselves what specifically needs progressing, let alone whether or not we need to progress in the first place. After all, to nature, it makes no difference; what are an avalanche and a glacier but water molecules shifting around from place to place? Everything that happens on Earth is a cycle, and all is one and the same.

If we go back to this paradoxical notion of suffering, perhaps that is the point of it all—to suffer, even if not collectively advancing humanity as a whole, even if we repeat the mistakes of the past, for it is all that gives us meaning in the end.

Urgency

In the moments where we feel we least need to do something—to hone our moral and ethical awareness, to cultivate our capacity for effective reasoning and empathy, to merely give a modicum of attention to someone in need—are the same moments when we probably most need to do it. 

Amidst unsurpassable chaos, great pain, great pleasure—when our emotional impulses conquer and occupy our consciousness—seldom do we make the right decisions.