I
seem to be in the midst of struggling with the prospect of ageing that
dominates the horizon of my remaining years.
It is no easy matter to find accommodation with the ineluctable reality
that body is no longer as capable of doing the complete bidding of my wishes
and desires. In regard to my intrinsic
abilities I can no longer trust them as completely as I used to. Of course, this comes as no great surprise, and
to resist this reality is, of course, futile.
To
me the only sensible course is acceptance.
Furthermore, a recognition of individual mortality has an additional
benefit. That benefit resides within an
increased and more acute awareness of the wondrous qualities and subtleties and
intrinsic beauty that imbues every passing moment. The world presents me with a remarkable array
of details and perspectives present in the simplest of experiences if I choose
to open myself to them.
In
my mind, if I allow myself to be caught up within the intricate fabric of
distractions produced and sustained by the modern world the unfortunate
consequence is that the precious moments are lost within the crazy-quilt miasma
of contrived existence. It is, after
all, an inventive and intricate shadow world that envelops the modern human
world that constantly demands our complete attention. Much of this shadow world is wrapped in the
comforting domain of the pursuit of material possessions. The potpourri of images and manifestations of
objects that are continually fed into the sensory apparatus of the thinking
brain are presented to us as palpable vehicles designed to enhance our chances
for individual happiness whether it be a shiny new car, an ensemble of fabulous
clothes that would improve our sexual appeal, all manner of so-called “hygiene
products” that have become our necessary companions in the social world,
labor-saving devices that are guaranteed to free up our time and bring us even
more happiness, and on and on – the list is seemingly without end.
Moments
lost to these distractions cannot be regained.
Life cannot be rewound. Life
proceeds moment to moment through a continuum of choices. Modern living demands heightened unquestioned
passivity to the multi-faceted norms that have been carefully constructed for
mass consumption. This intricate structure
is indeed a reality of a kind, but it is not representative of the natural
world and by its nature is impermanent and can readily implode upon itself. Many examples exist of such an internal
collapse have been reported through the course of history of human
civilizations.
We
are representatives of a sentient species – our home is planet earth. We are by no means the sole inhabitants on
Spaceship Earth, although we often behave as we should be and possess a seeming
determination to make it so. What we
will accomplish, however, if we do not awaken from our collective stupor, is to
craft an environment that will ultimately be unable to sustain us. This is the height of stupidity, for we seem
to relish the idea of killing each other over issues that are more contrived
than real, undermine our collective future by our continued raping of the
natural world, and endanger our future rather than embrace peace, harmony, and
real and substantial social justice.
Without
the presence of Homo sapiens, the earth will continue to spin on its axis,
revolve around its sun and move through time within a vast and wondrous cosmos. Our continued existence as a species is not
required and is certainly not a necessary component of the working
universe.
As
products of our collective imagination, the panoply of gods, ethereal beings,
spirits, demons, apparitions, etc. will all vanish when humans are no longer
extant. They have no substance outside
the realm of the human brain. The
universe, however, is real, time is substantial and each moment is
transient. Within this fabulous matrix
our individual selves are created and move on time’s ineluctable trajectory
until our individual brains cease to function and the molecular organization
that sustains us unravels joining us once again to the chaos and ferment of
creation. We may pretend that this is
not reality; we may put our faith in fabulous ideas of other-worldliness, but
it is not matter for it changes nothing.
Self-delusion may provide comfort but it changes nothing. We may choose to embrace death with the belief
that there is something more, but it changes nothing. Reality has no need of either our
acquiescence or resistance, for when the brain ceases to function, as
individuals we are no longer. It is that
simple.
In
my thinking, if I choose delusion over reality, I choose to engage the pretend
version of existence and fail to appreciate the vivid reality that surrounds
me. What I do know is that while I
continue to have a conscious existence it is my responsibility to fully appreciate
that I am a living witness to the wonders around me no matter how brief my
sojourn. I am, after all, grounded to
this Earth, lungs filled with the air that sustains me, a body that moves me
through life and the marvelous organ of the human brain that is me.
If
I can embrace myself so thoroughly and completely than I can embrace
everything. Once stripped of the array
of filters that distort existence in order to fit into prescribed limits, it is
then that I can truly see and understand what it is to be human. There is an inseparable bond between the
ability to see with clarity and love, compassion and understanding. We are all, in fact, flawed creatures,
imperfect on account of the evolutionary path of our species, mortal by design,
contained within the architecture of our brains, yet we are collectively capable
of so much more than the disastrous and unsettling choices we have made to
date.
Think
of the world we could craft if all humans were to fully incorporate the truth
that we are all (the eight billion of us) members of the same human family
rather than continuing to pursue the current idea that we are somehow intrinsically
separate based upon contrived differences in race, belief systems, political
ideology, sexual preference etc. Think
of the world we could craft if we finally stopped killing each other for no
good or apparently justifiable reasons.
Think of the world we could craft if we seriously began to be responsible
stewards of our earthly home rather than actively undermining the natural world
that sustains us. Think of the world we
could inhabit if we finally took full responsibility for our collective fate
rather than allow ourselves to move about in a delusional reality of our own
making that presumes that a super-human being(s) is “watching over us.” If we were to bring about our own
self-destruction tomorrow, the cosmos would be completely unaffected and the
movement of time would be unimpaired. The
human species is not a required component for the running of the universe
machine.
