Nowhere Fast...

Today may have been one of the worst days of my life. I've had shitty days before, that's nothing new. But today...today was something worse. Far worse. This week I was introduced to the Myth of Sisyphus, a paper by Albert Camus. I have to wonder why it was brought up, because knowing that the person who brought it up knows me very well, he would know that that saying I seem 'unusually depressed' followed by 'that reminds me of this essay...' would only inspire me to hunt for the piece myself and read it. Apparently Kindle hasn't deemed it worthy of its vast library, so I'll buy the real thing tomorrow or the next day. In any case, I am now generally aware of the theme of the paper. It's one I've been struggling with for almost a year now.

Nearly a year ago I found myself peering into the metaphysical unknown and came across "the Abyss." It was something dark and terrible, an inevitability of existence which even though I had some notion of its being there, I never went looking for it, never gazed down deep into it for any length of time. To quote Nietzsche "And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." And that's what it did. I lost a lot of optimism, too much of my hope that things will turn out alright. It's probably where my bleak perspective on everything lately finds its origins. In that cavernous nothingness that all existence is doomed to, the bleak fact of our universe. Everything will eventually be nothing. It's a truth of the universe, it's slowly slipping into entropy. Eventually everything will become so distant and so cold that everything will stop, and that'll be the end and there's no way to avoid it. Camus's work, though I can't imagine it speaks specifically to the science of the universe, presents a similar conclusions. Eventually we realize that it's all meaningless, and any meaning we find in life we have put there ourselves. We can make leaps here at our cliff's edge. We can leap off, call it like it appears, and commit suicide. But those aren't the only leaps we can make. We can make leaps of science or leaps of faith, and put meaning into the hope that one of those two things will provide purpose and fulfillment in an existence which doesn't have either. I myself have always been guilty of making these leaps, more the leaps of faith than science, but admittedly I do both. These things provide hope to what would seem like an otherwise hopeless situation. But science works in the hope that man will use knowledge appropriately and justly. But if there's no universal truth or standard, who defines what that is? Put God into the mix and we have our outside perspective of morality, our universal truth, but then science becomes a bit meaningless as all falls short to the power of God and man's dominion over existence is a bit cheapened.

At this point, a fourth option is presented for how to deal with this realization. Instead of leaping off the cliff, or leaping away from it with faith in God or faith in the potential of man, a person can turn away from the nothingness and walk back to the world everyone else lives in, bringing the horror of the abyss back with him. This may be hard to comprehend, thankfully media has given a great example in the case of the Joker from The Dark Knight. The Joker was free, completely and utterly. But he was so because of his unique perspective, one which I'm not even going to try to put into words. I feel like I have the potential to become that sort of person, slowly but surely. Someone who doesn't simply have anything good to say, but someone who presents the cryptic truth in a way that it can't be avoided. I feel like my propensity for honest evaluation of what I perceive and my ability to see insightfully into people will be perverted to undo them at their very cores. Frankly the idea terrifies me as it exhilarates me.

Today was terrible not because I saw farther into the Abyss or because something otherwise awful happened. Today was terrible because I think for the first time in a long time I looked in hard enough and saw myself for what I really am; a failure. One could reason and logic that I've accomplished many things throughout my life, that I've made a difference and that I've meant many things to many people. One could say I've seen great things, thought interesting thoughts, loved, laughed, lived, etc etc ad infinitum and ad nauseam. But really, anything someone could tell me all comes down to me and how I accept or reject it. I know that here and now, my very nearly 26 years on this planet have been squandered. I've done next to nothing with my time that was worth it. For all my intelligence, wit, and charm I've produced no results that I can say are either lasting or worthwhile. I'm unhappy at the deepest level with who I am and what I haven't done, what I've never made myself do. I'm adept at putting off, at making excuses, and finding other things to distract me. I'm adept at ruining my life. I could never be fully conscious of how many ways I've endeavored to degrade my experience on this planet, how hard I've worked to sell myself short. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then the road to unsatisfactory existence is littered with shortcuts.

I'm angry at myself for making me so miserable. I know how I've done it, my inability to decide any course of action leaves me doing nothing at all. Doing nothing has produced splendid results. So splendid that contemplating a slow fade into nothingness is now more preferable to me then spending another day languishing for a chance to ruin any opportunity that I come by.....

But, today, when I felt myself literally shaking at my frustrations, ready to scream and lash out one violent, final time to bring some sort of meaning in how I chose to end things, it all faded away, like it always has before when I've grown desperate to the point where I no longer feel human. You may not be traditionally religious or spiritual, but I can tell you at moments like this I'm aware that no force on Earth can so simply and so effortlessly erase the poisoning emotions from my being like they have been erased in times like today. When all that darkness and misery and horror fades away, I remember...

I believe in man's capacity for the infinite. I believe in man's power to choose and to create and to will into existence that which he desires to exist. I believe that who or what I am today isn't what I have to be tomorrow. I believe that we define ourselves not simply by where we finish, but how we worked to get there. I desire purpose for my life, so I'm going to go make it. I want to accomplish on a daily basis, so I will find ways to triumph on a daily basis. I want to be happy, to cherish what experience I get to have and the people with which I get to experience it. I want to never feel so desperate again and I know, for that, I will have to believe that nothing is ever so desperate. Hope remains for those willing to fight to keep it. The universe may one day slowly fade to darkness, but I intend on recapturing the light of my existence and I intend for its brilliance to be blinding.

-M

P.S. Camus presents a fifth option wherein one stays at the cliff, acknowledging the absurdity of it all and being content with it, finding happiness in its lack of meaning. That feels like giving up to me, so I chose not to present it.

The Slippery Slope

Well I'm not surprised that I took months to come back and start writing again. It's not that I forgot to do it or that I didn't have something to write about. It's more that I didn't want to. I kind of feel like I live my life under an all pervasive motivation dampening field. No matter how many good ideas I have for my time or what my state of mind is, I almost always resort to doing nothing. Has my subconscious manifested it's belief that all life is futile during my waking hours?! No, I doubt it. I'm sure my subconscious self has at some point deduced that life as it is seems to be stacked against the living, but I'm well aware of the potential for accomplishment and fulfillment, which means so is subconscious me. And, since we're still here and my dreams aren't dark or depressing (oddly enough) I can only conclude that both of 'us' have decided to keep on truckin'.

Getting back on track and to the point; I'm lazy. My guess is that I'm aware that I can continuously use the excuse that I've never tried that hard at anything so I really haven't failed at anything. It's a bad attitude to have for sure, and I know it. I'm trying, day by day, to get myself back in order. I feel like I've fallen, or that I never began at a standing position, and I need to right myself, get back on my metaphorical feet. I earned my black belt in Tae Kwon Do years ago now. Our school motto, when translated states: "Fall seven times, stand 8." Unless you're dense you get the meaning, persevere no matter what. What I'm doing now clearly isn't working for me, what I need to do is the question.

I have a plan of sorts of how to utilize my boundless free time and my decaying intellect and innate talents/skill sets. Expected items of the plan include working out more for the myriad positive outcomes it produces and reading stimulating books and articles to prevent the entropic decline of my brain processing power(I'm aware that "entropic" may not be the best descriptor for the decline of my brain power, but the steady march of existence per the thermodynamic mechanism of entropy intrigues me). Some unusual things I'm planning on doing, depending on your perspective, revolve around the idea of personal improvement in both useful and completely inane avenues of human existence. I'd like to learn things ranging from magic card tricks to hands-free cartwheels. Everything and anything is game, because I'm working under the assumption that any gained knowledge or learned skill is valuable intrinsically and therefore going to help to construct a better me. Also, this foolishness will help me use my time in a fashion that isn't so wasteful, because even if the thing I'm attempting to learn seems to lack an avenue of practical application, I'm at least learning something, using my cognitive powers of understanding and adaptation.

So that's the idea, the general framework for the "General Personal Enhancement Program." There is a "Specific Purpose Personal Enhancement Program" as well but that's got some time to go before implementation and has some kinks and quirks to work out. You may or may not have read the titles and interpreted an odd pang of mis-use with the word enhancement. Improvement seemed like a more contemporary and universal word to use in lieu of 'enhancement' but I'd like to think that there's no way to really improve on the human condition of existence. It's my belief we're filled with infinite potential for all things, good and bad. How we undertake to realize that potential defines our character and how we broaden our ability to experience our infinite nature is how we enhance our experience. So, enhancement. Hope today's post left you with more questions than answers, maybe it'll draw you back.

-M

"No New Posts!"

Well here we go, the first fateful step in the world of online blogging. I truly enjoy the fact that I can vent in a private, personal forum that may or may not reach multiple people.... Actually the idea is a bit strange to me. I get the idea of searching for personal connection by airing personal thoughts in a public forum, but really how personal can you get when you know other people might read your crazy? With that 'line' in my head I'll endeavor to be open and honest without much that can be perceived as inflammatory.

I think I'll start my first entry with a quick explanation of the title (not that it isn't particularly self-explanatory). The title I had for quite awhile and I can really relate to it. Everything I put here will lean towards the abstract nonsense that fills my head on the days when the demands on my brain activity are so sparse that it can wander to fantastical places. My mal-adjustments are probably similar in some respects to many other people's, but in so many ways as they may be similar I get the feeling that there are twice as many ways in which they're unique. I don't think I fit, like somewhere along the assembly line I got fitted with octagonal pegs in a world of square pegs and round holes. Malcontent has to be my favorite part of the title. The word wasn't new to me when I read it in a book about Alexander the Great, but it's use in labeling a particular group of his oldest and most skilled Macedonian troops resonated with me. Here were the people who left with him and his dreams of conquest when he first stepped forth from Greece, and they had had enough of it. To stop their infectious bad attitude from polluting the ever expanding grand campaign, they were put to death. Their lives were taken for seeing the truth behind their leader, that somewhere along the way he had lost his grip on on reality and was now fueling his ego with a quest for glory he could never obtain. Alexander grew selfish and those who called him such were dishonored for realizing that fact.

I don't have anything in particular to write today. I simply started so that I can say I started and from here can begin with real purpose. I hope to update and add regularly and I plan on draining some of the darker and stranger places of my mind to fill this bucket of whatever-you-will-call-it that will become this blog. Who knows, maybe I'll add a video portion too?

-M