The trick is living without an answer

... I think.


Hello and welcome to the show! I sit here in my cane chair and stare at a blank document. This document can be anything. Somehow, its potential is intimidating.
The irony isn't lost on me.

It’s 2009 and the year is coming to its end. I’ve always wondered what we call this decade. There were the 80s and then came the 90s and these are the 00s. That makes sense. Except how do you say it? And what do we call the next set of 3652 days? Tens? I think the 20s to the 90s have it easy. We’re sitting on some difficult to term terms. And nobody seems to be bothered. The future is well on its way but I can’t seem to spot any flying cars or people migrating to Mars. Ooh but apparently there’s water there now. Or the possibility of water. Tomato tomato. 90s 00s.

In my quest for self realization I have met many travellers. Unfortunately they don’t share my enthusiasm in finding myself. Selfish? I don’t know. But in this journey of awareness and cognition and the occasional dinner party, I have learnt many things... So let me begin by saying what I’ve figured out is –
I like figuring things out.

“What is the meaning of life?” is never a relevant question. It’s what brings meaning to your life that’s the trick. I guess I find meaning in meaning. As we grow older, that meaning tends to dissect itself and spread into tributaries like your kids and their kids and health and tax and self preservation and death and leaving a mark before dying before exiting this world and going to another. Where? Fuck if I know. Society has trained us into believing we need things using the highly convincing methods of conformity and uniformity. If X believes this and Y does that and all the other letters in the alphabet are more or less the same, why would U like to be any different? [sic]

You ask me whether I believe in God and I ask “Why? Why God? When did that come up?” I guess that makes me an atheist. But I prefer ‘agnostic’ or ‘skeptic’ because that seems more sensible. I’m not going to pick a side when the battle doesn’t involve me.
My version is that we’re here to write a story and that’s all it is.

“Science is cool. But we’ve been talking about reality for generations. Explaining gravity would be to you like explaining consciousness is to me. It’s a subset. Complete the bubble.
Age matters because it’s a way to measure the physical world. Age is to science what consciousness is to existence. And we exist because we need to exist. Take away need. Boom.”

That’s a neat little trick I learnt about credibility. Quotation marks. People seem easily charmed by anonymous intelligence. A pearl of wisdom spawned from an unnamed source is way more valuable than if you knew it came from an oyster named Bob.

So I guess reality is nothing more than a consensus. We are sharing consciousness/reality... We ought to feel grateful. A basic form of that is our ability to express thought. And I am grateful that I can, and in this way. But the problem with that is that as soon as you communicate meaning into thought, it takes away from its meaning. And as soon as you start thinking, you’ve justified your reason to start thinking.
It’s like stepping into a hole that wouldn’t be there if you hadn’t stepped into it in the first place.
And somehow that never ending Catch 22 is inspiring in that it’s even been created.

But what if someone else’s meaning could be made up of something other than thought? Wow. Imagine that. I can’t.

We have grown into a culture of verifiable knowledge and I think we need to embrace it. Google is in the flipping dictionary and we use these words no longer as nouns, but verbs which just goes to show how horizontal we’re moving. Broad and vast, we’re covering subjects like tidal waves across the realm of information. And the difference between information and misinformation will one day hopefully drown into oblivion. Our thirst for knowledge coupled with our desire to conform to the consensus of reality (a.k.a remaining legally sane) has escalated our learning curve to a point where it is embarrassing to not be in the know. And if you’re in the know, you better know it right. Ambiguity and weasel words don’t cut it.
You need to understand to be understood. And vice versa.

Our minds are entities themselves and if you think about it, the human body (brain and all) is a vessel. It’s like our minds’ little child’s toy. We exist outside of it. Maybe this is what the fourth dimension is supposed to be. Or fifth.
A simple example is how we feel about our bodies and hair and clothes or whatever. Because it is how we are represented... Our minds are being represented. At a certain level, your own body is alien to you. And what’s funny is that you know it.
Everyone knows it.

The funny (and incredibly scary) thing about representation is that it is everywhere. On our faces, in our writing, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the music we listen to, the people we associate with, the food we eat. The job we have and how much money we look like we’re making, the school we went to and the level of regret/pride we express for having gone there to even the fucking operating system (mac vs. windows) we choose. It’s all representation. Most of it is subliminal. The rest is elementary. And people like you and me learn to become obsessed with portrayal. It’s sad, it’s pathetic and worst of all, if you really think about it – it’s unnecessary because it’s in your head.

"We are the victims of the trap that is our minds. And that’s putting it lightly. That’s merciful. Because YOU are the victim of the trap that is YOUR mind.”
There’s another powerful set of quotation marks for you.

Now assuming there is a world around me and people aren’t merely figments of my imagination, I’d like to talk about relationship maintenance. The past few months have posed some pertinent questions. I’ve always invested a lot of myself into relationships because I derive meaning from them and the people around me constitute a large percentage of my happiness quotient. Lately, however, I’ve been thinking about whether it’s worth putting any effort into fixing or sustaining relationships once you reach a sizeable conflict. Deliberating the principle - on one hand, I want for people to love me and appreciate me etcetera etcetera. On the other, if I succumb to the responsibility of upholding the relationship alone, I am in danger of compromising my integrity. I guess I 've learnt that I can only work things out if the conflicting party is intent on working things out. If they aren’t, well, there isn't anything I can do and any and each effort I make to resolve the situation is solely to make myself feel better. So do I persist? Do I stand my ground? Do I sever ties?
I think secretly I’ve always felt I’d be successful at keeping happy relationships with everyone I ever meet because that is exactly my intention. But now I’m starting to question my personal Doctorate of Intentionalism and whether it really is the true way forward.

Coming to a close now and there's some really groovy, ambient stuff playing. Music always manages to communicate emotion into its own universe of sound. It's a sensual process and I love soaking it in; feeling it in the tips of my fingers; inhaling the melody; shutting everything else down. I feel positive at the moment. The beat seems to resonate my happy state. I wish I could share this with you.
Be happy. Spread happy.

Which brings me to the theme I intend to follow this coming year: Happiness and Humility. I believe that there is truth in humility and it is key in the pursuit of happiness. This year, I hope to incorporate as much of the humble stuff I can in my pursuit. At this point, it seems genius; but I can only conclude with a field test.

Here’s to taking her for a spin! See you next year!

Yours humbly,

The Greatest Person Ever.