This Afternoon’s Thoughts
The biggest concern in my life these days is What am I Doing with My Life? Which is another way of asking Who am I? I always picture the scenario thus: I am laying on my deathbed, years from now after a long life, and I am remembering everything I have ever done. I am, in essence, re-living my life moment-by-moment, evaluating what was worthwhile and what was wasteful.
Will I regret how much television I watched? How many books I never read? Will I recall fondly the work that I did and the people I called friends? Will I remember myself a good and present father, a mindful provider and guardian? Will I regret the alcohol, the drugs, the meaningless sex?
I read somewhere that humans are terrible predictors of their own happiness. I don’t need to read that though, I know it from my own life. I remember being a kid and watching things for Christmas, begging for them, promising eternal contentment to parents and every sort of good behavior I could think of. Then, on the magic day, receiving the gifts, playing with them for a few hours and, ultimately, losing all interest. That kind of happiness is so fleeting. Like a sugar high that leaves you feeling lower than before.
I believe religions are an attempt made by our ancestors to solve this problem. They’re supposed to be road maps to contentment. By following the rules, desiring what you are told to desire and forbidding yourself the rest, you reach whatever the magical word for happiness is – Heaven, Nirvana, Fana, Clear. Even more, the journey is on paved road.
On the other hand, I have always admired the spiritual renegades like Krishnamurti who could entirely deconstruct religion and lay bare its fundamental urges, its elemental drives. Truth is a pathless land, Krishnamurti said. He meant that there were no paved roads to truth, because truth is ultimately a personal reality. That’s a terrifying thought. It fills me with loneliness and longing.
Physics tells us that no one ever touches, that the matter of our bodies is mostly empty space and force fields. When two lips press, they never really do. It’s just their exclusive atomic fields pushing against each other, never overlapping. To be solid is to be trapped. To be matter is to be bound.
What is the happiness of a solid? Is laughter ice melting into water? Is an orgasm water bursting into steam? Is the sun pure joy?
The one truth that cannot be disputed is that I will die. My body, as I type, is decorporealizing moment-by-moment, second-by-second. Very soon I will be just a skeleton. Very soon there will not even be that. Very soon I will be done with being. Is this Paradise?
