just needs
he sleepwalks as time brusquely pushes past him. the years pass slowly, mocking him because he cannot keep up. he is numb, and yet he stiffly imitates the outward manifestations of thought and feeling. desperately, he fakes a smile, cracks a frown, speaks empty words, yet even he knows that such things are hollow.
mortified by the idea of making a choice, he settles for nearly nothing instead. unable to see beyond the illusion of momentary security, he is still vaguely aware that he wants something more; the dull ache is practically visible in his posture. he also knows that to reach for that something is to abandon the old shell of himself, the comfortable daily routines and opinionated ignorance of being 'well-informed' yet helpless to change his world and himself.
:: the demon-filled darkness
he fears pain, looking instead for the simple answer where there is none. i just need a better job, he says. i just need to have more time, more fun. he can't bear to let go of the harmful relationships, the people who reflect values that he wishes to move beyond; they accept him because they too are immobilized by fear. each clings to the other, renewing their infectious insecurities with every idle conversation, and in their attempt to live longer, they prepare themselves only to die a little bit every day.
:: children are the reason?
he pretends that children are a reason to live. as i look on at his struggle and compare it with my own, i wonder: every species of animal has children. what is it that makes a human being different from an ape or a dog? the human mind has the capacity to move beyond sociobiology, beyond the genetically predetermined urge to procreate. i can, at least conceptually, choose my life's purpose if i am aware that there are choices and that it is possible to reach for them. circumstances may not allow for the fulfillment of certain goals, but as a human being, dream can become reality, even if only within my own mind's private imagination. a dog or an ape will never write a computer program, compose elegant poetry or even fabricate such amusing diversions as 'heaven' or 'hell' and their attendant mythologies. i would rather live a life of delusion that one without dreams. further still, i would rather live a short, harsh life of striving than a long one of slavish contentedness.
:: the pious croak
all creatures eat, sleep, shit and fuck. as a human being, for me that is not enough. an animal that can think, feel and create but chooses to wallow in its own glorified bodily functions seems little more than a monster. but i see that so many people are afraid, paralyzed by fear, that they cannot even take a step beyond the illusion of security and compulsive adherence to our genetic programming as reproductive machines. it is the easy way out to look at the world with a teary eye and say 'children are our future' with a pious croak in my voice... and of course the children of this era, having been indoctrinated by this same mantra, look forward to future generations and repeat the same useless existence of our parents. they became their parents because in the end, to become parents was all that they strove for, all they had left when their dreams died. with nothing else binding them to this physical world, they blindly imitated those who came before.
:: cruel and unusual?
i suppose that to most people, the idea of living life now by removing the compulsion toward child-rearing and security may seem cold or strange. more unthinkable to me is the knowledge that most people seem perfectly content to live pre-arranged lives, not thinking twice about the fact that every animal on planet earth performs those same basic life functions. i wonder how many people would actually consider living their lives as more important than pretending that they can survive indefinitely, living a 'good' life by following the backward traditions and habits of their progenitors. my life is being _lived_ as long as i move freely, as long as it is driven by a purpose. i am only barely surviving if my movements are constrained by fear of death, discomfort or pain.
as a human animal, i can choose to live a life of running from fear to fear, looking for some impossible sense of permanence or security. all creatures live for the sake of longevity; this can't possibly be all that there is to life.
:: now versus later: live in this moment or die slowly
on the other hand, i can choose to live now rather than wait endlessly for a so-called 'better tomorrow'. with the understanding that either i die now or i die later, i can see fear clearly and decide to live fully with this time rather than waste every available moment on my knees, begging for just a few more moments. i most likely will not choose the moment of my death, but i can choose the actions of my life.
it has taken a long time for me to feel that in my bones. now i wish for some way to give that feeling to those who matter in my life before i lose my sense of connection to them. sometimes it seems that my thoughts die once they pass my lips, as though i breathed smoke rather than air.
something tells me that it may be time to walk away again, to find others who are still changing and becoming something other than what they are. but i wish i could shake my loved ones awake, even though i myself still feel drowsy. we have all of eternity in which to sleep; why waste the opportunity to be alive, even if only for a moment?
:: it feels right today, but there's always tomorrow
still i am afraid of making definitive statements. definition allows for a kind of self-righteous fundamentalism that seems legitimate, but is never justified except on its own terms. if my sense of truth does not coorespond directly to the cold beauty of nature, who is to say that i have not lost my mind and constructed a false reality in order to crown myself king? logic and rhetoric can twist nearly any prevarication to become indistinguishable from truth. how can i avoid deceiving myself if all of my thoughts may be thinly veiled attempts at soothing fears of irrelevance in a world that continues without need for conscious intervention?
this evasive sense of clarity feels like another empty shout bouncing back from the walls of my own mind. how long will i be trapped in this asylum of refractory thoughts? for every answer, there are three more questions.
