I have been having strange thoughts lately. Not morbid thoughts as such, but thoughts that seem to hover on the fringes of life; at the boundary points of existence between this phenomenal world and that of the spirits. Anything can start this train of thoughts in motion.
Take last night for example. A pretty ordinary November night. Dark. A slight chill in the air. A dampness engraved on the pavement. A fresh breeze. And autumnal leaves scattered everywhere. I stayed indoors last night. I was watching ‘Predators’ – the new Predator movie. It features a group of people who are parachuted into another world for the sole purpose of being hunted and killed by the predators – for sport. One by one the ‘game’ (people) are brutally hunted and killed, and it got me thinking. Maybe it was late, maybe it was the dark, maybe it was the Rioja Gran Reserve 2001, but it got me asking a very simple question (and you can apply this to real life), what ‘crime’ or what ‘sin’ or what ‘misdeed’ had these people committed that meant they were hunted and killed? Let’s ask the question again:
What ‘crime’ does any hunted animal commit that means it is hunted and brutally killed by its predator?
What ‘crime’ does any hunted animal commit that means it is hunted and brutally killed by its predator?
And in a flash of (I like to call it profound) insight the answer came to me: the crime these people; the crime the zebra, the crime any hunted animal that is killed for sport, or killed for food, has committed is the crime of ‘living’. Yes, just being alive, existing, being here, is enough to condemn you to a brutal death in the jaws of a tiger, or a lion, or (in more fantastical terms), a Predator. Just my existing condemns many other animals to death (for I will use them – their flesh for food, skin for clothes, bones for ivory), but also my existing, my being alive, condemns me to a life of struggle and strife, a life of bother and pain, a life of passions not extinguished, a life of wants not satiated, a life of disease, a life of infirm old age, and finally a life of my death.
I have departed much from the theological beliefs of my forefathers; the religious and the non-religious, who seem to view life as some sort of ‘gift’ and therefore worthy of gratitude from the almighty. I pour scorn on such fanciful ideas. Life is not a gift, but a contracted debt. And the debt was contracted in our begetting – that singular moment when our parents gametes fused in an intoxicated bliss of sexual inebriation and our becoming was made possible. I was never asked if I wanted this! (this being my life). Yet I am expected to show gratitude to not only my parents but also to a god, for something I never asked for, for something that was given me without my asking. Sorry but I can’t do that. The fault is not mine! It is my parents that are to blame! I know. I know. It sounds rather ungrateful of me don't it? I sound like a spoilt child that has been given something wonderful but doesn't want it. But you're only thinking that because from the earliest days from cradle to school we are all schooled that life is a gift, a blessing, something to be grateful of – as if the alternative is some abominable hell!
Let me ask you: what is the alternative to life? Answer: non-existence. What is non-existence like? Easy: the opposite of existence. Just think back to the time before you were born...what do you remember? Exactly. Nothing! You don’t remember it do you? It’s just an emptiness, devoid of any pain, any pleasure, devoid of well....anything and everything. A blissful black ocean of nothingness. And compare this to life. I don’t know about you, but I quite ‘like’ this blissful black ocean of nothingness! But you must remember, if you’re in this black nothingness you don’t actually know you’re in it. What I mean to say is that you can’t imagine this blissful black ocean of nothingness as something that exists, positively – it doesn't. It’s the absence of everything – so you can’t imagine yourself sitting in this all enveloping blackness thinking: ‘Oh, this is rather pleasant! This kind of nothingness!’. It’s not like that. It’s absence. So in affect we are comparing life (a positive thing in the sense that it exists) to non-life (which is a negative thing in the sense of absence).
The more I think about this life, and by life I mean life in general; I don’t mean my own ‘personal’ life (which is rather pleasant by the way – free of worries and obligations and stresses), the more I think about life in general, the more I’ve come to realise that we take it way too seriously! Way, way too seriously. We live too much in it. We are swept away by it, like a raging torrent it sweeps us along, and in trying to remain above the water and not drown we don’t notice the torrent and more importantly, we don’t notice the scenery, the banks on either side, the sky and the stars. And we always seem to be pining for the end; or some imaginable point in the end, where the torrent will cease – and we will finally relax and get some rest from this constant struggling. But there’s only a waterfall at the end and we will all go over it and then it will be all over.
I don’t mean to depress you. I really don't! That is not my intention. I want to emancipate you from the tyranny of life. Unshackle you. Strip away those fetters - those mind forg'd manacles. Rather, I think these thoughts should make you sit up straight and take heed. I keep saying this and I will say it again: life is an amazing experience. That is the acme of my philosophy. Everything else I believe stems from this statement. Life is a one in a quadrillion opportunity. Look out there, look up there, look everywhere, there are more stars in the universe then there are sand grains on earth. This planet of ours is a mere blip in the utter black mind-bogglingly vast ocean of stars that is the universe. Our brains cannot possibly contemplate this vast ocean of stars. Obviously it is you and I who are alive because if we weren’t we wouldn’t be here talking about it! We must never forget how special and utterly maddeningly improbable a thing this life is. Yet we become so accustomed to it – we fail to take notice of it. There are moments (many moments) when I sit on the London Tube looking around me with a little smile on my face, and an all expansive feeling of awe, contentment and compassion welling within me. A sereneness not unlike that on the face of the monks – but my smile comes from a realisation springing from the depths of my being, that nothing matters, nothing is worth our troubling over, all will end one day, just sit back and enjoy the ride!
Just sit back and enjoy the ride. That's practical philosophy for you!
Don’t take heed and don't trouble yourself with the opinions of others – others are little people, and little people have little skulls and in those little skulls are little thoughts and little opinions. For most people have not a true vision of the real nature of existence - too ‘involved’ they are in their everyday doings and going on's. It takes the mind like that of a child to look out of the window in a train and wonder goggle-eyed at the majesty of the scenery – it takes the mind of a stupid adult to be seated on the same train as that of the child, but instead have their nose stuck in the newspaper, or attached to another adults ears!
Adulthood! Bah humbug! What a waste! To be an adult is not to have a clear picture of life. To be an adult is to be preoccupied with nonsense. It’s children who really see life for what it is. It is children who are truly wise! I am not jesting. I am being deadly earnest and serious. Only children see this world for the massive sensory overload of a playground that it is. That is why they are constantly jumping around, excited, chasing pigeons in train stations, whilst we adults stare up at the train timetable, wondering when we can get on the train. We don't see the pigeons in a train station. But the children do.
And what does one do in a playground?
Explore and have fun.
And what does one do in a playground?
Explore and have fun.
