mindwank

The other night, Brian and I were having a conversation prompted by his paramasturbatory illusions about fate, destiny, and all things cosmic.

There are only a two orders of the universe to which I can fully attest fate as the progenitor: life and death. We had no choice whether we wanted to live and we have no choice whether we want to die. Both things have and will happen.

Even then, those two concepts can be seen as viscerally as simple biological imperative; hardly as fate, but more as one lifelong fight. As sperm, some unseen motivator, some hard wiring in our simple system propels us to that egg, to fight our way to fertilization. We swim furiously toward that ovum, darting past millions of our own brethren, boring our little heads through that barrier whether we are wanted or not, and once we make it we cling furiously to the uterine lining for another nine months.

As living beings, we fight death with our every fiber. We go to school to better our living conditions so that we stay far from death as possible, we aim toward a living that will mean either spiritual or financial wellness, and on our deathbeds, we fight to stay alive (most of the time). We seek fulfillment, we seek to extend our selves through child baring, we travel, we cry, we scream, we love. We attempt to experience and experiment with every possible neuro-chemical combination available to us because in doing so, we ARE living, flaunting the gamut of human emotion.

Fighting, clawing, running, hanging stubbornly, all of that then, is the very manifestation of life. You see a goal, and if you give up on it, then you just didn't want it enough. Even if you get blown off that path you saw for yourself, you could at least say, "Damn, I fought my ass off for that."

It's hard for me to see life as a series of chain links: one singular event that is so greatly influenced by every precluding event. Rather, life makes greater sense to me as a series of self-wrought goals. There is no fate, there is no destiny. There's only where we are versus where we want to be. What we want comes from a human imperative to achieve and distance ourselves from death. The farther you are from death, the more alive you are.

And once you've achieved that which you've wanted, then you can settle into bliss. Numbing happiness. An equilibrium of ups and downs, but in the long run, it's a constant. This'll be addressed later on.

Sometimes, I feel like I might have skipped a step. Now, I'm forced to go back. The problem is, one has melded into the other and created all sorts of confusion.

I know what makes sense rationally. But that really is it. I know it. But it doesn't feel right. Again, it's hard for me to see life as fate, to see life as mathematical and probabilistic.

It's passionate. So I can only do what feels right.

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I looked through my dad's credit card reports (bad, I know.) The only thing he buys are groceries and gas for the cars. Working. Eating. I wonder if these are the things that makes him happy, or if he's far past the the pursuit of happiness and has settled into mind-numbing day to day living.