Retrospection

What a year it's been... I experienced a first 'relationship', and what's funny about romantically-involved relationships is how close two people get, but once it breaks, it is as though the two people in question never ever knew each other. Unlike friendship, there can be no mending. Once over, both parties separate completely. There are always exceptions to rules, so there may be some people managing to stay 'friends', but even that can only come some time down the road. In my particular instance, I'll never again hear from the guy... he was just another passenger on a train. We hooked up and spent some time together, and then one of us had to get off at some point - and we were never meant to get off at the same station.

Then I started my 'first' real job. You know, that 'real' job that involves the idea of 'career'. It took me some time to adjust to it, to say the least... but it's good for me. I spend my life living inside my head, so it's good to have to deal with the real world 5 days a week, 7 hours a day, excluding lunch time. I also like my job because everyday it reminds me that I can work anywhere so long as I learn self-discipline. Hopefully some day I'll be a good pupil and learn to be organised enough to never have to work in an office. But even if that doesn't happen, well... such is life, so it's alright.

I spent the night between the 24th and 25th drinking vodka and Diet Coke with my cousin, sitting opposite each other on the old sofas of the living room. After a while, we were both talking in our respective languages and the language barrier no longer mattered. I suppose we just understood whatever we wanted to understand as the other spoke. And there we stayed, drinking and talking nonsense till dawn. I was wearing reindeer horns on my head and he was wearing a green hat with the word ELF on it. The rest of the family had been wearing red Santa hats, but they'd collapsed in bed way earlier than us.

I realised fairly recently that the friends we make often happen to be a certain reflection of ourselves, and it's because we recognise a part of us in them that we become friends. I haven't made that many friends throughout my life, but the ones I did manage to make are truly a reflection of some parts of myself... We seem to have at least one thing in common: we don't fit in and we don't seem able to find our place in the world. There's my friend B, forever addicted to the internet world, rough on the outside but softer than a baby's skin on the inside... There's my friend S, who came to this country many years ago to help her family and try to make a better life for herself. But she remains just as lost as I am in this world, never finding her other half while she watches everyone else that she knows be pulled in, get married and have kids. As she works her ass off to send her family money, her mother keeps nagging her about the fact that she's a social loser - in the sense that she's almost 30 and has no 'situation' for herself. Nice, huh?

There's my friend A, whom I've known since I was 13. We only went to school together for a year, and then lost touch for over 4 years - until I moved here and decided to go look for her. And because I chose to look for her, we rekindled our friendship. But I remember why she never came looking for me... I had to be the one who looked for her because I had been the one to break the friendship when we were 14 and she had to leave... and I couldn't stand the loss. Four years later, I end up having a dream of her inside an empty train station, and that convinces me to look her up. She's the other dreamer, the one who never gave up no matter how tough reality has been on her. She's been in and out of various relationships, forever seeking herself. Now she's toying with the idea of leaving her 'safe' job to focus on her dream full time... and I am in awe at her courage.

These friends just happen to be passengers on a train who chose to sit down next to me for as far as our journey together takes us. But it was never about the getting on and off part of the journey - the fact that we all come and go in one another's life - it's about the connections, and ultimately the interconnection of absolutely everything. It's about realisation. Knowing that each connection made between stations had a particular significance to be realised in the moment or in retrospect.

Moments

"If one ever wanted proof of Darwin's contention that the many expressions of emotion in humans are universal, genetically inscribed, then a few minutes by the arrival gate in Heathrow's Terminal Four should suffice. I saw the same joy, the same uncontrollable smile, in the faces of a Nigerian earth mama, a thin-lipped Scottish granny and a pale, correct Japanese businessman as they wheeled their trolleys in and recognised a figure in the expectant crowd. Observing human variety can give pleasure, but so too can human sameness. I kept hearing the same sighing sound on a downward note, often breathed through a name as two people pressed forward to go into their embrace.[...] The variety was in the private dramas: a father and teenage son, Turkish perhaps, stood in a long silent clinch, forgiving each other, or mourning a loss, oblivious to the baggage trolleys jamming around them; identical twins, women in their fifties, greeted each other with distaste, just touching hands and kissing without making contact; a small American boy, hoisted on to the shoulders of a father he did not recognise, screamed to be put down, provoking a fit of temper in his tired mother.

But mostly it was smiles and hugs, and in thirty-five minutes I experienced more than fifty theatrical happy endings, each one with the appearance of being slightly less well acted than the one before, until I began to feel emotionally exhausted and suspected that even the children were being insincere. I was just wondering how convincing I myself could be now in greeting Clarissa when she tapped me on the shoulder, having missed me in the crowd and circled round. Immediately my detachment vanished, and I called out her name, in tune with all the rest..."

- Extract from Enduring Love by Ian McEwan

I was reminded of that passage when I went to fetch an aunt and uncle at the airport the other day. I'd arrived too early and upon checking the information for arrival times, I realised that they'd given me the wrong time and that I'd have to wait an extra hour before their plane was due to land. I went to the nearest Starbucks inside the airport, ordered a coffee and almond croissant, and sat at a table in a corner from where I could just gaze vacantly at my surroundings. I started observing scenes as described by the author above, but for a second or two, I found myself unable to remember where I'd heard the description before. And then I remembered I'd read it a week ago or so when I'd started reading that book.

Then my aunt and uncle finally emerged from the arrival gate and I stepped out of the crowd to greet them at once as they pushed their trolley forward looking a bit lost and confused. Before that, I'd observed various scenes playing out; two children, a young boy and his older sister, emerging out of the arrival gates, stopping on their tracks for a moment to scan the hall blankly... and then their eyes lit up upon recognising their father waving from the far end of the hall. The children ran towards him, beaming, and clung to him as though they hadn't seen their father in years. A moment later, their mother was with them, reunited at last with the father as they gave in to a tight embrace before walking away slowly towards the exit, arm in arm with their children.

Next to me was a mother with her young son, who kept asking about the various destinations listed on the arrival board. "Look mum, there are people who come all the way from Los Angeles - does LA mean Los Angeles, mum?" he asked as they waited for family members to arrive through the gates. "Yes, it means the same," she replied quietly. "There are also people coming all the way from Australia - look," she added, pointing a finger up towards the board. And then as the people they were waiting for arrived, they beamed and greeted one another hurriedly before making their way out together, chatting loudly and laughing.

And there it is... the sameness in all our differences. Airports make for interesting places to observe. People... Moments... Life is nothing more, and nothing less than what we make of it, it seems.

Mad World

"Retail history is expected to be made in the UK today with analysts predicting the busiest shopping day ever recorded. Visa Europe believes that the nation's shoppers will use its cards to spend over £1 million a minute, nearly £18,000 per second - totalling £1.5 billion across the day."

"Visa predicts that the busiest shopping hour of the year will be on Christmas Eve between noon and 1pm, in a final flurry of activity before Christmas Day. A rash of discounts and sales is likely to hit profit margins as stores fight to entice cash-strapped shoppers through their doors."

- Sky News

"Millions of people have hit shops across the UK to secure last-minute purchases ahead of Christmas Day. Meanwhile, online shopping association IMRG expects consumers to spend £186.4m online on Christmas Day. It forecasts that £367.8m will be spent on Boxing Day.

"Hectic scenes have been reported across London's West End... [A spokesperson for IMRG said]: "There are also a lot of people at the Marks and Spencer and John Lewis food counters, where people seem to be panic buying."

- BBC News

"Time is running out for Christmas shoppers across the country as they hit the high streets in a last-minute buying frenzy. One million people were expected to descend on London's West End over Friday and Christmas Eve , spending an estimated £100m.

"In contrast, ugly scenes broke out at stores across the US as shoppers vied to lay their hands on Nike's new shoe. The release of the company's retro version of a classic Air Jordan model, which cost $180 (£115) a pair, was responsible for disorder outside stores from California to Georgia."
- The Guardian

Sometimes it feels like a dystopia of a world where every single original meaning or thought has been turned upside down to fit a particular agenda of a given time.

When did we get there as a society? When did it all become about materialism, so much so that we seem to spend our time buying, buying, buying...

There was a children's movie on TV earlier and as I ate my lunch I watched parts of it. I'd seen it before anyway. It was about some guy becoming the new Santa, but there it was, staring back at me, the ideology of spending and materialism for children to be inspired by.

This so-called Christmas time has nothing to do with family or anything innocent or pure. It's a give-away for excess and materialistic orgies.

System Reboot

I vaguely remember a topic of dissertation I was given in high school. The topic stated something like "Man exists only among other men", please expend. It was the first dissertation topic we were given in philosophy and we'd been allowed to do it at home. I was struck by the fact that a mere few words (man exists only among other men) could inspire so many thoughts in me... the rush of arguments overwhelmed me at once as my mind was inspired to consider the hidden depths and multitude of factors that needed to be taken into account.

When the teacher came back to us with our graded papers, he accused me of cheating, claiming I had to have asked for help, that I couldn't have written it on my own. He only stopped the accusations after I scored just as high during class tests where we'd have to sit for 4h in a row writing a dissertation. In insight, the man didn't know me at all. I'd landed in that school out of the blue for my last year before final exams and the only friend I'd made was a girl who wasn't doing well at all and who was more obsessed about her boyfriend than school work. I had nothing in common with the girl, but for some reason she'd taken a liking to me. She was kind enough to invite me to stay with her and her family over the weekends, and since I was on my own in the city, it felt nice to pretend I wasn't so alone.

That one year spent in Warsaw was so strange... I remember only glimpses, as though in my mind I had decided that the whole year was just a glitch in time, because I would only be there in passing and the only reason for my being there was to finish high school. Even though I kept bunking off certain classes, I still managed to get the highest grades, which felt odd at the time. I had never been the 'best' in school except back in early primary school. The oddest part was that I didn't even feel like I was making a particular effort, and still I kept getting the highest scores. I had been out of the school system for a whole year previously - working in some Mc Donalds, cleaning tables and taking rubbish out - and still I was doing better than all the kids whose lives had unfolded like clockwork.

I was getting the best results in every subject - it was shocking. I kept wondering how dumb must the other kids be if I can do it without much effort at all. Once, I did mess up and got a low mark for an essay in literature, but while I didn't actually mind at all, the teacher was the one apologising to me for having to grade me down. "I'm so sorry Aliska, it's just that you forgot to mention this, and also that, so..."

Hell, that year I even scored the highest in freaking German. But there must have been a reason why I suddenly did so well over a one-year period of my life. And that reason is called: having a purpose, or goal. The fact that I was removed from everything I knew, all on my own with no one to turn to led me to focus absolutely on just that one goal to achieve (finish high school and pass the exams), and I somehow focused on this so much that it led me to do my absolute best without even realising it. Having an absolute goal in mind helps garner that intense focus of mind, and it is also a helpful psychological crutch in the sense that the person can simply lose themselves in it - regardless of the surrounding chaos. As I made my own mind focus solely on a precise goal, all its resources and strengths were channelled in order to meet that goal.

As lovely and powerful the focus born out of intensely focusing on a goal may be, the revert of that is what happens once the goal is achieved. What happens once the mind, which has been made to channel all its energy - to the maximum - towards one particular goal, achieves said goal? I can tell you from first-hand experience what happens. Absolute sense of confusion and loss. As much as the focus and direction feel clear while intently pursuing a particular goal, the achievement of the goal itself leads right back to square one. I experienced it with such force that it led me to a deep state of depression afterwards. As soon as my own absolute goal of the time was reached, no matter how incredibly well I did thanks to the intense mental focus, once it was achieved... the question "and now what?" was the most painful of all.

And that is the slippery slope notions like purpose, or pursuing any particular goal, that I grew incredibly wary of over the years following my experience with 'goals in life'. It only feels good so long as we're in the stage of trying to reach them, but once reached the realisation of 'and now what' is the most painful. It can truly annihilate you inside and out, although one should find the strength to look at it as a learning curve.

But what's the lesson in all this? It doesn't seem so clear or even possible to avoid going through life following one goal after another, but that is perhaps only a man-made conception that precludes us from being able to envision a way of perceiving existence as anything other than ticking boxes on a long list of goals to help pass the time and grant a momentary illusion of purpose.

My 'philosophy' seems to have now become something like this: do and give my best in anything that I do in the moment, while refusing to dwell on where that might lead. This really means a focus away from the future, and doing that really means letting go of such things as ambition, to name but one.

Notions such as success, for example, are driven primarily by desire and ambition, but by allowing to be driven by the latter, one is merely getting caught in yet another pursuit of some goal. The achievement of something that has been pursued as a goal will only get the person back to square one, endlessly seeking another 'goal' to at least elongate or resume the illusion of meaning or purpose to escape the intense despair and confusion left upon reaching a goal in the first place.

So... it's not about having goals in itself that destroys and limits us in the long run - it's our focus on them.

My take so far? Have no goals, no ambitions, no expectation. Let the future, and any notions attached to it remain a complete blank slate. Meanwhile, of course, focus should be placed back on what we do in the moment - always with the intent of doing whatever we are doing now in the best way we can. Giving our whole to the now, and let the rest unfold without any goal in mind. it may be scary not to have the comfort of envisioning where our steps might lead, but it was always just an illusion in the first place.

In other words, it's about a cessation of pursuing any goal whatsoever to allow the now to take us there, wherever that 'where' ends up being (so long as a person gives their whole to each moment, doing or giving their 'best' and not just drifting mindlessly and then being surprised that the 'where' ends up a very bad place to be).

How hard it is to let go... So hard. Yet, it must be done to free oneself from all the ghosts accumulated along the way throughout one's existence.

I heard the thought that there was beauty in ruins, because ruins give way to something new or renewed, and for anything to improve - for anything to change - the old must be allowed to lay in ruins for more to be built upon it. There is beauty in being able to see the role destruction can play... inside and out.

Weakness

I never learned to show weakness in front of others, except for my mother, who taught me from a young age never to expect sympathy from others for some reason that probably stemmed from her own experiences in life.

The defining moment probably came while I was being bullied at school as a child. After over a year of keeping it a secret to my mother, I finally cracked and told her what was happening. That day, she turned into a lion ready to die to protect her cub, it seems. She said: "Aliska, no matter what they say, no matter what they do - never let them see that they hurt you, even if they have. Never show them, never give them that pleasure."

I listened to her advice, and developed all manners of cutting and hurtful comebacks as I tried hard never to show my 'aggressors' that I was hurt. I became so good at it that I wouldn't be surprised to have come across as some sort of heartless monster that just couldn't be put down by the age of 10. But inside, if they could only have seen the bleeding... inside.

In the midst of my worst mental woes, at a time when I was actually truly considering ending my own life, I never looked 'happier', apparently. I remember starting a part-time job when I was 20 over the Christmas period at some bookstore, where I met a 17 year-old boy, or young man rather, who for some crazy reason fancied me so much that he kept following me around all the time. I remember not wanting to hurt his feelings, so I kept bringing up the age gap, jokingly calling him 'kid'.

Even then, he would keep following me around, finding stupid excuses to be around me... We became sort of friends, and he'd take the bus with me all the way to the tube station after each shift even though he lived on the other side of town. Once, as we were sitting right at the back of the bus, I laughingly confessed that I was depressed and actually on medication. He stared at me for a moment and then burst into laughter. "You? Depressed? No way, stop lying. You're always smiling and looking so happy." I replied quietly that appearances could be deceptive, but he simply shrugged it off.

Then came our last day at work, since we were only supposed to work there over the holiday period. He asked if he could take me out to a restaurant and spend one last day with me. I agreed, and in insight I can honestly say that this boy - this young man - was the first and only one to ever treat me in a loving manner despite my inability to reciprocate more often than not. It was all so very simple... and then he gave me a present, a little silver bracelet I've since lost by accident. We had this meal, he told me again how much he loved me, I reminded him gently that he was a 'kid', and that was the last time we ever saw or heard from each other.

I never really thought back on this until fairly recently. I'd been trying to retrieve some memories of my early 20s, you see. The depth of my depression was so great that it had felt like a coma during that time... I sporadically wrote diary entries here and there, but reading them back feels so much like reading a stranger's mind... But it was me. I was this person writing these entries, even if I could no longer remember.

It was never that I really wanted to die... it was the tiredness and the refusal to become an 'adult' in that 'adult' world I saw and which made no sense to me that drove me to despair.

Nothing in my environment has changed much. It still feels very much as though I've been thrown to the lions for a long time. But somewhere down the line I must have found the strength to keep going. Perhaps it was the realisation that no one was ever going to uncover the fact that I'm so weak within, so easily breakable away from the eyes of others, and that no one would ever dismiss me as simply insane, at least not just yet.

In this world, I can use no excuse. Everything I do has to come from me, and I can get no 'helping hand' along the way, for some reason. This strikes me based on my current experience of work. I work with people who constantly use excuses - literally any excuse under the sun - and people respect them for it. I never realised until now how much social interaction rests on the ability to draw pity onto oneself. I mean, really. This strikes me because the few times I tried, people showed no care in the world for my woes, so there has to be an 'art' to make people feel sorry for you, so much so that always let you get away with it, so to speak.

The more pity you're able to draw onto you, the more people like you. It's the equivalent of being the funny guy in the group, really. I think it may appeal to people's need to see that others are worse than them, in a way. It not only relieves them, but also makes them feel stronger or bigger than they actually are.

I personally have no skills whatsoever in showing or pretending to be weak. Sometimes people ask me what's wrong when I'm not smiling at work for some reason, but whatever I say, I feel as though I'm lying. Complaining or drawing sympathy out of others feels so alien to me that it really makes me behave as though I was a liar. It's different on here of course, simply because... hey, I'm Aliska on here.

Trapped

This feeling... of being trapped. it came back to the fore recently after meeting with a friend, who was adamant we should 'run away' for a few days in the countryside not just to recharge batteries, but also in search for inspiration. We made plans, it sounded easy and straightforward enough. We were going to book places on a boat and after an overnight journey by sea we'd get where we intended to go. I was looking forward to it, I have to say.

My friend called me last night to tell me she'd just booked her place, and she sent me the link to book mine at once. As it turned out, there were no more places left. My friend had booked the last place, unbeknownst to her. I called her back, telling her it wouldn't let me book it, and she realised, sounding half-horrified, that she'd just booked whatever last place there was left on the last boat for the day. We checked the next boats - all full. So we checked air travel options - no places left. Everything was booked, probably because it's Christmas time.

I could have felt angry or frustrated about it... the fact that I couldn't go. And perhaps I was for a second or two, deep down... yet at the same time I was laughing inside in a more ironic or sarcastic way.

Me? Escaping for even a few days? hahaha... I am trapped in this reality. And the more this reality traps me, the more my mind finds itself fighting back.

Some day, some night,

There was you, there was I,

And then it all went dark.

The unfolding of processes

My very first blog entry was almost like a catalyst for things to come. It started with a feeling of oppression followed by that of release, or liberation within the mind when suddenly everything I saw, heard, or read rung false. At the time I thought I 'got' it, but I really didn't.

Whatever stage I've reached, it feels by far more strenuous, dangerous and unavoidable. The path of deep introspection is tough. Everything from my first entry was nothing compared to where I'm at now. It is as though I have come to realise that all that I am is based on my own perception of things, and with it comes the experience of what we call reality and the potential release of far greater awareness. A type of awareness that goes far beyond our usual perception of reality.

My obsession with understanding the external along with my own self has led to this realisation that it all starts within. Far from feeling free or at peace, I am at war inside. I have observed and pushed to understand my inner core so much that now I can only stare, helpless, deep into my own abyss.

As I stare into my own abyss, I feel as though I now have two pairs of 'eyes' through which to see and experience the world and even through which to reason. One pair of eyes is linked to Ego, the old self, whose gaze only allows to see as much as I've been able to see or understand until now. This 'old' pair of eyes is besieged with old habits, accumulated flawed or limited perception through the years, and through these eyes is projected the old persona - meaning the physical embodiment of Aliska interacting with the world, which could also be called identity, individual awareness or personality instead of persona. But now there is this other pair of eyes within. And this one... this one can stare directly back at the other pair.

It is like a perfect mirror image within, where the old pair of eyes are confronted with the reflection of another pair of eyes, except it feels nothing like perfection and it certainly doesn't feel 'nice'. It is as though the other, more recent pair of eyes developed unbeknownst to me along the way as I kept digging deep within myself, pushing and pushing... And now all I can say is that I have these two staring back at each other - the old one being the window into Ego, the other being in the infant stage of taking over said Ego. But I can't be sure, of course. All I can really do right now is describe what's going on inside me, no matter how insane it may sound.

I feel mostly as though I'm walking deep inside a dark cave, wishing so much to find light, but all my calls for mercy and help keep drowning in the silence of this seemingly infinite cave... Trapped in darkness, constantly yearning for light. From time to time a faint streak of light beams from one corner and I try to run towards it - but by the time I reach it the faint light has already vanished to leave room only for more treacherous ground that forever seems intent on making me trip over.

As time goes on, the constant falling over inside the cave and the complete lack of light drains me from all my energy, making it harder and harder to get back up on my feet... to the point where I've grown aware that there is now a clear possibility I may never reach the exit from that deep, dark cave within. However there is this other pair of eyes in their infancy now, and it may be that if I can help it or allow it to take over the old one, I might, just might be able to keep going some more - always towards the end of the tunnel. What lies beyond I could not say, though.

On Memories

There is a certain sense of pointless arrogance in wanting so hard to reject the world based on selective perception, or placing extra focus on one side of the coin rather than considering both sides. Sure, most things to me will never make sense, and I know most days I will continue to feel as though I'm living in a giant circus, but I have to shift my focus away from that. Three years on and torturing myself by focusing exactly on what I know I can't change is now revealing far more about me than anything else in this world.

Why is it always so much easier to focus on other things or people rather than ourselves? There is this... illusion that if only we could make everything right on the outside, somehow it will lead to everything being right on the inside, too. I fell into the trap a long time ago, back in the days when my mother and I lived in precarious conditions. The stark contrast between how things were and how they changed was one thing that messed me up for a long time.

As we struggled, moving from one place to the next, never sure how long the respite would last, I got myself thinking that if only we could have a proper home again it would make it all better and suddenly everything could go back to the way things used to be. Between the age of 17 and 25, that is all I could think of to make myself believe that things would be okay again. I could not accept that what once was had passed - as all things are bound to do. I became a prisoner of my own ghosts. And each passing moment from then on was to add more sorrow inside the giant black hole eating at me from inside. Each memory formed by passing moments became little more than nutrition for the black hole within.

In the greater scheme of things, though, all we really are in the end is memories, and most of our human world as we know it rests on the passing of memories from one generation to the next. Among memories passed on from one generation to the next is knowledge, experiences, sometimes even the inheritance of knowledge as to where we come from. All this serves to preserve a sense of continuity from initial point A to the yet unknown or unfolding point B as I write this. Severe that bridge allowing for the transmission of memories from one person to another along the way and there would be no world to speak of.

All species on Earth seem to follow that need to connect past to present through memories, the only means of connection through ever-flowing Time. Of course, in the case of animals, we would be more likely to be talking about instincts and survival techniques passed on from, say, mother cat to her kittens. But the point is the same: if mother cat didn't teach her kittens and if she didn't pass on her own 'knowledge', the idea of cats as we know it would be disrupted. In fact, it may well mean there would be no cats to speak of for they would lack so much guidance due to the breach in the passing on of knowledge that they could not survive long.

As I pondered all this, I wondered how come memories hurt me so much when really they play a primordial role even just to survive long enough to have a world to speak of. And I realised that it was my attachment to them that led to the pain. This of course led me to start facing the fact that attachment has always been something that held me back even inside my head.

Attachment, fear of loss... it's all the same really. It only serves to stunt growth inside and out.

I used to assume that my past experiences of sudden loss had at once made me immune to it in terms of fearing it. But I was wrong. It was only the premise for a mighty lesson for myself. It was only the equivalent of the first act of a play when the plot is being set up or laid out.

Interlude

There I was, thinking I knew you, but when the wind blew over the water

the reflection I thought was mine faltered.

Fake

As I train myself to let go and remain neutral inside, I find the distance between me and people around me only growing further. But it's not people, it's me. Every single person I know seems to have hobbies, things they like to do, favourites, dreams, desires that are often widely found among people, making it easier, in a way, for them to bond with one another. These hobbies, favourite things, 'interests' or dreams make it possible for them to fit in more often than not because all these hobbies, favourite things and 'interests' repeat themselves randomly across the world. After all, we're part of the same species, and though we like to claim differences, we are mostly similar in essence. Even the need to feel different is part of a common human trait that can be found across the world in various people.

Depending on the pool of integrated 'interests', hobbies, preferences and desires a person has, it turns out easier or harder to make 'friends' and integrate within a group. The more generic the likes and preferences, the more likely the person will find themselves integrated within a larger group, whereas the more 'niche' the list of interests and hobbies, the more difficult it will be to find others sharing the same sort of niche list of interests and hobbies.

Well, that's nothing new. Being more like the majority means getting on easier with most because you share a lot in common with a lot of people.

I've realised for myself that I've grown rather empty already. There is nothing about me remotely attractive for any regular person out there. I mean really. I have no hobbies, no strong preferences in anything, no strong interests... nothing. I could sit in that chair just thinking all day and it would be enough for me. Sometimes I think about what I could do or try, but there is never a strive strong enough to make me want to bother. I'm like a blank slate inside that just doesn't 'take' in when it comes to further adorn my identity with composite elements such as likes and dislikes, interests etc.

I can be interested, of course, especially if it's something entirely new to me, but nothing ever seems to become a part of who I am, or that could ever define me.

I noticed that a long time ago, but until now I was never able to fully realise it for myself. You know how people will define themselves through the things they like and don't like, be it in a conversation or online? I remember once when I was still at university, I started going out with a few popular people in my year. One day, I ended up sitting in a pub with a couple of guys from that group of popular folks, and as I sat there wondering what the hell I'd talk to them about, one of them simply started asking me about my likes.

"So what kind of music you listen to?" asked one guy. I looked at him for a moment as I racked my brain for an answer... nothing sprung to mind in terms of 'favourite' because I liked way too many things without any particular preference for one or the other. I just enjoyed almost every genre rather equally for different reasons. As I looked at him, I picked my answer from the pool of all the types of music I liked without any higher degree of preference according to what I knew would probably fit it with his own high favourites. So I replied: "Radiohead, Kings of Leon...that sort of thing." And the guys nodded in approval at once, especially at the mention of Radiohead.

Depending on who is in front of me, I seem to adapt to what their bundle of interests is. It's often easy because while I have no strong preference in anything, I usually appreciate almost everything without any particular bias or strong interest, so I just pick whatever would fit with whoever is in front of me whose identity is just based on a bundle of strong preferences.

But what does that make of me? It means that every time I make 'friends' I'm actually playing a different role each time 'tailored' to a particular person... and it probably explains why I've ended up with a few friends, but all of them usually completely different from one another - so much so that I can never really gather a group of friends because they would be way too different from each other to get along or even relate.

For a long time, I used to accuse most people of being 'fake', but it was always me. Most people are at least consistent in terms of their core identity. They have a fixed set of likes and dislikes that can expend or retract over time, whereas I happen to be so open-minded that I have lost, or never really had, the capacity to be selective to create a core identity for myself, and I don't think that's a bad thing at all... it's just that this realisation makes all the difference now, because it finally sheds light on a lot of things at once for myself.

So whenever someone approaches me, I'll be tailoring myself according to them because most people are really just a bundle of likes and dislikes, preferences and interests, while I don't usually prefer anything, I can just like a lot of things equally for different reasons, and none of it is ever assimilated deeply to my own person, leaving me somewhat like a blank slate that I can construct in a certain way just to match another person's bundle of likes and dislikes, preference and interests.

Hence my inability to truly 'fit in'... because every time my core personality is just a made up 'doll' according to who's in front of me.

I have... no so-called personality. I'm just a rough outline upon which layers of interests and preferences can be loaded randomly depending on both my environment and the type of person I interact with. But as soon as I'm away from it, the layers vanish leaving me back with the rough outline that presents no strong interest for any particular thing.

Nowadays, I can't help perceiving people more like 'bundles' than 'real' people. It's hard to explain... it's like I've grown too aware of how much people build up their sense of identity like lego blocks in terms of defining themselves based on the things they like or don't like, their hobbies and interests. It seems to be needed to fit in within a group or society in general just to bond with others and create relationships, so I'm not saying it's bad. I just can't relate.

So long the idea of belonging, fitting in with what I never was in the first place.

Ego

No more poetry to be written, no more sweet-sounding words, hollow enemies of the mind. What is the mind anyway but part of the same prison Ego has constructed for us?

It's all an illusion. It may feel real, but it is not. Everything is caught up in a maze of neurons and sensors inside the brain while the rest of the body constitutes the bulk of the machinery to keep the whole going. Same goes for 'bigger' things like society or the 'world'. It all works pretty much in the same way fractals do.

My words aren't even my own. They are borrowed and drawn from the pool of some collective consciousness that remains intent on deceiving its subjects or 'parts' by instilling the overwhelming notion of Ego from the start.

There is NO 'I'. Not even the shadow of one.

If I am but a cog in the big machinery of the universe, then why must I be made to believe and hang onto the false belief that 'I' exist independently from the whole?

An ideal form of language, if there really must be a 'language' at all, would never have a first person. It would at best only have a third person that is undefined.

Everything about languages as we speak and write them today are a consciousness trap because languages are not made up as such by a group of people who sit down to think about it, they are or have become a mere reflection of the tenets within the collective mind that stick. Languages evolve mostly depending on what the collective mindset prefers to adopt in terms of ideologies, imposed meanings and beliefs at large. As such, languages become little more than a direct mirror of our belief systems and reinforce the prison within which all is trapped. To use any ready-made language is per se to inherit a whole set of pre-defined notions, beliefs, illusory understanding, etc - including most if not all the flaws accumulated within that particular language's collective mindset.

Why is English so popular and spreading so easily throughout the world? Why this one and not another? (Yes, Chinese is technically the most 'spoken' but not in terms of spreading power) That's at least partly because most of the world is being made to adhere to a certain collective mindset whose influence happens to either have come to existence or developed from the English speaking side. Sounds far fetched? Only because I'm not finding an efficient way to put my point across.

Language is the equivalent of a virus carrier within the mind.

Apart from that, I still don't know how to de-construct the Ego in me. How to kill it... I'll embrace emptiness and void if it means I have eradicated it. To be fair, I still can't see the good that would come out of it. As the sack of meat that is 'I' becomes emptier, I find it robbed of any joy, smiles or hopes. All that remains, more and more, is emptiness devoid of anything at all. How can that be good?

But I can't stop. The alternative for me is even worse, it would mean having to live in a fake world that is really just a prison of cheap senses.

Lost

Sitting in the dark, with only the light of a flickering candle to pierce the darkness... but there is no light within, only obscurity.

I feel absolutely empty, and not even words sound accurate enough anymore. Like a metronome, I still carry my self from place to place, I smile when prompted, I speak up when asked a question... but death is what I feel inside. Complete and utter emptiness within.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the elevator's mirror at work this afternoon, and for the first time in my life I saw the emptiness reflected in my very eyes. It's hard to explain, but it was there, staring back at me with a void and sadness no word can fully describe.

Even words no longer ring true... Nothing rings true anymore, and when I look at people in the street, as I stand against a wall for a cigarette, it all looks unreal. Just metronomes shaped in the form of human beings passing me by in a hurry.

God I feel so dead inside.

I feel like a puppet on strings who no longer cares to know what happens if the strings break. Everything feels so unreal... The world may be big, but I can't feel it. It feels like being trapped inside one of those snow globes they sell in gift shops.

I've been trying to drown my sorrows in various alcohols, but when it's not the pounding headaches gripping my mind, it's the intense waves of paranoia waking me up at night in a sweat.

I don't know what happened... something just snapped again out of the blue inside my head, except the inner bleeding feels like it's situated inside my chest, so heavy and painful.

I just want to be my self? It very recently occurred to me that I've never been my self, especially in instances when I thought I was.

I have never been my self.

I've tried and tried to find my self, let the 'true' self come through, but the more I tried, the more confused I grew, till only darkness started pouring out of me.

I have seen some seriously DARK sides within me. Disgusting, revolting, shameful... and for a time I embraced all those sides, each time thinking they made me 'I'.

But I was wrong...

There was never any self in the first place. Yet most of the world imposes the notion that it does exist, enslaving us to the useless pursuit of something that never was. But even as one realises that there is no such thing as a self, they have to face the emptiness.

I no longer want to find 'I' because the notion of 'I' has been toying with me for too long. I just want to let go of everything...

But if I let go of everything, even the futile attempt at finding 'I', then what will be left except complete emptiness? I don't know. But I've already reached a very scary stage...

I feel so awful inside... There are no words. I wish I could just plunge a hand inside my chest and remove whatever twisting rot is burning me from within.

And my eyes... they look so dead and empty now.

This can't be right... From self-awareness, which all human beings experience more or less, to the annihilation of Ego... for what?

How does it make sense to start off existence with the development of self-awareness only to need to destroy the Ego that feeds off and grow from the self-aware stage?

The User

I've been thinking about the notion of 'users', as in people who use others constantly for their own benefit often without even realising it, and how much a world's ethics based on greed and self-interest has been driving that trend.

It would be foolish to think that the way our world's ethics have developed isn't directly having an impact on the very way people turn out to be in life. More and more, life as a whole has become a race for consumption. A belief that each of us has a 'right' for almost everything has nurtured a society based on self-entitlement and expectations that ought to match our own, irrespective of the fact that our expectations may be wrong, deluded or contrary to the well-being of others.

We want what we want, and give no regard to anything else. We have a 'right' to want, and that's it. Everyone is out for themselves in a society that no longer exists in essence, but whose foundations are still there to give the illusion that it's still a society we live in.

Love has become this strange commodity that one can get and throw away at the slightest inconvenience. The notion that love is something deeply linked to responsibility and commitment has pretty much gone out of the window for a lot of people out there. People just want the easy part where it's all cuddly and nice, and as soon as the going gets tough, they can just throw it all away and move on.

It's particularly disturbing to me, I have to say. It's not even like I have a particularly strong sense of 'ethics' in life. I'm rather flexible, and tend to follow or dream about things that would make more sense than not. Things that would more likely bring a healthy balance than not.

Yesterday, I went to meet a friend of mine, thinking it was good timing that she'd called me to go to the movies with her since I had nothing planned and was feeling a bit down. I decided at once to go out and spend the afternoon with her and catch up on things. Just have a girls day out, you know, between old friends...

We met near the cinema where we used to work together, and went to have a burger and chips first. As we sat at a table in a corner, she started telling me how she was no longer talking to her other friends because they were so 'selfish' and always 'wanting things to be their way' without any regard as to whether it was good for her as well or not. I was listening, nodding my head as she said all this, and then she said something like: "Yeah, so I told them I wouldn't go out with them anymore. I said I didn't want to go to the movies with them this weekend anymore, and when they laughed and said I'd have to go on my own, I just told them I'd call you, so... in their face, right?"

I was struck for a second by the blatant fact that she'd just told me in my face that the only reason she'd called me was because she needed someone to go with her. She'd used me and told me in my face, and couldn't even see that she did, and yet there she was complaining about her friends doing that to her.

Talk about making you feel like the third wheel, here. But that's obviously the role I play with most people I know. Thinking back, they never call or text, or really want to be in my company unless there's a specific purpose that forces them to see me.

A few months ago, another of my 'friends' called me out of the blue. Her polite excuse was that she wanted to catch up, and then before I hung up the phone, she asked if I could lend her that pretty top I had because she was going salsa dancing. I said, sure, I'll bring it with me when we meet up, which I did.

Then I didn't hear from her for another 4 months or so... till she texts me again out of the blue and offers to go out for a drink and 'catch up'. I'm like, yeah, of course, that would be nice. So I go there to meet her, and we do have a nice time catching up, but the real reason for meeting up in the first place stares me in the face the whole evening: she needed to return the top.

This sort of situation where I'm reminded I'm always the third wheel or Billie no mates isn't new to me. It's the story of my life since high school, really. I've spent a good part of my last decade wondering what it is I do that alienates people so much from me, and I'm sure there are things I do or don't do that put me in that position. My lack of active social interaction doesn't help, in the sense that I don't actively seek to be in contact with anyone most of the time. But the reason I don't is because I just don't feel drawn to most people... they bore me, perhaps just as much as I bore them. There's this inherent incompatibility with the people I end up meeting, which is really at the core of why I can never fit in with them.

For a long time I used to think that perhaps I was just plain weird - but even the worst of weirdos make friends. Doesn't society love a so-called weirdo? Maybe I'm a mean person, but then again, don't people always feel more attracted to the bitch and the jerk of the village? Yes, they do. So... I ended up thinking that I was probably too boring, and it fitted with the fact that I just don't find what most people talk about 24/7 interesting that much. It's interesting, even fun at times, to gossip and make stupid jokes for a third of a conversation, but after that it just gets way too boring for words, I'm sorry.

So I've developed that inability to fit in with a lot of people because I don't really get what they talk about. I don't watch much TV, don't read the latest trends, don't follow sports, don't enjoy shopping, etc... so when people start mingling with each other and 'bond' I can never contribute, not only because I'm not interested, but because I really can't, since I don't follow what most of them do.

However, I recently started to make some effort just to have the basis of a mainstream conversation with people, you know. It's not really helping because now I've realised something else: people, for some reason, never wanted to listen to me at all. It's like whenever I open my mouth, people would rather ignore me or talk over me.

There I was thinking that my inability to make real friends, even to just 'fit in', was linked to my lack of conversation on trivial matters and gossip. But even as I found myself having things to gossip about, I realised that it didn't change the fact that whenever I interact with people, a chasm between me and them remains.

I've spent way too much time trying to close that chasm, and nothing worked. I just have to accept that there is something about me that makes it impossible to ever fit in. I have to accept that and start finding ways to cope and get used to standing alone in this life watching a world I don't belong to as though standing on the other side of a glass wall.

Twenty seven, twenty eight

Sites like Facebook are a good way to gather some sort of personal statistics based on the number of people you actually know on there. You can also keep track of predictions, such as the one made by my philosophy teacher when I was 18 and about to leave high school.

After spending a year teaching us the basics of thinking in depth using the logical side of our brains, the philosophy teacher ended his last lesson with a gloomy, dismissive outlook. He claimed we'd all have forgotten what we'd learned by the time we hit 25. By then, he claimed, all of us would be married with babies or careers to obsess over. That was the fate that awaited us all, he said. No escape. Every student in the class protested loudly at that point, accusing him of stereotyping people without knowing any better. I was petrified that his outlook could be right, somehow, but by then my life had turned upside down so abruptly that I also knew there had to be some exceptions to that rule of conformity.

"There are exceptions," I told my teacher, who sneered back at me dismissively. "No, really," I insisted, "There are always exceptions to rules, come on." He looked at me again and shrugged unwillingly. "Yes, there can be one or two, but no more than that," he said. He was the only teacher who knew me a bit better than anyone else in that school, which I'd joined for my last year of high school out of the blue a few weeks after the first term had already started.

The reason he knew a bit more about me was down to the fact that he was also my headteacher. When I started bunking off school and not attending certain classes (Latin and History) he was made aware of my repeated absences and confronted me one day after his lesson to threaten me with disciplinary action. That day wasn't a good day for me mood-wise, I'd tried calling my mother, but she wasn't answering, so all sorts of fatalistic scenarios were dancing inside my head by then (I lived alone in a foreign city where my new school happened to be but no one knew that apart from me and one girl I'd made friends with by then). As he threatened me, I got angry and words began to flood out of my mouth - how much I didn't care, because it was hard enough to find the motivation to go to school at all when you were accountable to virtually nobody. It's not that I didn't want to go to history class, it's just that the lessons were always so late in the afternoon that by then the temptation to just leave was too great to resist. As for Latin, I couldn't stand the teacher, so why should I force myself to endure it when I can simply not attend the class? All I had to do is keep walking past the classroom and leave school grounds. It was too simple and easy not to do it. And once you've done it once, it gets easier and easier because you realise no one is doing anything about it. Nobody is actually stopping you, because nobody can ever stop you in anything except yourself.

The teacher stopped threatening me and sort of blinked in surprise, saying he had no idea I was alone here. "How come you're alone in this city?" he asked, puzzled. What was I supposed to say that would be short enough to prevent the meeting from lasting a whole afternoon? I embellished my story, that's what I did, making it simpler for anyone to grasp, because even I couldn't make sense of what my life was at that point. I said: "My mother and I can't stand each other, so she sent me away to get to know some of my family over here. Unfortunately none of the family members in question live in this city, and we can't speak to one another because I don't know the language. So they dropped me off in the city with my luggage and drove off. Now I'm here."

The story seemed to have the effect expected and the teacher suddenly turned more sympathetic, no longer threatening that I 'had to attend classes, or else...", but instead urging me to 'try and attend classes' as much as I could. He also said something about how he'd assumed I was just another spoilt brat.

Anyway, to revert back to the last comments the teacher made on our last day of school with him...

Ten years have now passed, more or less, and his outlook turns out to be rather accurate, except his timing was off. Most people didn't conform completely by the time they reached 25, oh no. Modern times mean that 'clever' people now take longer to 'settle down'. They'll have spent the greater part of their 20s studying for pieces of paper that will then get them a steady foot on the ladder. Apart from a wrong timing, everything predicted seems to have materialised. And how could it not be the case? I guess it all comes down to whether you end up settling down with a career to keep you busy if that's a choice you derived for yourself. More often than not, though, people end up trapped in such settings not by choice, but according to social expectations because that's what you're expected to do. You're expected to get a good job, get married, have kids, do like everyone else is doing, basically. So you do it. Not by choice, but blindly according to what others expect and the pressure from seeing everyone else do it.

I wonder... Is it realistic to even think it's possible to lead a life derived from personal choice, or is it more likely that most will just lead a life derived from expectations? In other words, is it possible to lead a life for ourselves, or are we doomed to lead it according to others because others have ultimately become the symbol needed for our own validation?

What is success?

The world is full of positive definitions built around that one word. 'Success, succeeding, successful'... They have the same term in French, borrowed from English, "succès", even though the French have their own word for it, like "réussite".

Ask anyone around you, they'll all tell you the same thing: success is good. It means you're doing something right... right?

Or is it?

If anything, the notion of success is nothing more than the translation of peer acceptance as to a person and/or an action. In other words, success is nothing but a majority-based agreement that, for better or for worse, decides on whether something is a success or not, or whether a person is successful or not.

But that's easy. Almost anyone could derive such a basic conclusion. The more interesting point to be raised is this: what is the cost of success as the world, or a society, recognises it?

In this modern world, everything is about succeeding in something. It really is, even when one thinks he/she 'only' aims to get a better life by getting a better job, for instance. That means, really, that the strive is to be positively validated by as many people as possible (majority-based agreement) or by a specific group of people within a specific area as found in the notion of 'career' - let's call this a 'niche-based agreement' even though the intrinsic meaning remains the same: the notion of success is absolutely subjective and only exists based on other people agreeing on what it is and whether it exists or not.

How many other words or notions, beliefs or dogmas, rest on such absolutely rooted subjectivity? Quite a lot. In fact, so much so that it would be enough to prove most of the world is built on human illusions stemming, perhaps, from over-developed minds compared to our chimpanzee neighbour.

So what is the cost of success, this one notion that prevails in our world today? The cost seems to be to forsake all other notions or ideals to reach it. This means spending one's existence running blindly after it - therefore doing nothing more than seeking others' validation. The fact that others' validation often brings rewards is often incentive enough to go for it.

We are wired to long for the notion of success from the moment we start going to school at the very least. Tiny children who can't read and count yet are 'innocently' asked to draw pictures and the likes, and then a figure of authority - a marking figure in a child's mind - gathers them all in a nice little circle to elect which one was best, for example. It then gets worse and far more obvious as the children grow up and made to compete for the best grades. Those who seemingly don't care about such things as grades are usually those who have been scarred by a figure of authority at some point or other - be it at home or at school. They may deviate from the norm here, but often will find alternative ways to continue developing the competitive streak in them, such as taking a liking for sports, or even just to beat their friends at whatever game or task. Or even to be the best at simply not doing the 'right' thing, ie: crime, anti-social behaviour. No matter how you look at it, it can always be found rooted in the notion of succeeding over others because success giving way to endless competition to reach it is the prevalent notion from the start.

How can education as we know it not be all about conditioning mind in such ways? Anyone looking back on their time at school would probably agree that most of the testing they had to go through, all these endless grades that were hyped as the most important thing in one's life, actually have no bearing on real life once they become adults. Did it really matter to get a A on that science project when I was 12? What about all the grades I had to study for throughout the year, every year that constituted my education years, when I was made to believe they could make or break me? 99% of them had no use in the real world.

Sure, most could say such techniques as testing are meant to assess learning. That's the lie right there. The lovely subterfuge to allow for the conditioning of minds from the weakest point in time in terms of human consciousness - childhood, where minds are easily moulded and influenced without any notice of it.

A lot of people would be inclined to conclude that being competitive and striving for success is just what we do naturally, because it's part of our make-up, so to speak. But how can this be when the base is already being manipulated, meaning that everything was already set up to encourage us to develop in that way, with very little room for any alternative way of development?

If I were to make a science experiment involving looking at the behaviour of a virus or bacteria under the microscope, but placed in that sample another element that will thwart its natural or innate behaviour, could I be allowed to claim that whatever behaviour I then get to observe is bound to be its natural behaviour? No, I would have to start over with a base sample that removes any external factor that could influence the outcome of that experiment so as to be able to have a basic observation of that entity, and then be able to compare its basic behaviour with the way it adapts when I add external factors.

The same is true with the way we constantly draw conclusions as to who or what we are in essence. We constantly base conclusion on an already spoilt base - meaning we have no chance of truly finding out about what human means unless we stop conditioning ourselves.

Interlude

Complainte du petit cheval blanc

Le petit cheval dans le mauvais temps, qu'il avait donc du courage !

C'était un petit cheval blanc, tous derrière et lui devant.

Il n'y avait jamais de beau temps dans ce pauvre paysage.

Il n'y avait jamais de printemps, ni derrière ni devant.

Mais toujours il était content, menant les gars du village,

A travers la pluie noire des champs, tous derrière et lui devant.

Sa voiture allait poursuivant sa belle petite queue sauvage.

C'est alors qu'il était content, eux derrière et lui devant.

Mais un jour, dans le mauvais temps, un jour qu'il était si sage,

Il est mort par un éclair blanc, tous derrière et lui devant.

Il est mort sans voir le beau temps, qu'il avait donc du courage !

Il est mort sans voir le printemps ni derrière ni devant.

Paul FORT

When I was little, around 6 years-old, we used to have to learn poems by heart. One day, I remember our regular teacher being absent for the day and a replacement teacher took over for the day. I can no longer remember whether it was a woman or a man, although I think it may have been a woman. Whenever we had a replacement teacher, we knew we wouldn't be doing much work, so we liked it because it sort of felt like a holiday for the day. In this particular instance, the replacement teacher decided to give us a choice of different poems to learn rather than impose just one on us. We had to read them all and then vote for the one we liked the most - and the one the majority liked would be the one we'd have to learn by heart. That day that little poem came up in the selection, roughly translated as "the little white horse's complaint". It was my favorite of the batch, and it always remained so... It was the first ever poem that my heart fell in love with, could relate to... I don't know, but it marked me. Maybe that's because sometimes I feel like I am it. I am the little white horse in the story.

Today one of my worst nightmares kind of materialised - that of entering a room full of black ties and snotty strangers and having to interact with them as though I was the most social person in the world. Only I can know how awkward I felt as I tried so hard to hide it from my face and posture… Body language says a lot, you see, and it can betray your best endeavours.

After shaking hands a few times with people whose names I couldn’t even register in my head, I wondered about the meaning of hand shakes. Surely knowledgeable people could tell from a mere hand shake something about you that you’d rather they didn’t know about. Perhaps there were subtle messages being passed on through the mere strength of fingers squeezing around another person’s palm, or even meaning in the length of time it took to part from that other person’s hand? I couldn’t say, but my thoughts lingered on that point for a little while - and then I made a mental note to google it at some point.

For better or for worse, I noticed that my hand shake was on the strong side, with a lingering hint to it. A more ‘feeling’ type, I suppose. My thinking is that since I’m being made to shake someone else’s hand, I might as well mean it. I do remember shaking ‘limp’ hands, though… the kind that feels like a dead fish in yours, and it always translated into a feeling that the person in question was a prick thinking themselves somewhat superior and ‘having’ to shake yours. I’d tend to squeeze that sort of hand even harder, just to get the message across that I piss on their deluded sense of superiority.

It’s getting so late now, and it’s a Tuesday night. It means that tomorrow is business as usual, having to wake up like all the other drones out there. Some of them are only pretending, or maybe they are part of the fish caught in the net that can’t find a way out. To the machine, however, these distinctions never matter. The machine itself (the workings of the world which allow it to flow in the patterns we can experience and live in) only care about results, not the detail. So it matters not in effect whether one is caught up against their will, or if they are in there willingly, because the end result is the same: we all end up allowing the machine to carry on existing and working like clockwork.

I hate networking with people. It wouldn’t be so bad if I was merely expected to say ‘hi bob, what’s up’, but there’s nothing more awkward than standing in the middle of a crowded room and suddenly falling silent with nothing to say, and the other person remains silent too. Ideally, you want to end up with the opposite sort of temperament that is able to talk non-stop regardless of the situation. That would usually be the forte of ‘communications’ people. Until you realise that these people are pretty useless at giving you the sort of information you need other than empty chit-chat.

After another half hour spent struggling to look like I was networking with people, I picked up on a trick that consisted in at least managing to strike up a conversation with one person, and listening to whatever they were saying about the business (which I still know very little about), and later on, when I met another person, I would start talking about the topic spoken about by the previous person as if it came from me. That way it not only gave me something to say, but it made me look like I knew more than I actually did.

Pretence, pretence, pretence.

I still find myself ‘running away’ from the office a few times a day to draw in some fresh air, and my eyes invariably look up at the sky as soon as I emerge from the building. In a daze, I wonder what the hell I’m doing, and I realise I have no clue. It leads me to wonder whether I’m the only one feeling that way, but I guess I can’t be. But then I wonder how many out of the masses of clueless people out there actually stop to wonder about their own clueless ways, and I think the number of people there is quite low.

On Reality and the Understanding of Absolutely Everything

Stranger things have happened...

I don't seem able to stop thinking about meaning. In fact, it seems I just cannot stop thinking about the 'hows' and the 'whys' of this world. The questions keep dancing in my head, and if they ever grow subdued, it is only to come back to haunt me even more.

Because I crave understanding of all things, my imaginative side came up with all sorts of theories and stories which I haven't yet been able (or had the discipline...) to put into words.

I just cannot not think about why things are as they are, and how or what made them be as they are, and why we are 'we' or 'I'... The notion of reality and what truly constitutes that notion has taunted me from the moment I was born, I think. I was first fascinated, and as with all things that are new to me, I remain fascinated for as long as it takes for my mind to know a subject well.

The trouble with human affairs is that they are forever tainted by subjectivity, and so it is that to try and understand them one has to be able to differentiate between the micro and macro level. That's right, I'm now using economic terms. Why? Because they save me endless words and winding sentences.

The micro level is the individual one - the detail. If one is to observe the micro level, they would come to realise that this whole world is made up of smaller and smaller worlds that get smaller and smaller to eventually zero in on specific base detail. It leads nowhere, unless one likes to collect tiny detail. Of course, taking into account the laws of reality, a powerful equation could actually determine an idea of the number of detail that exist at a micro level - probably in the region of the millions. Why? Because the micro detail (say, in human beings alone) is made of all the possible genetic combinations that can be produced, along with all the possible environmental factors that can interact with the predispositions or innate traits, leading us to the fact that only an equation could get us close to an estimate (proving at the same time that reality is limited and that only a finite number of things can exist or happen and none other beyond that number). And in the end, an equation would finally prove that there is only so much that can exist on this very Earth, and that there is only so much that can happen, too. That there is a limit, and that reality is limited, and that in fact one could derive the conclusion that it is quite possible to predict reality/the future in terms of pure mathematics.

I don't care if it makes no sense... these thoughts never leave me.

The macro level comes in handy, I have to say. It is the equivalent of taking a bird's eye view of all the detail that exists (even if we cannot possibly know the number of detail that exists outside an equation at best). It is, quite simply, what sociology and other human sciences are all about. They take into account trends and generalised phenomena, turn them into statistics and the likes and... Ta-Da! We are suddenly able to draw a rough map of the way things/people function.

The macro level also comes in handy because it allows for the mind to detach itself from a plethora of conflicting micro detail that would otherwise make it impossible to ever come close to a conclusion or clear idea on anything at all. It therefore allows the mind to take a bird's eye view of the bigger picture, hopefully allowing for a better perspective away from limited perception - the latter being the plague of micro detail.

tbc...

On Society and the Illusion of Meaning

We, humans, never run out of meanings. We are champions at making up meanings and purposes.

There is no meaning to anything unless we ourselves attach it to something, and that’s exactly why we spend our lives drifting according to nature, only we make our surroundings more interesting to pass the time till the grave. We get born without having a say on the matter, people just spawn us one after the other like Kinder surprise eggs. That is because we are mammals. There is nothing great or special, or remotely meaningful attached to it: it’s the only way to ensure survival of a species. Monkeys do it, rabbits do it, ants and even cockroaches do it. We, however, feel the need to attach greater meaning to it all. That meaning then varies from one individual to the next.

Then there is the fact that the word ’nature’ is very misleading. Indeed, the way that term evolved it tends to hint at a personified idea of it, when really nature is just the biologically random chain of events that leads from A to B - from the first tiny microbe that managed to survive in a more life-friendly environment (A) to the way species are now (B). There is no such thing as ’life’ or ’nature’… These words are just abstract notions that encourage the belief in supernatural ideas.

Meaning is an illusion, and that is why materialism was always the easiest vice to get a hold of us. We get hooked on materiality so easily that, if anything, it is a blatant sign that the lack of any meaning whatsoever makes most of us hang onto the first concrete or shiny thing there is.

I guess we had to gather at some point and start living in societies, because that is after all the best setting for mass delusion. By living all together, we can pretend that there is more to life than what reality dictates, and we can each make up our own little purposes. By living in society, we all suddenly get to play a role, and by getting a part in the play of Life, we suddenly feel more important - we feel as though what we do matters in some way. We can more readily focus on our own little meanings on things, and society provides us with the framework within which to play out our role.

In that sense, society seems nothing more than a bubble we almost naturally came to conceive in order to create a strong enough illusion of sense and purpose for the majority living within it.

Entertainment and social activities were like a basis of that process, because they allow us to sink deeper in the enjoyment of moments without having to face the bigger picture showing us that it’s all an illusion in the end. Nothing holds any meaning intrinsically.

Society is like a 24/7 theatre play, really. Everyone gets to play a part - from the homeless guy begging outside the train station to the rich snob sitting on his toilet carved out of gold. Within the play are various settings that developed over time. After all, the more the play repeats itself, the more elaborate it is supposed to become, right? (Yes, it all repeats itself over and over again, with only a change of landscapes from time to time).

Some settings available to human actors in the big play of Life include such things as the option to climb the social ladder, which was provided the moment we all gathered to form a society, discover whatever can be discovered, focus on amassing as many things as one can, pretend that we are even more special by hating death and trying to save the ‘poor and vulnerable’… etc, etc.

Another great feature of the play is that as we are many, we suddenly have the opportunity to feel more important or even special or unique. We can strive for recognition, which is always one that seems to give people that shot of further delusions into thinking they are really more special than others. We can strive for success, which will spawn recognition anyway. Or we can just strive for money, luxuries, which will lead to easy ways, comfort and a better footing to enjoy existence as it unfolds regardless of anything.

With comfort and easy ways, we may however experience a tricky period of sudden depression brought about by too much free time pondering on meaning. But fear not, the play would not be complete without yet another setting to save the fools lacking fake meaning because they already have it too easy in life. With riches and success already under the belt, one can get immersed in the hobby of philanthropy, or new age abracadabra, or simply travel the world and go “Wow” every five minutes. By the time such options are exhausted, it’s usually time to die anyway.

Haven’t I just summed up life as a whole?… There is no meaning, there is no purpose, except the ones we fancy making up along the way. Shame we could never all agree on a higher one that would actually have made living as a human being worthwhile. Instead, it’s just a circus.

Interlude

In the morning of light

Never a word, but a whisper,

And I wait, for a fight,

For the right one in, the fair,

No fool, the mindless whim

Of liars and cheats, of doom,

For peace we dreamed so soon

Destroyed for the rise of grim

Nightmares, and darkness shimmers

In the false light of hope

In the eyes of the damned,

And the righteous dreamers.

All for one, none for all,

The painful howling of gloom.

On the power of images

So the whole of the middle east region is caught in the grip of ‘revolutions’… talks of rebels trying to bring down their current governments or dictators are all over the news, but it has become most impossible to discern true facts from propaganda. There was that long video being shown on Sky News last night showing rebels in Libya running in the street screaming when suddenly firearms are heard shooting in their direction, forcing them to retreat back running. They have the time to gesticulate in front of the camera and show the few people who fell from shot wounds in the distance… then an ambulance arrives at once on the scene to pick up the wounded and the journalists hop in to follow them on the journey back to the hospital.

And then they showed us inside the hospital and a few people being treated for gunshots. At some point the camera zooms in on a little boy screaming and kicking as he is being held down against the stretcher by nurses… He had a large gash on his head, and I just thought: “Why are you showing us things that may well have nothing to do with the struggle?”

I mean, ok, showing wounded kids will always sway public opinion into thinking the conflict is a horrific one… but for all we know, that kid was in hospital because he fell from a tree and hurt his head. So of course that leads us to the big conundrum of video footage and just how much can be trusted when really one needs to bear in mind that whatever is shown in images is invariably selected by the person recording the images. Watching a video, or a clip, only means that we are shown a limited perspective, and certainly not the whole picture… and that, on a psychological point of view alone, means that such recordings have a very big influencing impact as to what a viewer will end up thinking about a situation.

It was also interesting to notice that while journalists will show us at length ‘rebels’ screaming and chanting in the streets, they hardly ever bother to translate word for word what is being said by the crowds. No, instead, in yesterday’s report, they just handed one man, who clearly didn't speak one word of English, a placard with the English words spelling something like: Gaddafi must go down. That certainly makes for compelling viewing, and I guess in terms of images, those were striking ones that viewers would remember… but again, what a viewer ends up remembering is based on one limited perspective, and while that can’t be avoided, it makes it so much easier to use mediums such as video recording with the intent of controlling exactly what you’ll end up believing in a matter - from your understanding of it down to the very opinions you will adopt in your mind.

What we end up watching, and whether we choose to believe it or not, depends solely on whether we think we can trust the source, or even just the person who made the image selection.

One other thing made me ponder further what is actually happening in that region (and I’m nowhere close to knowing, therefore my thoughts on this subject are just that, thoughts and questioning) and reminded me of just how much media outlets are intrinsically biased to re-enforce the idea they have of our ‘democratic’ system as the best one in the world by selecting and showing only what conforms to such an idea.

What I mean is this: if journalism, especially the reporting type, is by definition supposed to bring to the public’s attention what is happening in the world without prejudice (allowing for facts to speak for themselves and inform us) then surely it would be able to show us both sides of a story to give us a clearer perspective and the actual possibility for our minds to decide on the issue. Showing ‘both sides’ of a story is actually what they teach students over and over again, it’s even one of the BBC’s pledges, after all. If you go on their website and look at their journalism guidelines, you’ll see what I mean.

Now, it was interesting to see some of the reports dealing with what Gaddafi had to say, or rather his reported speech. In itself, it was good for us to get a glimpse of what the man had to say, just to give a more balanced view of the whole affair. However, at a closer look, one would notice how the journalist him/herself would make use of negative adjectives to surround the quotes. The effect? While they allow you to see what the man has to say, they can at the same time ensure that you will be left with a very negative view of him regardless of what he has to say.

For instance, he was quoted ‘rambling’ on and on about how the enemy was from outside. First of all, an unbiased report would not have used the word ‘rambling’ - because all it does is infer that the man must be insane and not worth listening to. He wasn’t just quoted as a rambling man, but also as someone who makes crazy, unintelligible statements. One only needs to have a look back in time - at a time when the dictator wasn’t regarded by most western governments as a threat, but more as a potential ally - to see that far from being some stupid lunatic, the man had an education and philosophies attached to his politics. Beyond the fact that he may or may not be a monstrous dictator, what I’m highlighting here is how media influence works. The scariest part of all is the great possibility that we are actually being told what is happening, but in a way that is filtered and controlled to make us see or understand a situation as if we were wearing blinkers - the blinkers of the power above us intent on making us think and agree with them especially where ideologies are concerned.