Overcoming Time
If anything is universally plaguing to the human mind, it is time. With this, I'm starting a series about all the things you can do when you abandon the idea that "time"--by our common understanding--exists. This is essentially the premise behind it all:
Life happens at the level of events. In dreams there is never a dull moment--just event after event after event. This is the way our mind perceives things. Now, as with most of the things that I argue are bullshit, they are really just a way of making sense of things. Time, to me, is this: a measurement between two events.
For example, speed depends on time to be measured: at event 1, you are at location 0. At event 2, you are at location 5. We now know that you are travelling at 5 locations per event. This can be miles per hour, inches per second, etc. When you read these, try to think of seconds and minutes and hours and days and years simply as a marker to an event in time's world. The reason time falls through when it comes to you as a person is because you are not "time." You aren't "politics." You aren't "logic," or "beliefs," or "values," or "wrong," or "perfect" or "imperfect"-- you are a mix of all these. And when you take any of these at face value and try to apply them to other parts of "you" as a sort of attempt at mental homeostasis, you quickly see it doesn't work.
So-- time. Think of it as events contained only in your mind and what that would mean for you. And then read what is to come.
The Human Experience
We should all think twice about our existence. Not everything that is accepted by the crowd is true. The measurement of time and space could simply be a product of our intellect, just as state lines or manufacturing processes for Twinkies are. Our universe could be a tiny electrical spark in someone's mind-- a fleeting thought. We could contain an infinite amount of universes in our own minds. There's too much we don't know about the world we live in to not give what we "know" a second glance. Think. Step outside the norms and "proofs" and consider something only few dare to share with the world.
It's not comfortable. And it's not easy. But it's liberation. It's the closest you can come to heaven without dying. Embrace the thoughts and understand the power you hold simply in your mass of neural connections stored in what you know as your skull. Embrace something you don't know or what is not widely accepted and you will be unbound from the world you know as reality.
You're not the most important thing in the world. You may not have an inherent meaning. But meaning gets assigned as it is learned and experienced, simply by existing as an intellectual being. Run with this and don't let the dark places in your mind overpower the positive, because they will always be the first to occur to you. Nothing bad will ever happen to you in life unless you view it as such.
This is all part of the human experience-- stay thirsty, my friends.
Making Friends
It seems like I only wake up in a good mood when I’ve spent the night before with people I really enjoy. Other times it’s just a mediocre night, a mediocre day. But my mood this morning got me thinking about how it’s easiest to make friends when you don’t have them. When you have friends, you might gain a sort of lackadaisical attitude: you’re set, you have friends already so why would you need more? I’m not entirely like this, I like to go out and make new friends constantly. But even with this attitude of trying to make new friends as much as possible, there are some unavoidable facets that come with having friends.
It’s like this: if I go to dinner with friends as opposed to being by myself, no stranger is going to approach me and vice-versa. Therefore, no new friends on that occasion. If I’m walking down the sidewalk and see a friend, I may stop and talk with them—for longer if I’m alone than already with friends, more than likely.
There are some philosophical implications I’ve been just gaining knowledge of lately that have to do with this. Seneca, in arguing that life isn’t short if you know how to take advantage of it, basically said that we don’t live when our time is taken up by preoccupations; we simply exist. By preoccupations, he means people, money, trying to achieve a life of leisure, basically things that take away time from yourself and doing what you want to do. People are obviously a big perpetrator of this. Think about all the times you’ve spent waiting on someone to get ready or even “getting ready†when instead you could be out doing what you’re getting ready to do or anything else.
This all comes back to being your own person. Life really should be about living for yourself in my opinion, and just because that makes you a perceivably “selfish†person doesn’t mean it’s wrong; the day you become a douche bag about it is the day it becomes wrong. I think I’m going to take a break from my normal friends, as I have this weekend, and see where life takes me—do my own thing like always, just officially (as far as they’re concerned).
The “Moment” in Action
Continuing a bit from my last post here, assuming it all made sense. We'll pretend it did. Alright, well that's all fine and dandy, but what about putting it into action? That's a little harder to do. What if the current situation you're in, at this moment, isn't good? It's natural that we'd want to remember the past or possibly hope for the future when this is the case. For example, if a loved one dies, we want to remember them and everything they've brought to our life. The present sucks, frankly, so why would we want to concentrate on that when it brings more joy to us to just stay in the past, remembering? Seems like a dead end.
It doesn't have to be. Yes, the present isn't good. But what about the ways in which the person affected your life? The things you learned from them, and how they might have shaped you into becoming who you are today? You're a better person now. Ah, that brings us back to the present. Thinking of those things can actually make you think of the present, and it might even make you feel better that you are better off because of that; because of the person.
Now what if it's for the future? For example, you're working at a job that you hate. The people suck, your boss sucks, you don't want to wake up every morning just because you have to go to work. You could hope for the future: "Maybe things will get better." Again, the present isn't good. But what about the things you could do in your free time to make that dream of becoming a musician, or becoming your own boss, or just doing what you love to do, come true? You can start taking action, and this is where the future is different from the past-- it hasn't happened yet, and therefore it can be changed. And the only way to cause any kind of change at all? Action and action only. Thoughts, dreams, and hopes exist only in your head and nowhere else. They can influence your actions, but it's only when these things are converted into actions that change actually begins to happen.
Making the leap from your current mind-set to this kind of thinking can be a bigger gap to jump for some than it is for others. And if it is hard to begin with, start smaller. Start switching your gears from listening to, analyzing what's in your head, to what is really happening at that exact moment. Realize that the only thing that is real is what is happening this moment. By this time it's more than likely habit for you to think ahead or reminisce when the present starts to go for the worse. But habits are more easily broken if you consciously think about your actions, or in this case, your thoughts, at the moment they are actually happening.
Anticipation of the future
Our favorite thing to do. Sometimes it helps us to be happy, anticipating a good day ahead or good things for the future. Sometimes it drives us nuts with the anticipation of the worst possible scenario we can come up with in our heads. But why? We need answers. Hello religion, hello natural scientific inquiry, hello mom ("I need some advice"). The unknown, certain unknowns, make us crazy. Just by the unknown's very nature it can do this. It's damned weird if you ask me.
So why does it drive us so crazy? Well, I'm smart... I'm missing some pieces and don't understand something... So following that logic, what the hell is "wrong" with me? Nothing. You just don't have the knowledge of this particular subject you're inquiring about and if you had a few less expectations in your life well you wouldn't have this problem. But since you do, sit down and be patient. There's no use wasting your current time thinking about the future, especially when it has expectations tied to it.
What do I mean by this. We could agree that we humans don't know everything. We don't even know time. Then again, we created it. But regardless of that, every moment that passes (note a moment isn't a set amount of "time") moves into the past. We think we know the past through our minds, through memories, smells and sights and sounds linked to memories, but we really don't know it. For all we know we could have dreamt it.
The future. We can only imagine it. In some special cases, we can dream it, but that's about it. We can anticipate and come up with things that coincide with our desires, whether good or bad, to prepare ourselves so that perhaps the blow of this event happening is less hard, whether this is intentional or not.
So what are we left with? The present. It is the only thing we can be sure about. We can know that right now, you are reading the word "word" and hearing the low hum of a computer fan and smelling whatever smell might be in the air and touching a computer mouse perhaps. It is absolute-- it is completely positive. So, coming full-circle here, why spend the most certain moments of your life trying to draw conclusions from the most undetermined? Live not only for the moment, but for the present.
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