In the past I have expressed the fear that I am the only one with a soul. This is because I have found some experiences to be so real that I consider them nearly self-evident, and yet I fear that no one will corroborate these experiences or truths along with me. Not only do I fear that they will not corroborate them, but that they will not even understand what I am talking about. What I am vaguely alluding to is, generally, the ridiculous nature of being a human being that exists and that our lives mean things. Not only do they mean things, but I would posit that they have more value and worth than we have time to comprehend. On top of all these things are more and more specifics, like how we ought to live, but before all that I fear that people don't want life to be serious. Indeed, I myself on the surface of my desire want life to be this one day trip to amusement park where I try not to trip and scrape my knee on the gravel inbetween walking to different rides and attractions. I want it to be great, but unmeaningful. Unfortunately after having reviewed reality from my perspective I find it impossible to arrive at these conclusions. Life is very important, and very meaningful, and demands serious attention and a lot of hard work. It includes stinging, unwanted truths that must be addressed. Meanwhile, while all these convictions and ideas formulate within me, I see the traces of the same reality apparent in no one else. Instead of seeing the general mass of people stringently attentive to and worried about life's big and ultimate realities, I see something called "the social world." This world is, by definition, unmeaningful. It is a world of toady conversations and words spoken with no honest intent behind them. Everyday I enter this place called the social world and interact in it constantly. I greet people and ask them how they are and catch brief glimpses of faces and hear partial realities of other people's lives. In the social world everyone adopts a social "self" to be a person that appropriately fits into the scene and mode of interaction that is understood to be unaninmously and unspokenly accepted among all persons in the social world. Because of this pervasive notion of an accepted decorum, people follow all the same rules. In conversation people will respond to one another how they think is "appropriate" rather than honest. As a result, the realness of people, the reality of the world, and the meaningfulness of interaction vanishes quickly into thin air. It is this world that scares me. I am not saying it is terribly wrong, but its irrelevance must be understood by everyone for it to cease to be a danger. However, as it is, I believe many people only exist in this world, and again, that is what scares me. What if people don't think there are things that are real? What if people think this "social world" is all there is? That there is no reality beyond all that? That no serious meaning exists? Oh, how terrible those thoughts! This great life, with all of these swirling emotions and realities inside me, this beautiful planet, has been demoted in importance by humans to this banal feature called "the social world." I know that when I leave those places of crowds of humans and return to my house, to my thoughts, to a true friend, that there are things that are real again. Consistently I then remember that the thoughts lurking low in my mind during my time in the social world represent an actual reality, that they are who I really am when my mind does not become crowded with the demanding thoughts of the social world. Do other people have the same reality? There are times when randomly someone will open up to me that I realize that other people know it too, that there really is honesty in this world that represents the way things truly are. Somehow, I know when someone is saying something to me honestly. Even if I do not know the person, when someone is being honest it is apparent through what they are saying and in how they are saying it, and you realize there was more to the person than you ever thought. That is how I think it is with everyone. Everyone has a true existence of who they truly are that they do not readily expose in the social world that represents them completely and honestly. It is through whispering thoughts during the day, and those loud thoughts at night. It is what people really think, with all reservations aside. In the social world people reserve and hesitate with thoughts. There are blocking ideas that make it inappropriate to say some things to just anyone, so that we need someone we can be real with. And everyone has this realness to them, although sometimes when a person has been in the social world so long that they do not know it, it takes much digging and prodding to actually find the realness. Allow me to now reiterate that I am so afraid that people have become so far removed from this realness of life, what they really think of it when face to face with how things are and their own honesty, that people don't even know what it is. And this is all I think about! What is real? What is true? What am I, this thing called Philip, and what does it mean? If there was a spectrum of realness, then being all alone and thinking to yourself is complete honesty, and the social world is on the opposite end of the spectrum, representing how you are when affected by the presence of other people. To me, a vast amount of people spend their entire life on the surface of the world, in the "social world," or in "the system." Eventually, when people are in this mode of interaction where they consistently reserve thoughts because they are around other people, they eventually learn to do it indefinetely. They think that those quiet thoughts that are embarrassing are obviously lying to them, and for their entire lives they ignore them. They will grow up without any meaningful conversation, even though talking to people abundantly, get their education, a job, a family, and then die, thinking that was it. This is what I take by the quote, "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." The supression of his true self as represented by his thoughts kills the man. Hopefully there are moments, conversations, experiences in people's lives where they realize things are real. Through a conversation with someone or music or something they understand the shadows of the things that are to come and act on their findings to dig and dig, not relenting until they find the truth. That is what I intend my life to be: the desperate and intent pursuit of what is real. Truth lingers in the air around the corner, on the man's face in the street, in the beauty of the sunset. Truth wanders the streets, as a casually dressed stranger. He is obvious and not obvious all at once. Once a person realizes the existence of something being real, it becomes everywhere and nowhere. Everything is a clue, but nothing is the truth in itself. Life becomes one massive project to investigate the nature of the thing itself. It is odd that of all the inclusive and intricate components that are in my life, the most startling and amazing fact remains that I am alive at all. Everything I now see is after-the-fact.
Where is a thought? Though thought can be categorized as certain neurological activity, from my perspective as the actual human agent I experience a more vague thing called a "thought." This thing called a thought I can only say is a conceptual strand of what can only be classified as a something-in-itself; that is, thoughts are only thoughts because I think them and I know they are there and I call them thoughts. But they can be found nowhere, from what they are from my perspective as I call them "thoughts," in objective physical reality. There can be no physical analysis of thoughts by empirically sorting through a chemical or physical thing, but rather only thought can compare thought. It is a reality completely divorced from physical reality. Therefore I find consciousness to work as a seemingly nonphysical reality, although I know there is chemical stimuli behind it. The nature of thoughts is for them to seem nonphysical. Thus, when I conclude in my nonphysical conceptual things called thoughts that there is a nonphysical reality called God, I have good reason to do so. Naturally, I cannot conclude that these thoughts are only naturally occurring within a closed natural system if they can in fact extend beyond said natural system, since they are seemingly nonphysical. If I could analyse my thoughts and say see that their reality can be naturally exposed, then I would doubt considerably the meaning behind any seemingly nonphysical nature of my thoughts. But as it is, the seemingly nonphysical nature of my thoughts leads me to conclude that there is a good possibility of a nonphysical reality called God. And, accordingly, my ability to function and think in this seemingly nonphysical reality allows me to be in constant assessment of the idea encompassed by the word we pronounce and conceive of as "God." If I find (which I can) that I can likewise comprehend and consider physical as well as nonphysical reality, but there is no nonphysical reality, then I find myself to be with excessive, superfluous functions. Rather, it is my instinct to agree that there is nonphysical reality and to attempt to explore it in the medium I have to do so, that is, thoughts. In conclusion, I believe that a conception of nonphysical thoughts allows me to logically conclude that, because of them and what might the purpose of their function, there is a nonphysical reality. And also, on top of that, it might be called God.
I do not like the system. It terrifies me that mechanical, unloving nature of the system. What happens is we start in this lovely reality called "childhood" and then when as we grow older reality becomes colder and harsher as the world reveals its true colors. Growing older is as if marching from a summery meadow into a wintered forest. Once, people were prevalently pleasant, and much of the time naively honest. As time progresses and people learn to use their ability to strategize and analyze, the world become complicated. People advance psychologically to the point where they are only concerned with their own immediate reality and being able to create a stable equilibrium within it. Don't go to close to people, you might disturb their equilibrium. Soon, people become off-limits, and you can't talk to that person anymore. Sadly, much of reality becomes hands-off, as people gain their identities and fences arise that limit the freedom of human interaction to contain you in your own little world. Eventually, many people will settle down in this world called "the suburbs." My friend David once noted to me that a dense, small town of 5,000 is where everybody know everybody else, and a populous, compact neighborhood where the houses are crammed together and nobody knows anybody else. The suburbs to me is a nightmare. It takes life and its travails and it makes a spectacle of them by flaunting pleasure and convenience in their face. Suburban homes are like little personal empires of convenience where there is freedom for anything. People set themselves up in these empires and live their quiet, happy, safe, contained lives inside of them. This is not my conception of a worthy life at all. As I once wrote in my journal a long time ago, where is courage in the undaring life? Where is character in the unchallenged life? Where is bravery in the untroubled life?
Life will never become old or stale to me because I experience recycled feelings or concepts. The nature of time passing itself nullifies this. Life is only lived once and is only new. When person arrives on earth at point A and dies at point B, I believe every moment proceeding in-between was a remarkable and interesting one. Life is continuous. It is now and now and now and now. Moments are perpetually and infinitely refreshed.
Life is always new. Every moment is new and unique.
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