The world twists and turns through my mind, careening at a speed of which I am not accustomed. Reality is no longer a thing that can be grasped. Reality cannot be counted on. The fabric of the existence of all things pulses in and out of recognition. There was a time when all was constant, a time when I was content to watch life happen without ever really noticing it go by. That time is now an unreachable memory, an unattainable state.
Deep-seeded anxiety runs through my bones like cold electricity, and my body shivers in fear. Fear. The only constant these days.
I pace up and down the sidewalk. To the corner I march. Upon arrival, I turn and march back to the edge of the driveway. Once again, I turn and do it all over again, slightly quickening my pace with each repetitive turn.
The nervous state of mind I am trapped within causes my stomach to tie knots of sharp, jabbing pain. I seem to have little control over the rest of my body. I try to stop pacing for just a moment, but I cannot stand the feeling of being still. When the moving stops, my body shakes and twitches while my mind feels as though it's tipping into a confused, foriegn, and all-together horrifying black hole. I grow disoriented, losing my bearings. The confusion and terror of a dissociated reality grows within my mind slowly and steadily like an hour glass counting down the moments. What I fear most is, what will happen when there is nothing left for me to dissociate from.
Constantly, I am on the fringe of losing myself. Of losing the world I've built up around me over the years. Constantly, I am captivated with fear.
There are wolves I am desperately trying to keep at bay. Pacing is all that keeps me just beyond their bite. No matter how long I pace though, the problem remains: I cannot quite recognize where those wolves came from or what they want from me. I cannot think. I cannot rationalize. I can only pace.
This is me. Alive. This is what I'm doing with my time. This is reality as I understand it right now. This is a panic attack. This is what I can only imagine it feels like to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. On the verge of shattering all understood concepts of reality thus far.
This is hell.
--*--*--
There was once a boy that did not know the terrors this life can hold. A boy who's world was built upon feeling, experiencing, and putting the pieces together with each new day. The world existed in varying hughes of possibility. The boy could be anything he put his mind to being. He could go anywhere he sought to go. He could do whatever it was he intended to do. This boy was alive with the freedom and beauty of a person born with opportunity. He'd been raised to understand that life, and the world one's life existed in, were whatever you made them into.
Possibility.
The boy took the possibility of life one day at a time. He did not often dream of his life far down the road, years away. He was too much of a 'feeler.' The current day, the current moment often held him in the present. The boy's curiousity with the potential of the world around him often got him into trouble, yet his ability to look upon any predicament as an opportunity to rise out of allowed him the luxury of avoiding any lasting confrontation. There was always the possibility of turning things in his favor, if only he could contort the world to work in harmony with him.
Time went by, and the boy lived his formative years absorbed in a kalidescope of situations, the outcomes always his to create. He was a god, even if he did not think of himself as such, he lived his life as an omnipotent being. He was untouchable, even when trouble came knocking, an exit strategy was always in the works.
Life was one infinite possibility.
--*--*--
As the boy shed his youth and gradually grew into adulthood, the possibilities of life slowly fell out of sight. He attended university, where he was told what to think and what to be. He was led to believe that if he did not fall in line, he would fall by the wayside.
The young man learned of the endless hunger and war in Africa. He was taught that such suffering was a product of human greed, jealousy, and impulsive action. He was taught that these qualities come hand-in-hand with humanity. That such treacherous characteristics were the inescapable downside of our species.
Scientific evidence that the young man stumbled upon told him that neuroscience was uncovering the mysteries of human life. That there was mounting evidence refuting the existence of a soul. That humans were nothing more than highly evolved biological machines.
He learned of the relentless economic and social systems of his country. He saw that he could become many things, and do many things, and go many places, but he could not do anything without money. He saw that possibility was indeed fruitful in this life, yet every possibility in this world started with money. He saw that his youthful view of a world abound with endless opportunities waiting to be created was both naive and constructed upon false presumptions.
For several years, a war had been raging in the East. The young man's country had set out on a mission to bring their cherished economic and social systems to those unfortunate soul's who had to live a life far different from the people of the young man's country. He had not had much of an opinion of the war when he was younger. The very idea of such a war was distant to him, even though it was constantly advertised by the media. Now, however, he saw that he'd soon graduate university and begin making money. He saw that his government could not fund its wars without taking money from people like him. He saw that, inevitably, he would become a war financier. He would pay for people to be killed in his name. All in the name of protecting the systems that allowed him to make the money that he gave to the government to go to war with. He saw that his life did not represent freedom. He saw that he'd been manipulated into thinking he was born immune to enslavement, and that he had no doubt been duped all along.
The young man felt betrayed by his own species. With each new day, he felt like less of a human. Or maybe what he really felt was that being human began to mean less and less. He felt sickened and ashamed to be a part of his species.
Eventually, the young man turned his attention to things less anthropogenic. He studies the natural world, learning of the Earth and the natural cycles it fostered. He learned of water, of rock, of all life. He learned of the web of connections that existed between all things both biotic and abiotic. He learned of the fragile balancing act evolution and natural selection had brought forth in order for life to endure on this planet. The young man began to see the endless beauty of what was really happening in this place. And then, as he delved deeper into his studies, the young man learned of climate change, the devastating effects of human pollution, the coming shortage of fresh water, the depletion of nutrients and resources essential to human life as we've come expect it. A presidential candidate came out with a moving educational documentary of such things, and the young man saw that it was not enough. He began to understand that, more likely than not, whatever humans got around to doing about their excessiveness and wasteful, destructive tendencies, it would be too little, too late. That whatever he chose to do, would not be enough to fix the problems that his generation faced.
And so came the end of possibility.
While the gradual progression towards a narrow, fatalistic view of the world was leaving the young man devoid of all possibility for himself, something new was creeping in. His ego turned inward, unable to positively relate to anything in the outside world. He saw the ugly truth: the world was a dying, polluted, manipulated, horrific mess. Humans were a disease to the planet. He was a disease to the planet, to life. The reality of life slowly ate away at the young man, robbing him of all spirituality and hope. He understood less and less about the world, and consequentially, less and less about himself. Eventually, the demons in the dark closed in on him, spreading their darkness throughout. He grew fearful of each day. Fearful of what he'd feel, what he'd see around him, what he would think of himself as. Anxiety and panic became mainstays in his headspace. They consumed the electrical wiring of his insides and seperated his mind from his body. More and more, he felt life becoming a fleeting thing. An unattainable concept. He felt as though his understanding of what he was supposed to be was now reserved to a small corner of his mind. The rest was filled with that paralyzing fear. And what he feared the most, was losing that last corner of himself. He imagined that he would soon have a breakdown and become forever trapped somewhere within the recesses of the space between his thoughts and his body.
The young man's ego had turned on him, and he felt as though he was inescapably self-destructing.
There seemed to be no possibility of ressurection into his former self. He did not know how he could ever return to himself when he now knew such fear, such terrible desperation, that he did not previously understand. He had, in the end, reached the point of no return. And that was a dangerous destination to have come upon.
This crippling reality, this state of fear, consumed him for some time to come. And he teetered on the edge of this state, constantly terrorized by what life had in store for tomorrow.
It cannot be said when or where things took a new turn for the young man. He was lost within himself, he was no longer aware of any further progression or degression in his life. He was frozen in that singular state of terror. However, something did change eventually. And one day, he noticed the change.
--*--*--
I once was that terrified, consfused, entirely jaded individual. I was had absolutely no place in this world. No place within myself. Like so many others that I have come across over the years, I was completely lost in life.
How I overcame that stage of my life, and how I continue to exist as something else, is far too complicated to explain in one writing, and will therefore, in part, be a revisited theme of future writings in this blog.
Can I say that I am now found if not lost? No, certainly not. I think a human that claims to be 'found' is a human that is, in part, denying the very fabric of their existence. However, I can also confidently say that I am no longer lost. How can this be? Well, I think I've finally embraced the being I am.
To be human, historically speaking, is to constantly search for meaning and understanding, hoping to find the ultimate reason behind our existence. This is the pursuit of science, of religion, of society and culture, of life in general. Also to be human, again historically speaking, is to never quite find all of the answers sought. As a species, we've not yet found the origins of existence. We have, however, made many ground breaking, concept shattering discoveries througout our time on this planet. Therefore, to be human, is to be caught somewhere between being lost and beind found. As a collective, I would argue that we are not entirely lost nor found.
The problem is, most of us cannot embrace this reality. Blame it on what you will, but the fact is that one of the hardest things for an individual to grasp in their lifetime is the reality that we simply don't know where we come from or where we are going. This is where science and religion come into such important play for us. Religion attempts to provide the answers through a defined faith in a specific higher being or higher existence. To further complicate things, as science attempts to reduce everything in the universe to reason, we must keep in mind that every single discovery that anyone has ever made is completely relative to how the discovery has been percieved, and limited by their capacity to percieve reality around them. So yes, our entire history, our entire foundation of knowledge, is relative to what we can experience. It is more than likely that there is much more around us, within us, and beyond all that we know.
For me, the realization that everything is relative was the most humbling experience of my life. When I realized this, my ego changed from one that was driven by the urge to relate and 'fit in' with the rest of the world, to one that relates only to what I can experience for myself. I stopped trying to take advantage of the possibilities of life, and instead embraced the existence of possibility as being far beyond my own ego-centric desires to control my own fate. This has abled me to become as close to being completely non-judgemental as I can imagine. It has freed me from the pressures to be anything other than whatever it is I am. It has set me on an endless adventure of personal enjoyment and wonder.
While everything is relative to personal observation, I think our true potential as a species is to share our experiences and inspire new ones within each other. That's what love is, anyways, isn't it? The acknowledgement of a shared, cherished experience. So the question is, how do we get people to get out there and have deeply personal experiences?
Technology, destruction of natural landscapes, and a culture/society that tells us we all need to strive to be one certain way are the things that I believe have destroyed the profound personal experience. We live our lives consumed by consumption. Consumption of information, food, entertainment, and all of the vices that keep us from ourselves. This was what led me to that state of confusion and anxiety described above. I saw humans as a collective, mindless plague. Sure, we all have moments where we really absorb and cherish life, but why do we have to reduce those momenties to rarities? Why can we not commit to really seeing the world for ourselves at all times?
I started this blog because I so often feel the need to understand myself as being neither lost nor found, to recognize myself somewhere between understanding and confusion, and I am extremely grateful for this. I see myself as not a living god, nor a helpless soul. As an observer of all that is happening around me, with the ability to relate what I see to what I am. And that makes me an observer. Undoubtedly, we are all observers. This is a gift that comes with higher cognitive function. Where we faulter in our observations, however, is when we so often observe the world around us as predefined. As understood. As having no real possibility for ourselves outside of what science, technology and politicians tell us is possible, yet as being able to use the possibilities that we do know of to our personal advantage. We have been reduced to unaware observers. I write to try and break that mold. To get people outside of this little bubble of existence we are sold as truth and reality, and find themselves in the awe-inspiring, dazzling, endlessly possible state of mind that comes with being a consientious observer. Take a closer look for yourself, and do not be afraid to wonder about the possibility of all things.
Possibility will continue to inspire us until we think there is none left. For when we no longer wonder, we will no longer be human.
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