It’s just writing: A ramble in Bb.
I unleashed the dogs and sauntered over to the usual concrete block -it makes do as a seat amidst the sand and dirt. Additionally, it’s large enough to lay back on and have a complete panorama of nothing but the sky. I think it’s a drain cover of some kind. Part of an abandoned development. There are unfinished foundations a few feet away. The architectural ghosts of COVID. The skeletons of over-frivolous excitement. Laying on my back, I escaped the twitch of anxiety, or perhaps it was a soft sort of existential dread, that I had been feeling earlier. The distance between the rolling thunder and I put me at ease. An ambulance and two police cars had driven past me earlier in the day. I messaged my wife to make sure she was okay. Many of the drivers here are reckless, and there seems to be little conscious thought for the fragility of human life. I don’t think its that people don’t care for one another, just that the effects of one’s actions on the external world is not a conscious thought. Either way, I struggle sharing the earth with people who would endanger the lives of others just to be somewhere a little bit sooner, much like I struggle with many other types of people, although, the more I think about it, the more I realise that it's all just a different expression of the same problematic way of being.
Thankfully, she was fine. Thinking about it on a deeper level, someone else was not, which is not fine, but she was fine, and that put a smile on my face. We take what we can, don’t we? See, there is a flip side to this, but you’ll have to bare with me. My thinking works in such a way that I am plagued by sensations of things going horribly wrong. I can, without much warning, be brought upon by the same emotional states that would come to me with the news of an accident or one of my dogs being hit by a car. Sometimes my brain takes me inside fictional events in which things happen to me or to people who are important to me. My feeling response is exactly as if I am there, right in the middle of it. Unfortunately, more often than not, these things aren’t pleasant, or sometimes they are echoes of unwanted memories. Either way, they take their toll, and I was grateful for the clear view of the sky and the sound of thunder. I found a little peace in finally understanding that this anxiety is a perfectly natural and essential part of having others in your life that you truly care about.
And this is the flipside. On the other side of that coin of worry that I flip over inside my pocket, there is the warmth of finally being part of something that has some meaning to it. The worry only exists because there are things connected to me that matter. I no longer exist for myself, not as a single entitity. I exist for my wife and my dogs, and for them I must exist. The formulas of interraction between the world and I are different from what they were, and from what I can tell it all seems like it's a crucial part in becoming 'more alive.'
You see, the characters that I have been, and many of the characters I see around me, I don't see them as very much alive at all. They will naturally tell you different. I can think of plenty that will unapologetically scratch at your eardrums with tales of free-spiritedness and expressions of individuality. They will each have a topic that conjours some illusion of passion. Some may even boldly tell you about their importance. But I have been lucky enough to step back and watch the reality in which they dream. There is something that comes as the result of a combined evolution of the relationship with self and the relationship with others. It is not possible for one to reach where it needs to go without the other. They certainly influence and inspire one another (and at times push and pull), but it would seem, walking around and listening to everyone's stories, for the most part, there is an imbalance in people.
I understand that it's impossible for there to be such a thing as an entirely selfless act, -I will spare you a philosophy lecture between myself and I- and in that sense, it is impossible for anyone to live selflessly. Even at our most altruistic, we invest in to a world that supports our emotional existence. So, while there can't be anything such as selfless motivation, everything must be selfish. However -and herein resides the bare nerve of my existence- there is a clear distinction between selfish motivations. There are those who support the world around them so that the world around them gives them the feedback they need to exist, and there are those who support themselves, even if it is sometimes at the expense of the world around them. We will all trundle along both paths throughout our lives. So what seems to matter most is where you most predominantly place your feet.
And now, this is where I fall short of the philosophers, or at least some of them. The remedy for a selfish existence. That is what truly matters. How do you objectify what makes for a meaningful and positive motivation? While, it might sound simple, I don't think it is. I think there is too much of everything always going on, and our place within the world, and ourselves, is always capable of being shaken or shaking. But, in this lies the magic. In this is where there is no excuse to claim 'boredom'. A bored person is simply without necessary direction. A bored person is someone who has the least excuse to be bored. They have the most work to do. Those who fritter their lives away on flashing lights, and selfish pursuits -the dopamine chasers- they are bored. And unfortunately, that boredom comes at a cost -often to others as much as the individual. I see that very boredom in the music people listen to, in how they behave, the drugs they take, the lack of respect they give themselves, their ill health, their networks. It is all the result of a boredom that they are trying to hide from, but ultimately it is driving them. A boredom, that if sat with long enough, would eventually make itself known as something else: A fear of a truly meaningful life. Because once one steps in to a truly meaningful life, one has to battle with the fear of it coming to an end (both life and what is meaningful). It is almost 40 years now, for that I am a little embarrassed, but I finally learnt that I was afraid of meaning. Afraid of anything or anyone truly meaning something. Everything had to be discardable. It took a lot of fuck ups and dances with death to finally arrive at a place where I can finally say to you, finally: “I would much rather be afraid than bored.”
(Author’s note: In most self-help literature, this state of existence is tied in with reaching a state of ‘self-love.’ Finding some sort of peace with everything that makes you who you are, and what has already made you who you are. At the beginning of this blog I touched on that as being only a part of it. So I don’t believe it is fair to have something like ‘self-love’ as entirely interchangeable with ‘a meaningful life’. It is not the ultimate goal. The former needs to exist for the latter to exist, but a self-loving human being must also learn how to connect with the exterior world and be connected to, or something like that. Someone can very much be under the impression that they are ‘self-loving’ but perhaps, and certainly in my case for a number of moments, that is yet to be tested by meaningful events. Anyhow, that’s enough from me, hopefully there’s something in here of something for someone to do something with somehow.)
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