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Thoughts on Existence
8 June 2014 18:52I believe that you are not your gender. You are not your race. You are not your occupation. You are not the country you were born in. You are not the language you speak. You are not even your name.
I believe that you are also more than the electrical impulses that give you your thoughts and move your limbs. You are more than a being that can interact with this world physically. You are more than the animals, for better or for worse.
Who are you? Who are we? WHAT are we? When you try to answer this, you see the need for a purpose.
Maybe we’re just here to quest. We are here not just to struggle, but to strive toward. The fact that what we strive towards is unknowable is the reason we strive. The search is the end. The constant movement is the destination. It’s a contradiction that fits.
Art, science, and religion are all trying to explain the same thing.
All questions lead to more questions. That is as much a function of the universe as it is a function of our own perspective. We have not found out how large the universe is and we have not found its smallest particle. The ladder is endless up and down and the road is endless in all directions as far as we’re concerned. Both ends of the telescope do nothing but expand our base of queries.
Imagination bridges gaps. Stories gives us answers. Myths teach us and give us reasons. A person with answers seems powerful because answers calm us. Without satisfactory answers, we turn faster and faster. We become smarter and try to dampen the curiousity with more knowledge. We turn to art to abstract the pull of wanting to know. We memorize religious books and tell ourselves that strength lies in belief, damming up the need for facts, facts, more facts.
The yawning abyss is exactly this.
What calms the journey is direction. Your journey may take you to the stars, to the intricacies of language, to atoms, to your own inner workings, to the physical and metaphysical. It may take you to places on maps either real or imagined. The quest for peace has so many paths.
This holy grail of balance is what comes in and out of focus for us. What gets us out of bed in the morning is not only our awareness of time passing, our bodies decaying. It is the question. As innate as eye colour. It is bred into us and seemingly, only us.
It is why our life form is insane. It is our greatest strength and our greatest flaw. With no curiousity, we would be at peace. This is why we are damned. This is why we are holy.
They say that getting there is half the fun. Since getting there is all we do, then that is why we feel we are missing out on half of something.
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I believe that you are also more than the electrical impulses that give you your thoughts and move your limbs. You are more than a being that can interact with this world physically. You are more than the animals, for better or for worse.
Who are you? Who are we? WHAT are we? When you try to answer this, you see the need for a purpose.
Maybe we’re just here to quest. We are here not just to struggle, but to strive toward. The fact that what we strive towards is unknowable is the reason we strive. The search is the end. The constant movement is the destination. It’s a contradiction that fits.
Art, science, and religion are all trying to explain the same thing.
All questions lead to more questions. That is as much a function of the universe as it is a function of our own perspective. We have not found out how large the universe is and we have not found its smallest particle. The ladder is endless up and down and the road is endless in all directions as far as we’re concerned. Both ends of the telescope do nothing but expand our base of queries.
Imagination bridges gaps. Stories gives us answers. Myths teach us and give us reasons. A person with answers seems powerful because answers calm us. Without satisfactory answers, we turn faster and faster. We become smarter and try to dampen the curiousity with more knowledge. We turn to art to abstract the pull of wanting to know. We memorize religious books and tell ourselves that strength lies in belief, damming up the need for facts, facts, more facts.
The yawning abyss is exactly this.
What calms the journey is direction. Your journey may take you to the stars, to the intricacies of language, to atoms, to your own inner workings, to the physical and metaphysical. It may take you to places on maps either real or imagined. The quest for peace has so many paths.
This holy grail of balance is what comes in and out of focus for us. What gets us out of bed in the morning is not only our awareness of time passing, our bodies decaying. It is the question. As innate as eye colour. It is bred into us and seemingly, only us.
It is why our life form is insane. It is our greatest strength and our greatest flaw. With no curiousity, we would be at peace. This is why we are damned. This is why we are holy.
They say that getting there is half the fun. Since getting there is all we do, then that is why we feel we are missing out on half of something.
tags
