Drifting along as time passes me by, watching others live while I dream life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to adapt to this society as a whole… the clockwork mechanism which people follow to the letter more or less, or at least within a set of perimeters they are happy to remain contained in.
It is still a mystery to me how a majority of people manage to follow some sort of well-defined path throughout their lives (be born, grow up, work, mate, have children, die - with 'having fun' and distractions in-between) that is only disturbed by factors such as illnesses, other people interrupting the set pattern for one reason or other (getting married or divorced etc)… but always they seem able to follow a certain ‘direction’ from birth till death that is part of human life’s cycle as we know and accept it.
In essence, the basis of human existence seems to rest on: growing up, getting a partner, having children, all the while working for a living - and work becomes part of what gives us meaning and purpose, or it helps not to think too much about the latter. Everything in between these basic elements of existence consist of passing time and distractions - ‘having fun’.
I could observe Charlie (the hamster we got the other day) and draw pretty much the same conclusions. Being born, growing up and being taught by the mother all that he needs to know to survive on his own… then sleeping a lot, stretching his legs from time to time when feeling ‘safe’, climbing the bars of his cage, spinning in his wheel… and if there was a female around, get together with her to reproduce. The cycle goes on and on…
Maybe my problem is that I don’t realise the value of ‘life’ itself… I’m only able to observe its repetitive mechanism and I get bored of it, or something… I don’t know. It just feels so pointless.
But then… what is it that I’m looking for? Meaning, I suppose. I just wish there was an option to take that took you away from that mechanism of life as it is known on this Earth…
Maybe the only thing that matters is the padding, or what I often like to refer to as illusions… Instead of staring at the raw mechanism of life itself, which can be observed in nature all the time (plainly repetitive and to the point: be born, grow up, reproduce, survive, die), add as more ‘padding’ as you can… Just like adding props to a theatre stage that starts off as bare and empty. And if you focus on these ‘props’ that you add to the raw mechanism of life to make it look more colourful and less basic, then suddenly it becomes more interesting to the human thinking brain.
Isn’t that what we’ve strived to do since bygone times? One only needs to look at the literature, the arts and movies, for instance. We never depict the raw mechanism of human life, we pad it well with props… So that in effect we never see a story simply depicting two people copulating to reproduce, even though the main point of it is just that. No, we pad that raw element of the mechanism with props such as ideals of love, and others that become part of a ‘plot’. Take out all the props (or the plot itself that intrigues and captivates human imagination) and what remains? The bare mechanism of life as seen in nature.
So… maybe the key was always to add as many props to one’s own human story as possible. That way the blandness and repetitive pattern of existence remains better hidden from sight, and the mind.
So in the end the only thing that separates us from Charlie are the props and plots we're able to pad our existence with to give it the illusion of more contrasts and therefore make it more 'interesting'. Remove those props and everything is the same as it is for Charlie.
No comments:
Post a Comment