If you actually sit back and think about everything that has lead to your existence, every little variable that has culminated in you being here, with blood pumping through your veins, reading these words. Every possibility that could have been, from the beginning of time, but yet everything has lead up to this exact moment with you and I both conscious of our being. People of my age especially, but also a lot of us in general, pay little or no time to appreciate this magic. When you really do start to notice the magic in the small things, the small irrelevant moments that pass you by each day, you can truly then be overawed by the glorious complexity of the universe we are in. The football scores then start to seem ridiculous, the little quarrels we may have with each other become unimportant and stupid. We are all but a tiny piece of a infinitely large puzzle. But it all fits together perfectly.
As a 23 year old man, I am far from wise and I am yet to learn and experience a great deal in this world, but here is a short insight into my mind. As I write this I am hit with a wave of questioning and confusion as to how we conduct ourselves within reality. We are a species that drives for order but creates chaos, we desire love but propagate hate, we feast on bad news and ignore the good. Why is it that everything is driven by greed, leaving everyday people to suffer whilst a select few reap the rewards for themselves? The thing I struggle to understand is that the people who are guilty of such heinous actions at a corporate or military level, will go home to their families and love them in a truly genuine way. A pure love, as most with a family would appreciate. But yet then when they are back in the work environment, those human emotions can be cast aside when their actions affect the anonymous. This duality is common in today's world, and is extremely similar to the Orwellian idea of doublethink, the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs in ones head simultaneously, whilst still genuinely believing both. Psychologists would call it cognitive dissonance, and we are all guilty of it to some extent. I smoke cigarettes but yet I know they are damaging my lungs each time I inhale, I resent corporate power but yet I sit here in my Adidas jacket typing this on my iPhone. Political leaders may truly believe they are in it for the people, but are still able to manipulate and exploit millions of people to gain votes. In life we are all sometimes guilty of hypocrisy, whether on a small scale or large. But how do we escape this way of being? Maybe the true way to becoming a more rounded individual is to eradicate as many of these contradictions as possible. I speculate, but something has definitely changed in the modern age. As humanity grows, the constructs we create become even more complex, but to me it feels we are devolving as a species. We fill our lives with so many different things to keep ourselves busy and entertained but as we do so we distance ourselves from reality. We are no longer aware of the world around us, wrapped up in a bubble of technology and entertainment. I believe we should stop revelling within our own egotistical lives and start appreciating actually being alive in the first place. Life should be exciting, it should be a new experience every day, it should be a learning curve until death.
We live a relatively short life in the grand scheme of things, but it is no time for morbidity or negativity. We will die one day, of course, but it should not be treated with resistance as is common place in today's world. A wise man once said to me: “The only thing we need to do in life, is to prepare ourselves for death.” When I repeat this to others the normal reaction is one of ridicule and confusion, why on earth should we be concerning ourselves with such a horrible thing as our own death? But the point is missed, in these cases, as we should be accepting of our short time here and the sooner we truly can come to terms with our own mortality; the sooner we can live freely. I am by no means there yet but I feel I am on the right path. Who knows, maybe this will change when I'm older and I have more of a life to lose, but I do not think we should shy away from the inevitable. Imagine living every day truly as if it is your last. That freedom is what I believe we should all strive for in our actions and in our hearts. Imagine if we could somehow tune into a childlike state, living in every moment with hardly any thought, just doing exactly as we should. I often think of cats as the perfect example. Obviously cats have their foolish moments but whenever I watch one, or any animal, I am struck by their pure and perfect ways. The cat goes through life doing what it does perfectly, there is no wrong or right way, it just lives.
In a way I suppose we are doing that, just in a more complex way. Each of us still goes through life doing exactly what we do, although we judge our actions as wrong or right when matched against our own expectations. We make choices based on our life experience up until that moment, so how could anything be necessarily seen as an incorrect path? Obviously if you go through life doing negative things then you can't possibly live a positive and happy life, at least not forever. So whoever you are, whatever your past, whatever your situation- just try and live your life in a positive way and the universe will reward you. You are living as the cat does. Perfectly.
