Nature vs. Fate

05/05/09

They say you should enjoy life, take every moment as it comes along, because we are alive today, and we should be thankful for that miraculous gift.

And I see the trees, the flowers, the sky and its glaring golden eye piercing layers of whiteness, and I feel quite very small and insignificant. I see Time passing, I see the billions rushing here and there, by chance or following a well-rehearsed path. I see nature, and I hear my own reason. There is a clash, and yet I’m always nature’s bitch.

Is there really something I’m supposed to learn from a sense of alienation as I like to think? Or have I put myself in that situation, somehow?
It comes down to whether I believe in Fate, destiny, or complete free will and randomness. The latter would presume that every step we choose to make lead us further down a particular path, and as steps are taken, the path takes a shape as influenced by the sum of all our actions and decisions. It puts the blame of the outcome on the individual, so that failure becomes the individual’s own responsibility. Nothing outside the person can be blamed for the mistakes but the person because the latter shaped his own life through actions and decisions of his own accord.

Thus life in itself can only be random, and we are free only in so far as we are ‘lucky’ enough to be born in places that allow us to grow as people. It places our species in line with all other species on the planet, and nature governs all, while our capacity to reason as humans is merely a reflection of a possibility. It would imply that such a capacity that seems to set us apart from all other species is in fact completely dependent on chance opportunity. Somewhere on Earth people were born in natural conditions that allowed them to develop a reasoning capacity which they then chose to nurture and pass on to the next generations. Reason is like a glitch of nature, but its very nature makes it quite possible that man was then able to nurture that capacity when all other minor glitches usually disappear down the line.

If I believe in Fate, however, I must presume that a bigger force is at work, somehow. More importantly, if I choose to believe in Fate, then I remove the weight of blame from my shoulder and I become Fate’s toy. Whatever happens isn’t really my doing, but that of something which I cannot fight, for it is already set in stone, somewhere. It takes away any impact my decisions or actions may have because I am merely following what is already planned for my person. Thus, if I am to fail or fall, I am free to blame any other entity out there but me.

It’s such a straightforward notion, isn’t it? I am not discovering anything new in the slightest here.

Then why does it seem so difficult for me to decide once and for all as to which theory I must believe in? Reason grants more power to the natural random theory, mainly because the natural world as it presents itself allows the gathering of more evidence, while the Fate theory is based more or less on notions of faith on the supernatural.

While my reason leans toward what makes more sense so far, my person is torn, and that feeling is far-removed from logic. It is fear. Basic fear.
Accepting fully that I am part of a world based on natural randomness takes away any possibility for me to cling on to the delusion of uniqueness or importance of the person in the world. Or rather, the importance of the Person vs. Humanity.

A free fall into the Fate theory, as lacking in logical evidence as it stands, allows me to cling onto the notion of uniqueness to an extent. I become passive in my own existence, and that might well be the reason why it appeals to my person, because I am naturally of a passive nature.

If human nature follows the course that nature intended for all living creatures despite the glitch of ‘reason’, then is our innate selfishness and all vices or flaws but a mere reflection of a species?
Our reason chose to attach to our flaws or vices a negative connotation for only two main reasons that spring to mind: society and religion.

Yet nature discriminates only against the weak. It is the weak that are left behind; the weak are killed or eaten; the weak often miss out on the opportunity to procreate. If one is too weak to survive then it will most likely die or perish. If a lion is strong enough to break necks then it is given a better chance of survival.

tbc

Random thoughts on yet another midnight day

I woke early today. I used to be able to wake up before dawn, but now I have to drag myself out of bed, and not even the occasional ray of sunshine seems to help.

So... I opened my eyes and was plagued with random thoughts and memories. I walked to the bathroom to find a fox sitting in the garden. I thought that was odd, but then nothing really surprises me anymore. I made myself some coffee, the first of many to come, and I lit up a cigarette. I sat in front of the computer to indulge in more pointless thinking that will only lead me to a self-induced headache.

I wondered about this wasted year I've just spent on my own, and I wondered what it would be like going back to university in September, because let's face it, I'm going back. I mean, one year left. Wouldn't that be a waste not to finish what was started? I guess I still fail to see what I could do apart from finishing my studies. Then at least I'll get a shiny piece of paper to hang on the wall of my toilet at the end of it. I'll be able to boast about having a degree, even though technically I already have one under my belt, except I don't remember anything I was meant to learn there. Call it a mistake of youth, I only got an idea of what I wanted to do when I was about 23, and now I just turned 26. I choose to call the period before my 25th birthday a coma.

I thought that maybe if I sat for a very long time thinking I would get to understand the meaning of quite a few things in this messed up life. But then, I'm no Buddha, am I?

A part of me urged me to go out and actually see people, anyone. I thought, hell yeah, why not? If I'm going to see people then I might as well ensure that I'll be able to drink so that the pointless chatting and empty words can drown in my torpor.

I should get out of my own head more often, maybe. Pretend that everything is great and interesting when everything means pretty much nothing. I should make more of an effort to find a job, or work experience. I should make a list of all the things I ought to be doing and then burn it. Now, that is a joyful thought to me.

Ought, should, must, have to... Expectations. I fail to see the point in any of this, apart from the fact that it answers others' wishes but mine.

Does that make me selfish, silly, immature, maybe? Well, does it?

Or am I plain depressed? Well, am I?

And if I am, does it matter?

My mind is a black hole filled with junk rotting in the sun, yet you would never guess walking past me in the street, because, hey, apparently I give off the impression of sheer confidence brimming with joy.

That reminds me of the time, a couple of years ago when I was actually depressed and on those wondrous little happy-chirping pills. I was on the bus with a guy from work and we were laughing at something stupid. Then our conversation somehow brushed the topic of depression. The guy said he had been depressed in the past, and I nodded heartily, saying "Oh yeah, that kinda happened to me, too."

He stared at me for a moment as though I had just spoken in another language.
"You? Never. You're too happy all the time to be depressed," He said.

Strangely enough, I felt a little offended by his reply. You see, it is a recurring pattern in my life: People always dismiss whatever I have to say because somehow I must be so happy, so confident, so arrogant and clever.

Well, I don't believe in the empty shell of words like happiness, my mind feels as blank as a newborn's slate, and the world scares me shitless.

I'm forever the odd one out because somehow I manage to get where I wasn't supposed to get.
But maybe it's starting to grow on me. Maybe, just maybe, I'm beginning to see the irony of my life as a whole and at least that makes me laugh.

Then again I have a lousy sense of humor. I like dark and sarcastic because it reflects reality more faithfully than any other sugar-coated form of humor.

I don't care what happens next. This life is a joke.

Through the tiny window

Since the door to the back garden has become a no-go area, I’ve had to find another way to get into that bloody garden. The mini swamp right outside the door means that a swarm of wasps is forever buzzing around.

Not to be deterred, I squeezed through the small bathroom window and managed to get into the garden. I went to the far end to have a closer look at that single bright red poppy that blossomed out of nowhere a few days ago. The grass is so overgrown now that I can’t see my shoes as i walk across the neglected lawn. Green stems keep growing upward in thick clumps, flies, bees and wasps buzz around, and the small pond is covered in dead leaves and mud.

As soon as I reached the far end I felt like Kara - the heroin of my little story- for a split second, except I can’t stand bugs and keep chasing them away like a mad woman. The wilderness of that neglected bout of garden is like a condensed glimpse of nature left to its own device.

Suddenly, I felt insignificant and small, but in harmony with the fact that everything that is alive around me is in fact in the same boat as me. We all share at least one common destiny, from the tiniest blade of grass to the fox that wanders across the garden at times, to the human being using his brain to make sense of everything at once. We all live to die in a never-ending cycle of life and death that gives the world as a whole its beauty. We’re all speckles, and when looked at in detail, each speckle pales in significance.

But take a step back and look at a gathering of such speckles, and beauty emerges strong and powerful. In some ways, it seems that perfection doesn’t lie in the detail, but in the whole.

Random thoughts on another midnight day

More and more, I feel not just like a drifter, but a ghost made of flesh and blood, wandering the Earth at random, never knowing where the next step will take me. I wonder what having friends ought to feel like, and then I wonder what the word itself means in reality. What is friendship but the safe illusion granted to lessen the weight of solitude, which in itself exists in every single one of us from the moment we are born?

We are, after all, always alone in our own heads. Only I experiences what is happening to the person, and though one might share it with others, it remains I’s experience and no one else’s.
We’re so alike in reality in so many ways and shapes, but the I within is always one and stands alone. People around us can make us forget for a time that there is that solitude of the person, for ever and ever, until perhaps the day we die and nothing matters anymore.

In the end

I stepped outside this cave of a place I live in and squinted under the glare of the sun.

The glare of the sun. That is such a pretty, yet common way to allude to the sun’s overwhelming light... I like it very much.

So, I went out, and my steps led me nowhere, for they had nowhere to lead me to in the first place: no pretty spot, or small park in which to wander about around here. Only streets, cars, blank faces, endless rows of identical houses. I’d have to take the overground to get anywhere remotely soothing and Holland Park is now closer than any other park by train.

I was born almost thinking that I was God - my own God- or so close to that notion. Maybe the lesson I must learn now is as basic as the notion of humility.

Learning to be simply human.

I don’t want to turn away from the world, but I don’t want to force it either way. I want to be able to keep an open mind, keep a remnant of hope that things can always change, and not always for the worst. And even if they do change for the worst, there is always hope that they will change for the better again. Maybe not tomorrow, the next week or year, but the hope is always there, lingering in the depths of my inner heart.

I feel that sense of sorrow, that hazy pang of wistful appreciation of what once was which has now passed, never to be again.

The image of a trapped animal in a golden cage haunts me because it represents exactly the way I feel most of the time. The more I fight against the irons bars, the smaller the cage seems to get, hindering my every move until I can no longer do as much as breathe.

They say ‘go out more, meet more people’ and I ask them ‘where to and what people?’

They shake their heads and dismiss my questions as a sign of depression. They fail to see that I am no longer able to pretend that what I see before my eyes isn’t really what I see. My depression is not a case of a chemical imbalance in the brain, it is the product of that ability I have to see beyond the layers of illusions.

I need to remind myself that patience is the key, here. After all, waiting seems to have become a major factor in my daily existence.

Waiting. Waiting to live, waiting to die. Waiting to understand, waiting to grow.

"But my depression is my inability so far to process too deep a sense or feel of others’ pain and what I can see is going wrong around me. Unless I can find a way or ways to reconcile every discovery I make for myself with the ability to cope or shoulder the weight of such discoveries, I will not make it very far and will end up consumed by helplessness."

I wrote this in the very post I ever posted on this blog.
I cannot believe that I actually fell right into what I feared the most. It feels as though I knew from the start that I would be left reeling.