Tag: existential

Waves of the collective ocean

4:47pm, at a trampoline park, Orange County, California, Saturday afternoon, April 2, 2022. The human soul is prone to sink by default; constantly threatening to drown in defeat, suffocating under embarrassment and flailing through uncontrollable loss. We are fated to a life of learning how to existentially swim as it were. That is, develop our own personal technique to rise above this un-chosen destiny. It is the only way to achieve anything that approaches true happiness. Of course, peace is not found through aggressive defiance. Constantly fighting negative experience simply burns a person out. No, true happiness is found when we accept our circumstance without giving in to it; floating along on the waves, being one with the collective ocean, available to the rare times tranquility finds us and gives us respite. After all, perpetual joy can’t be found and human suffering is never eradicated, but the few times we do accomplish such things are worth the effort life asks of us.

Friday morning

5:43am Friday morning. I came to realize I was in the system, a flow that shaped my existence. Whether contrived or natural I did not know. All I knew was my place and interaction with the system up until now. In my youth I was languidly passive . I wanted experiences. I partook in the rituals the system offered. Sports, dates, school, jobs, vacations. As I became older I vowed to conquer the system. To find one thing I excelled at and to rise to the top of my game. But now I realized I was not going to conquer anything. And with that what was I to do? Then it came to me. What my purpose was. All my frustration led to this moment. I was to cleanse the system. Not all of it, but the one piece I could. The one representative of my failure. I may not conquer the system but I can do my part to remove a malignancy. And wasn’t that a beautiful purpose in and of itself?

Thursday morning

Thursday morning 5:31am. Did I spend most of my life anxious, worried, wondering what I was missing, what I didn’t have, when I should have been enjoying what was right in front of me? All the peace I ever felt was when I existed in a moment. When a specific time and place shone so bright it blocked my overactive mind from wandering. Should I search for circumstance that affords me such happiness? Can I control my thoughts and make any situation so pure? Or is there only divine convergence of situation and person that creates such a thing? Perhaps beautiful moments exist only because some ethereal being loves me, wants me to be happy and grants me a time when all feels right with the world.

God thoughts

5:52pm. Returned from Orange County. I didn’t stop in palm desert so no check in there. Talking with my daughter about creativity. Dreaming of being the chaplain. Listening to Camus’s The Stranger And Pirsig’s Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance on the drive. All that together led to existential pondering…The concept of god is who ever validates our thoughts and hopes. The belief in god exists on the plain of thinking about the past and the future. I remember the past because it brings me joy. I use it in the present to being me peace. Same with a hopes for future. Not because it is real or even achievable but because it brings happiness. Some concept of returning to the past is feasible. Some concept of obtaining a dream future is feasible. Finding god in some form of the ideal is feasible.