Sunday, April 19, 2009 @10:45 PM
Last night, I awoke. Last night was the first time I was truly awake, and for once I thought.
We are ourselves, we cannot deny that, but what are we really? What do we consist of? Are we the body? Are we merely the brain? Or perhaps, are we wholly spirit? But in either case, do we truly exist?
To-night, spare your sleep, but rather marvel at yourselves. Bid your hand in front of your eyes and there it is brought. Immediate action. A perfect mechanism within each and everyone of us, every muscle and every bone. Do you see? We are no more the blood in our veins nor the cells on our fingers than we are the breeze we feel in the night, yet here it moves! We are but the mind, but the it commands the body as if it were one.
And so when we expire, where do we really go? The promise of the afterlife is a tempting one, but let us not blind ourselves further. What if, at our deathbeds, we ceased to exist, completely? What if not only our existence is erased, but our very conscience, our very consciousness, is lost? What if, at the moment of Guy Fawkes' hanging, or at Lincoln's assassination, their consciousness just vanished, and they permanently ceased to be.
Not even as a floating spirit, but the very existence of 'me', vanquished; not even a pair of eyes to see the galaxies beyond, not even the awareness of 'self', or knowledge, or language, but oneself as a 'something'; one who no longer exists.
After all, what makes one so special among the billions in one world alone, that one's consciousness should be spared from Nature's cycle of creation and destruction?
I don't know about the rest of you, but the very idea of such a reality pains my heart. The idea that I was created on the very day of my birthday, and I will cease to be on my deathbed. After the latter, no history, nor current event will matter to me any more than before the former. After this one life, there is no future, nothing to search for nor look towards over the horizon; you live your time and you're gone.
The possibility of happy endings are terribly overrated.
What we have now, its all we have left. What are we going to spend it on? Will I waste it praying in hopes of a better tomorrow? No! Will I lie to myself that future retribution may find no crack in my conscience? No! Will I then just kill off my dreams, sit on my bed and cower in fear? No!
Only today do I realize, life is as beautiful as it is too-short. When we cease to be, perhaps all that would really matter then is either that we've lived our life to its boundaries, or we have left our mark on the Earth, be it as a rainbow or a scar.
What we
are is not what we
can be; we become what we can be when we forget who we
are.
To shed our mortal coil; to create, first we must forget.
So, my brothers, let us usher in the new age; our age of forgetfulness;
Our age of
immortality.