Thursday, November 03, 2005

No More Questions

I’m at one of those stages where I’m too tired to ask questions. Not to be alarmed, this is not a permanent transition. Is anything truly ever? But hold up, that’s a question and right now, I’m not interested in those. There is an indefinable space between questions and answers that deserves veneration. A temporal space of indiscriminate creation that carries the weight of difficult demands and allows in the multi-dimensional influx of possibilities, truths and inventions. It’s an extremely difficult place. Pride fights with many suggestions, emotions struggle with others and though I may appear to be cool-calm on the outside, my inside is war-torn, ravaged and bleeding.

I’m realising, or rather admitting, that my entire existence is laden with lies. What I know of my place in the world is built on artificialities and selective amnesia. It’s not an easy thing to deal with in your mid-twenties. Supposedly a time of consolidation yet now realising that the entire formative process was misdirected! But perhaps it is easier than were I 65.

I have to negotiate my position and create new meaning for it. My meaning. I must reinvestigate everything I have presumed and everything I have been taught and told. I must take over my education and determine its curriculum for myself. After all, when you really look at it – pierce through and break it down – I am the keeper and carrier of my sanity. Just me, alone and only.

I have often gazed at madness with a somewhat admiring eye. It is an excuse in itself. A reason not to have to conform to the (spiritually?) oppressive elements of the everyday. But at the end of the day, could it just be another way to escape accountability? Wait, that’s a question again. I always try and listen to “bums” “crazy” people, lunatics, and observe them well and they often have extremely profound things to say and essentially simple truths to relay. And I ask myself why such wise people have been relegated to this (anti-) social position. I reply to myself that it is clearly because they have realised the high moral (?) cost of “normalness” and would rather be…free. For true, to see this world of ours, to really see it for all its hypocrisy, cruelty, injustice, delusion, depravity (and feel free to go on), is to be insane. I think that a lot of us know this and so choose to escape it through selective/voluntary ignorance. It’s much easier that way, much more conducive to a certain (widely-held) definition of “living”. But I keep coming back to the point where I demand of myself if that truly is living. I battle whether that is a kind of living that I can find peace with. That I can deal with, wake up every morning without even stirrings of guilt, shame and self-repudiation.

And “all the questions I can ask only I can answer” but, that’s the most challenging kind of work that this life affords. Indeed this must be the meaning/purpose of life…to figure out how to keep on living. Not in terms of basic survival (food, water, shelter) but in more ideological terms perhaps. Religion, ritual etc., we created these to give some meaning to things but, the purest of intentions are so easily corrupted. And so volatile to discuss. …To figure out a reason to keep on doing, to keep on being, to keep on smiling, to keep on hoping.

I retire to my suspended state, to let things wander in and out freely so that I may observe which ones can go the distance and make this committment. It's about that time for a real good dose of selfishness!

3 comments:

Digz guy said...

What you propose is a life-long project, which, a life-time later will only have just begun!
So make some decisions, live life, and learn as you go!
It ain't no one month project

poeticsense said...

this is a profound post... and is something that often crosses everyones' minds at some point or the other (definitely mine), but its allowed to slip by till the next superficial, temporarily exciting thing whisks us off. People have different things that inspire them at different points in their lives. For some, I guess it's their relationships, others their family or jobs. But surely, one thing cannot keep our focus forever. I don't think so anyway.

Since you started this, do you mind if I ask, "what is your reason for living?"

Kishawi said...

@ Poetic Sense
That's a difficult question but perhaps part of my answer lies in my turn-of-the-year-assessment
And I like to think (at least right now) that, it is good that no one thing can keep our focus forever for, we may then begin to lose our appreciation and reverence for it. We may become complacent with it. Not to say that all significant things should lose their importance. Perhaps it is variety and openness to new things and experiences that puts all in perspective and reminds you what is what... or challenges you to reevaluate when necessary!