Out in Flames

Today is one of those days.

Not a bad day, nor a good day. Just a day. But for some reason, I feel disconnected, somehow confused. I don't have a fever, but it kind of feels like I do. I am not sure why I feel this way today. If there was ever a time to use the word, "discombobulated", this is it. I was telling a doctor on Monday that I am just falling apart. A lost cause. She didn't disagree.

But I am determined to put out the fire.

Or start one.

I am not sure what needs to happen, but this is the beauty of writing, because it helps sort things out in the head, even if those thoughts don't spill onto the page. I should have started much earlier in the day, but I decided to clean some of the tasks off my list instead. Probably not a good decision, but the office is in far better order, and the bathroom showerhead (one of those big "rain" types) has been descaled. I guess those are something.

I have these moments from time to time and I like to imagine that it is my brain rewiring itself after the stroke, and afterward, I will have regained or improved in some ability. However, I think the reverse is true, and it is more likely a thought hitting up against the wall of dead brain matter, and not knowing what to do next, like a line of marching ants, meeting an unexpected stick across their path, and they start wandering around, lost.

Ants are silly.

I am sillier. Ants are just doing what they do, likely without much thought at all, just working on instinct. I should be better than them at recognising the stick, and then having a strategy of how to remove, go over, under, or around it, without much trouble. Yet, here I am, still trying to work out what the hell is blocking my path.

Be better, Taraz. Be better.

As said, writing is good for sorting this stuff out and pretty much, even if it might not be communicated to the audience, my condition at the start of an article can be quite different from the end. Often, I start off with something that is frustrating the hell out of me, but an hour and a million offshoots of thoughts later, I am in a different headspace - a different person.

Funny kind of, isn't it?

People say "we are our behaviours", yet our behaviours can change to extremes depending on circumstances, including those of our emotional and mental state. In one frame we can act like a proverbial angel, in another, well, the demons arise. But, while both are still us, if we look at the actions as independent events, we could claim that two different people were behaving.

A momentary demon, could ruin the life of an angel.

Lately, I have been thinking about how life doesn't really care if you are a good or a bad person. Just look at the state of society at the moment and what we choose to support, and it is clear to see. Being a good person doesn't grant you anything extra in life, and as I am one of those people who doesn't believe in an afterlife, why be good? Sure, if it came with some kind of premium existence, like better health and wellbeing, it would make sense to be good - but it doesn't. Good people have just as bad lives as bad people - perhaps worse.

Just think, if a person knows they are bad and do all the "wrong" things and then get cancer, they shrug their shoulders and justify it, saying "I probably deserve it" anyway. A good person, the saint however, can't do that. Instead they have to just accept that life is shitty, or for the believers, that it is a test of some sort that gets them a better room and food in heaven.

I'm feeling better already!

You?

When I talk about believers, I am not actually belittling them, nor do I think that they are somehow inferior, or me superior. As while I am no longer attracted to what I consider fantastical thinking, I do get it, and it brings comfort and meaning to people. It would be nice if more of these believers also thought that it would do their cause well to be good people, but it seems to much effort for many subscribers.

I like to think about "what if" thought experiments where something with absolute power and perfect judgement, can make something happen. In this case today,

What if the worst 50% of people disappeared tomorrow. Who would go, and who'd be left? What would happen after that? Would the survivors change the world to be a better place, with new systems of economy and distribution of resources? Or would they just replace those who disappeared, and repeat it all again. What if they knew in ten years from now, there would be another cull of the bottom 50% again?

Two billion of the best of us left on earth.