Firstly, allow me to say, and perhaps this goes without saying, but I declare nonetheless, I have changed immensely.
Secondly, the first two paragraphs after these first four are copied and modified from a comment I had posted two years ago today on a Facebook post that was about what I no longer recall. The rest is the extension of my thoughts on optimism and its significance and purpose (a word used very lightly) within the reality I understand from a modified perspective two years later.
With no further qualifications and rambled wordage, please tread cautiously forward. Thinking hurts: especially in such a scattered blabbering into which you are about to tread.
“It is better to tread sod in an unexplored territory of a ferocious beast than into the mind of a wannabe philosopher in free fall.” - Me.
“I believe in legislation that isn't religious and religion that doesn't involve itself with legislation. Honestly, I believe religion and politics are the two greatest enemies of unity. We can only be united when we accept our humanity. I don't believe there's a fix. Hopefully it comes, but we're all too different. I hope. I truly hope because I'm an unrealistic optimist. I think believing that change could happen is the only thing keeping me sane, whereas believing that change can happen is far more unbelievable to me.
“In an alternate reality bouncing off the infinite cosmos somewhere out there, a universe exists where the right course could be forded. For that reason I believe pretty strongly that alternate realities must exist. At least at the bequest and dissemination of our collectively trailing consciousness. I just have absolutely no idea what the right course is and believe no one else does except for the divine intelligence. And why it doesn't just show up and tell everyone right now what's gonna stop all the killing and backstabbing, I have even less an idea about. But humanity could still work around that impasse. I mean, we could also all blow each other up. - read: optimism.”
Humanity working around the impasse of the guy who made us not introducing himself. Interesting mindspeak.
I keep on hoping because optimism is the only thing that’s pushed the great processes of all progress, animal or human, forward since the beginning. Life has always been optimistic that the heat death of the universe isn’t the ultimate reality. Look at the formation of molecular structures and the exchange of energy between particles. Look at the forms we can manipulate; our bodies. Look at their intentionality in existence that is without input from us. Feel the reality of your body persisting without your conscious involvement. Look at the optimism. It has either surfaced in a hope for something beyond our current observed setting, or it has trudged forward through all opposition regardless and negligent of an end.
I mean, why keep on if it’s all so small and insignificant? What drives us to survive and why do we have the urge to thrive, above the persistent theme of maintenance in our daily engagements? If this ambition to just be were because of a Being of spiritual significance and existential dominance, there is an end answer that needs to be approached. Such a divine creature would have no motivation to engage us (divinity’s potential expressed) and convince us of its existence and, what’s more, its preeminence. If the being then did enter our perspective, submitting to our feral need for proof of god, we would be extrinsically grateful and captured by the gracious gesture of such a significantly superior thing; the thing from which the essence of what makes us exist is derived. If a living, feeling entity crafted all that is, such a thing is profound beyond our comprehension and doesn’t need to cater to us in any way. It means that there may be some end to things. It means that there is more significance to our experiences than the theory of an inside-out universe that is rubber-banding into a reverse snap cycle over and over again. Which, if true, still offers no explanation for a beginning to processes of any sort. So knowing a creator designed and placed into motion all that exists reveals a destinational significance. However, even a story of the sin-led fall from the auspices of the creator of humankind would not excuse or explain the absence and leading on of this extra dimensional entity in a life of simple existence within a void of limitless potentials that keeps spitting out new souls to claw their way up and accept that they never had any control so that they can have no control to go to the place that they may or may have not been predestined to go.
That’s why optimism is synonymous with the nature of everything.
If you’re still following, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.
Jokes.
What I mean is this. When we realize that everything is burning out and there is no purpose to anything, and that no purpose will be given to everything at the proverbial end of time, the hopeless depression that is sure to follow after such an honest observance of the meaning of everything would certainly drive most to contemplate ending it all right then and there. Or, at the least, said person may no longer put importance on the continuation of any principled religiosities (whether spiritual or secular, it doesn’t matter) and abandon morality as a whole to pursue the basest of pleasures without limit or remorse. We should come to full awareness of the abject frivolity of life and just stop.
So why do we not? I won’t even ponder the neglectful approach toward enlightenment, or the pros and cons thereof, characterized by most of us. I will simply wonder at the constraint and tension that hold us in a pattern of self-preservation; a need for moderation in all things. A reliance on structure and law. A need for “the way things are” ...until they change. A fight and a banner of unity. A fist and a caress.
What is the source of this gravitational well around which these ideas orbit? Who or what is the middle man requiring these oppositions to coalesce?
Why can we see billions of light years into space?
Existence is an expanse of untold realities and we are so caught up in attempting to define our own, insignificant part of it that it truly boggles my mind.
Why? Such a rudimentary, redundant question.
An answer could be very simple to such a generalized and unspecific question: if it is, there is no need to know why it is.
Although, perhaps that question and a question presented to it are the key to understanding the purpose that eludes. Why do we ask why? This is what has always strained my eyes in searching through what circulates and what gives me reason to believe there is a beating heart that ignited the mystery. I am so curious about how and why things are the way they are, that I often wonder in parallel, “why why?” It is easy to say, “because it is,” or, “everything can be understood at some point.” It is hard to say, “I do not know if it is possible to know.” That is, essentially, what the question is stating, rather than asking. It’s a rhetorical question of redundancy that is more concerned in honest evaluation of the extent of conscious capability than it is with receiving an answer. It compels one to stop making assumptions in the moment and within circumstance, and begin to wonder.
Wonder.
It’s like we’re in a dream that disallows us to know the waking realities of the greater consciousness. We see a spark and a purpose in the menial tasks of the day in, day out, but we don’t often ask why. It’s even less often that we accept nothing as it is and ask, “why why?” It’s like we are unable to understand what that question means or requires of us. It is easy to respond to this confounding implication with nihilistic reasoning and yield to the compounded monotonies by submitting to meaninglessness. We discount and exclude the question because it is unanswerable.
But it’s there. A sleeping observation of our deepest self. Our self that was before ourself which decided that this assembly of all the parts that make us what we are — should be — and should strive — and should thrive — in the way that we just — do. This is the 1st self that seems to synaptically handle all of my reactions before I react. This self defines my place in existence through means of matter and time. All the functioning parts of who I am push on to survive. They see a purpose, while my waking mind sees chaos. They see potential, while my observation sees loss. They have gathered, while I am reclusive. They are optimistic, while I give in.
So maybe, ultimately, and to tag back to my beginning thoughts on that orbital unification, I am merely giving into optimism. Because there is no purpose. Not any that I can see. But there must be an answer. Because it’s all too typical. But there is not an answer. Because the question doesn’t require one. So the questioning is purposeless, but King Solomon was wrong.
The question endures. It cannot be answered; not by me. Why is any of it? Who is the 1st self defining the 2nd and why is the 2nd hidden? The resolution is not “nothing matters, so nothing matters.” The resolution is also not “everything matters, so everything matters.” We don’t know what the resolution is, or even if there is one. The question is the purpose. But it has no resolution.
If a resolution isn’t necessary, then I don’t need to resolve that a resolution isn’t necessary. I can just exist alongside a circumstantially-contiguous understanding that a finality is indiscernible, so I should exist in the extremes I find my reality stretched between.
Moderation. Kindness. General courtesy. These are signifiers of the question.
So I exist. I exist and breathe out into the existence of everything that surrounds me.
Because there aren’t answers. And we walk ahead toward something undefined. And that’s good enough.
