The last gift we will surrender to the Universe, at the moment of death, is our collection of individual experiences of a brief lifespan – an abstract feeling of the quality that encapsulates everything we did, were and are – before that feeling dissipates and is absorbed into the greater and more subtle aspect of the Universe. And we, again, become nothing.
And everything.
A Kaleidoscopic Reality
My soul has been agitated and restless lately. Too much doom scrolling, perhaps. Being too involved with things and gadgets that steal my attention away from the now. Too engrossed in people’s opinions and seeing how divisive media and entertainment are, and how it all can be monetised.
It’s a shame that two perfectly pleasant people who would otherwise get along fine will engage in a violent display of keyboard jousting whilst others spit and add insults from the sidelines, cheering them on.
It’s the Colosseum. Entertainment. I don’t think we are mature enough to handle this level of technology…We might be ready to handle 80’s tech now. Maybe we should bring cassette tapes and Walkmans back for a decade or two. I digress…
The thing about online arguments is that they rarely, if ever, solve the problem being argued, and secondly, they’re likely to cause friction in the real world should the two meet. I’m not saying that things aren’t worth standing up for or speaking out against, but is it worth it when so much of it is triggered by intentionally divisive online media, A.I generated content masquerading as news, or even mistaken satire and “trollery”, and that’s exactly what it is meant to do – trigger and grab your attention, generate friction, views and interaction, regardless of how vile it gets. In fact, the more divisive the better – it doubles as entertainment…
and
we
keep
“scrollin, scrollin, scrollin!”, shouts out Fred Durst from the back of the sparsely lit room, before dropping the mic and exiting on a sleigh pulled by a business of ferrets.
Nothing but the ticking of a grandfather clock and a single cricket can be heard before the voice continues…and adding data to the almighty algorithm, and thereby creating, shaping and maintaining online communities.
After I peeled myself away from the phone and regained some of my stolen attention, I started thinking – what the fuck is reality?
And the best way I can imagine it is as if we are looking through a kaleidoscope with one eye, while the other is closed.
Imagine this kaleidoscope consisting of people, each person is like a mirror, all at varying angles, and each person has the ability to reflect and refract light entering from outside, causing a display of colourful opinions and chaotic fractals – interpretations of the truth. And outside of the kaleidoscope, shining in? That’s reality – truth. If you look closely, you can sometimes catch a tiny glimpse of a reflection of it within the chaos of patterns and colour. We all affect and add to the shared perceived reality within the kaleidoscope.
I do feel it’s getting too chaotic to tell what “reality” is (humans are not equipped to deal with true reality). Or even what it means to have humanity and humility in a society with seemingly diminishing compassion. It’s becoming more and more abstract. More crazy shapes and patterns moving about, and it has us mesmerised and entertained. I’m completely glamoured at times, but it is not the now, and it is not reality.
The kaleidoscope is colourful, intriguing and mesmerising, but it makes navigating close to impossible with one eye closed. For the love of god, at least try to open your other eye before you walk into something or someone…or crash into oncoming traffic.
Gratitude
Fuck. It’s been over a decade since I’ve had anything to say. The times are different, and so much has changed. I don’t know how many read blogs anymore, no less mine, and that is fine. I read some of my posts from 2013 and cringed a little. I ended up deleting them all and decided to start again afresh. I just need a tiny corner of the internet where I can express my imperfect thoughts, in imperfect English from time to time, outside the noise of modern social media – something I’m trying to peel away from… but that’s a different thought for another time.
In my attempt to peel away from the noise of online social media, I recently decided to read more and spend more time with creative things and thoughts. In an attempt to read, I started browsing the shelf. Yes, the dusty shelf with a modest collection of dustier books that past me swears he’ll get to…spoiler alert, he does not. But on the dusty shelf, one of the even dustier books caught my eye. It had a folded-up scrap piece of paper as a bookmark. I pulled it out, went to the bookmark, and was impressed to see I was over halfway through. I unfolded the piece of paper, which just so happened to be dated. November 2018.
Fuck. Eight years ago, but my brain registers it as two.
That was before A.I. was a thing. Before I heard what Bitcoin was. I mean, fuck, it was before my cat passed away. Before my dad passed away… Even before COVID.
I started reading from where I left off and was surprised by how much I retained. It has caused me to think about the last decade and a half, about how life has unfolded since the last time I read these pages, and all the synchronicities that have guided me to where I am. Everything feels like pure luck. A privileged life. The chances of me being where I am in life feel astronomically low (but certainly higher than much of the world’s population), like I was more likely to win the lottery (which I ironically haven’t). Thinking about my hardships over the decade and a half, things couldn’t have panned out any better or any other way, even if I couldn’t see it or understand it at the time. Things got bleak, and although I may have problems, as does everyone, I am glad the problems I do have are mine. This started to make me think about gratitude.
Maybe gratitude isn’t as easy as we assume. Maybe it isn’t something you verbalise every now and then, or feel in a fleeting moment. It’s more than, and more subtle than that.
Maybe gratitude also feels a little bit like guilt. Maybe it should feel like a tiny splinter under the skin – a reminder so it doesn’t become the assured ground you walk over daily without notice. Maybe when that happens, when the thing you were once grateful for becomes so common you rarely acknowledge it, perhaps that is the moment when you have taken it for granted, and have lost it.
Gratitude is an ongoing process that develops a certain character that you slowly assimilate into your being over time, and you become it. You become grateful. I don’t think gratitude is something that you ‘are’ or you ‘are not’ – I think it is something you work for, and in the process, something you become so that you may never lose it. I think you have to dig, find and excavate. You’ll get dirty and have to be honest with yourself, without any presence of witnesses. I think that is gratitude – the quality you feel when no one else can observe it.
I’m trying a little harder to truly be grateful. I just need to be reminded from time to time, as I suspect we all do. This is your reminder.
The Observing Vessel 