March 18, 2007

• Life and a Day

  What is life but a day on repeat?  Simply pick a day in history, any day, and you will realize the rara avis nature of what today is as well.  November 26th, 1689.  On that day there were a set number of humans that woke up and lived their days each a certain way.  They went certain places, breathed certain air and said certain words.  This is true of any day in history, or today, or tomorrow.  The fact is, when you wake up in the morning and stretch and yawn as the sun appears, you are about to embark upon a great tradition of these two coinciding elements: life and a day.  What you say and what you do are now found to not be so trivial, but rather your part as you in the great story of mankind.  Each day is a day in which conflict arises, ideas are created, people are born, people die, and everything inbetween occurs.  In a sense, with humans around the world all at different stages of life and experiencing the many different elements of the human condition, in summation, a lifetime is lived by humanity everyday.  Every significant decision in the life of an individual is collectively made by humanity as the decisions are made in many different places by different individuals.  In a day all things are contained.  And no matter how small or limited a part you play, of all the things done and words said, you were a part of humanity today. 

  As the blurry picture of the physical world comes into focus in the first few moments of sleep escaping us, we realize our eyes opening to enter into reality is an extraordinary tradition that we get to take part in.  Humans everywhere are doing this today, and have done so throughout all of history.  This curious structure is experienced by us all.  Every important date I have read about in human history was preceded by this strange phenomenon of the humans in that day coming back from the state of sleep to reality.  The default state of sleep is a neutral ground where all humans prepare their physical bodies for the weird paradigm of life we have all been thrust into.  And now I get to do it.  I get to wake up and live today.  How marvelous!

  As evening escapes and the day winds down, the magnitude of the great adventure that life is settles in.  Perhaps the day did not seem all that important or interesting, but in a lifetime be sure that you will know the dull and uneventful along with the extremes of this life, the days of dramatic windfalls of beauty and tragedy.  Sometimes into the night I will go, after the show is over, to think about the madness of it all.  Humanity really is making a ruckus here on planet earth; I hope the other planets don’t mind. 

  Yesterday is now locked away in the annals of time, the done and the unchangeable.  But today is a new day, one to take by force with all the power we have in our capabilities: to create, to love, to imagine, to dare.  Life never becomes old: every day is unique in itself.  God may have made life hard, painful, and agonizing, but we cannot complain that he made it boring.  Every moment is unique, and we live our lives along a chain of infinitely possible moments, until one day we die.  We’ll never experience all the possible moments and we’ll never experience the same moment twice.  May I never be tempted to wake up and vaguely feel that today is just like yesterday, for that would be deception: this day has never happened.  It waits to be lived just once, and dare I say I want to live the best one on the planet?  What thoughts, what faces, what conversations await me?  These are the things life is made of.  How could I be discontented by such a wonderful thing as life?  What happens in life may be stressful, but the thing life itself is the most creative and fantastic thing there is.  Down to its fundamental essence, I really am amazed at the whole format of a human’s life.  I’ll wave my hand around in the air, fascinated that I can do this at will.  I’ll subtly say hello to a family member, and they will respond, “Well, hello Philip!” and I will think how neat it is that I can get this other thing called a human to talk to me.  Gazing into a mirror I stand in awe, “So that’s me? … Interesting.” 

  People engage in interpretations of the human experience prevalently: books, movies, stories, music, etc.  However, is not the truest drama of the human experience seen through our own two eyes, from moment to moment?  What is the point of being vicarious?  We are the creatures of this frisson of drama, all owning a life of highs and lows.  Why look for it someplace else when we know life first-hand, through our own world?   Every attempt to interpret the human experience is a by-product of life in its initial state.  This is it.  This odd, continuous reality of your thoughts and your surroundings called life.  Ah, I love it!

  • 1:08 pm
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