Yesterday, roughly at 16:30 GMT+1, the Earth completed its 34th full revolution around the Sol star since I was born. Yeah, it was my birthday all right. And it was a good day too, filled with the predictable comings and goings at work, but also loads of beautiful messages from friends, wishing me all the Best. I really really liked it. Also, I cake at the office, bonus points. So what now? Now you are my friends, and you get to listen to me being really deep, and since my birthday is still fresh, you get to nod in approval; nod lots, please.
Now with the questions! What is so good about being alive? If one is lucky enough (and I am more than enough) plenty of things make life worth it. I cannot imagine for a second to identify myself with the words from the dark, tormented TV character, usually someone with the Gothic and vampiresque looks of a damned soul about them: I did not ask God to be alive! Woe! Oh, the burden of being alive! Lo! The futility of toiling for all those years, for nothing! All Dust!
...Sure...
I see it differently though, and since today it is my birthday, I feel authorized to drop some deep deep thinking upon you innocent bystanders. It is a thought that crosses my mind rather frequently, which might make me edge towards hedonism, I fear. It is a trite thought, perhaps, but one to which I relate easily: it is the journey that counts, not the destination. It is not the probability of all of this happening, or not happening, of life existing only on Earth or on a million distant suns, just blossoming, next to waning forever, at the pinnacle of progress or in the barbarous Dark Ages. It is just our ability to sense that, and to appreciate the wonderful miracle of conscience. The ultimate purpose of all this, if there is one, escapes me, yet I am also not chasing it all.
Is it hedonism then? The belief that the pursuit of what one derives pleasure from is intrinsically good? I think not. I think it is our ability to sense our own and one another's feelings, to relate and too want to react to them, with kindness, with awareness, with initiative, that should make us proud to be alive. I think it is this beautiful Indian summer that drives me to speak my mind in these terms. It might be the carrot cake that I tasted today at Sowohalsauch, the walk in Boxhagener Platz I took yesterday, or just the rush of adrenaline that still courses though my veins after the run, but I feel very much alive.
There is this book I just finished: The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov. It is a great book, that touches many interesting themes. Social engineering, time travel and the paradoxes that time itself inevitably fixes, making one wonder what is the connection, the fil-rouge that seams all of us and everything else into this huge fabric, this tapestry of Bayeux made of many, infinite, possible realities. It is mind boggling, and could drive one mad, like it happens to one character in the book. Another character, the protagonist as a matter of fact, Andrew Harlan, has a moment that describes wonderfully that feeling of epiphany that, from time to time, we have all felt, as if in the presence of something great and momentous, yet just beyond our reach.
He had only to move his hand to feel the warmth and softness of her flesh, and he dared not do that, lest he wake her out of whatever dreaming she might have. It was as though she were dreaming for the two of them, dreaming herself and himself and all that had happened, and as though her waking would drive it all from existence. It was a thought that seemed a piece of those other queer, unusual thoughts he had experienced just before. Those had been strange thoughts, coming to him at a moment between sense and nonsense. He tried to recapture them and could not. Yet suddenly it was very important that he recapture them. For although he could not remember the details, he could remember that, for just an instant, he had understood something. He was not certain what that something was, but there had been the unearthly clarity of the half-asleep, when more than mortal eye and mind seems suddenly to come to life.
Now with the questions! What is so good about being alive? If one is lucky enough (and I am more than enough) plenty of things make life worth it. I cannot imagine for a second to identify myself with the words from the dark, tormented TV character, usually someone with the Gothic and vampiresque looks of a damned soul about them: I did not ask God to be alive! Woe! Oh, the burden of being alive! Lo! The futility of toiling for all those years, for nothing! All Dust!
...Sure...
I see it differently though, and since today it is my birthday, I feel authorized to drop some deep deep thinking upon you innocent bystanders. It is a thought that crosses my mind rather frequently, which might make me edge towards hedonism, I fear. It is a trite thought, perhaps, but one to which I relate easily: it is the journey that counts, not the destination. It is not the probability of all of this happening, or not happening, of life existing only on Earth or on a million distant suns, just blossoming, next to waning forever, at the pinnacle of progress or in the barbarous Dark Ages. It is just our ability to sense that, and to appreciate the wonderful miracle of conscience. The ultimate purpose of all this, if there is one, escapes me, yet I am also not chasing it all.
Is it hedonism then? The belief that the pursuit of what one derives pleasure from is intrinsically good? I think not. I think it is our ability to sense our own and one another's feelings, to relate and too want to react to them, with kindness, with awareness, with initiative, that should make us proud to be alive. I think it is this beautiful Indian summer that drives me to speak my mind in these terms. It might be the carrot cake that I tasted today at Sowohalsauch, the walk in Boxhagener Platz I took yesterday, or just the rush of adrenaline that still courses though my veins after the run, but I feel very much alive.
There is this book I just finished: The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov. It is a great book, that touches many interesting themes. Social engineering, time travel and the paradoxes that time itself inevitably fixes, making one wonder what is the connection, the fil-rouge that seams all of us and everything else into this huge fabric, this tapestry of Bayeux made of many, infinite, possible realities. It is mind boggling, and could drive one mad, like it happens to one character in the book. Another character, the protagonist as a matter of fact, Andrew Harlan, has a moment that describes wonderfully that feeling of epiphany that, from time to time, we have all felt, as if in the presence of something great and momentous, yet just beyond our reach.
He had only to move his hand to feel the warmth and softness of her flesh, and he dared not do that, lest he wake her out of whatever dreaming she might have. It was as though she were dreaming for the two of them, dreaming herself and himself and all that had happened, and as though her waking would drive it all from existence. It was a thought that seemed a piece of those other queer, unusual thoughts he had experienced just before. Those had been strange thoughts, coming to him at a moment between sense and nonsense. He tried to recapture them and could not. Yet suddenly it was very important that he recapture them. For although he could not remember the details, he could remember that, for just an instant, he had understood something. He was not certain what that something was, but there had been the unearthly clarity of the half-asleep, when more than mortal eye and mind seems suddenly to come to life.
I think that Andrew Harlan, in feeling that question hovering above his head, the answer just brushing lightly against his forehead, feels finally alive and starts his liberation from the huge machinery that had constrained him until then. It is the miracle of conscience, that unanswered question that enters my mind between sense and nonsense. I hope it remains so, for another 36500 nights!!!
