Throughout my travels, as some of you who have been here a while may have noticed, I've found myself standing on the edge of chasms of human knowledge, which differentiates itself from comforting wisdom in the principle issue that not all knowledge can lead to a satisfying enlightenment.
There are so many questions we forbid ourselves from asking, which begs the Philosopher to ask if he has the mind and courage for it. How many of these endless black chasms have I found myself leaning over the edge of, only to retract. A retraction not from fear of being lost within those chasms, as I believe myself the ability to crawl back out of those bottomless pits, but rather, the question within the mind becomes:
What type of a man crawls back out?
Who is he once he has fallen so deep into such
dark and disturbing places only to return to its surface?
All these pits, these chasms, call forth not just the inquiry of the source but also what is the root of its meaning? Are we mortal men that corrupted? Are we truly that inspired by the senses? Where is the spirit within these bottomless chasms of the insensible?
How many of us have been so corrupted by so little, a corruption that extends far beyond the obvious. A contagious sort of corruption that spills across generations to the point of absolute obscurity as to its initial source and causation.
To seek, sometimes, is to find. Yet, the stories we tell ourselves about the journey being the most significant part of the conclusion aren't always so true. Some trips are the most horrific part of the story, only to land that adventurer right back to where they came from. Changed, and yet not always for the better.
Or is it?
To speak of such things is to commit treason against the sensibilities of humanity. To be outcast, perhaps rightly so, by that ever-present judgment of the social creatures we identify and align with.
To ignore is sometimes impossible. Instead, we invent the most glorious or even unremarkable stories about the stories. We make excuses. We tell lies. If all the above is impossible or fails, we simply ignore it and cast out anyone who asks the questions. How many storytellers, scientists, and thinkers have been lost to such conventions as the social cohesion of collective acceptance casts them out for fear of them being more right than all others?
Truth is not truth but rather a spectrum of our acceptance of the answer presented as weighted against our internal sensibilities, which are governed by the education we allow ourselves to receive and our capability to internalize.
You sense it, don't you? Even if you have no idea what I'm saying, your imagination already fills in the blanks of the context. That, right there, is so fascinating. Is that our corruption? Is that our angst, our anger, our powerlessness? Is that our curiosity, child-like wonder, our futile grasp at finding awareness in a world built on obscuring that process and its conclusions?
Where is the line?
Tell me where the invisible line is, I beg of you!
The line that if I cross you and all others shall cast me aside.
The line that if I cross a new law shall be made to prevent its crossing.
The line that if I cross may cause you to cross with me and be damned along side.
What is too much?
Too much information.
Too much pleasure.
Too much satisfaction.
Too much “truth”.
…Whisper it to me.
If you told me the line, I'd cross it, not in the physical but always in the intellect.
I'd cross it a hundred times.
I'd dance on that line to show you that it's just a line in the sand we draw to prevent us from understanding the nature of our mortal condition.
And yet, none of that really matters... For it is the black chasms of humanity that repel, and yet, those who fall within them never leave. Forming not just a worldview but an entire identity from within that hole.
The irony.
What is the meaning of it all? We endlessly ask across the endless ages of near-endless time.
You tell me what you think our purpose is, and I'll let you know mine.
Is this Hell?
Hell with just enough happiness to prevent the soul from crying out with hope for heaven?
For what is Hell without Hope? Equally, what is this world with so many demons within and within humanity?
Question
Has anyone ever "un-alived" themselves out of boredom?
Not a depression or a sadness. Not a loneliness. Not a contempt.
Just boredom.
Has anyone among us ever lived a life as far as it can go and then decided to 'move on' to the next thing? Done all they could or would and had nothing left to be or bare?
Tis the fear of ultimate knowledge I fear. To know as much as one can possibly know and have nothing left of substance to learn. Indeed, there are tricks and trades one can practice. Still, these things easily cross from knowledge to skill, which is a physical knowledge of the thing that supersedes the mind from the viewer's perspective.
Self-Soothing
I once knew a paramedic who told me some of the most gruesome stories for the shock and awe of it within his twisted sense of self-soothing. The one story he told has stuck with me ever since, which goes as simply as this:
There once was a man who had enough. Not wanting to leave a mess for his wife, he loaded a rifle with one bullet and entered his garage.
A single shot, he thought.
As that bullet passed through his brain, he did not die.
He laid on that cement floor for an ungodly amount of time.
As his suffering did not end, he crawled across the garage, up a few steps, and back into the home.
He crawled into the kitchen to grab a rag to wipe the mess as he went.
He crawled to the living room to grab another bullet.
He crawled back to the garage to finish his task, wiping the floor as best he could.
That man struggled more to die than most ever will to live.
I once asked that paramedic why he quit, as he clearly would light up with each tale he told as he recalled all the lives he had saved. He said the day he resigned was the day he was called to gather the remains of his best friend off a highway with a shovel.
I never judged him again after learning that.
He was a good man.
Constantly Dying
I remember one of the first times I almost died, the first of too many.
Trapped within a remote community for a short spell. I awoke in the morning, seeing my breath as the heat within my home was off, having used all its fuel much too early, during a particularly bitter winter. I called the person one calls for delivery of that vital fuel. The lady on the phone told me they don't accept credit cards over the phone and that I must travel to her office to pay for the service.
I gathered all my layers and headed into the basement, the warmest part of the house by that point, to dress as best I could. Wrapped in as many layers as my thick winter jacket would cover.
No vehicle would start in that cold, the most bitter cold I've ever felt.
I trudged along an empty street. It was only 20 blocks.
I don't remember much of the journey. Perhaps it was too cold for memory to work.
I remember the warmth that came over me while I was walking. I kept my eyes down to avoid the blistering blast of wind. My eyes strayed to that ditch along the road.
The ditch was warm to my mind. It called to me. It told me that if I wanted to be warm, all I had to do was curl up tight in that ditch, and I'd warm up. The more I thought about that ditch, the warmer I felt.
“Just for a moment”
the little voice said
“Just rest for but a moment and you'll be warm.”
I've never wanted anything more than to be warm in that moment.
I would have given anything to be warm.
I don't know how I made it to the office to pay for that vital warmth. I don't even remember the steps I climbed to the door. All I remember was the look on the lady's face as she screamed. A horrified and uncontrolled scream as I entered the building.
"You look like death!" she screamed as she rushed to me.
"I made it," I mumbled, her scream shocking me awake from my trance.
Ever since I've wondered if I actually made it.
I remember stopping on the road and staring at the ditch. I remember it so clearly.
I don't remember continuing the journey. I don't remember taking another step until I heard that lady scream.
My world has never been the same since.
I've never felt as warm as I did gazing at that ditch.
Did I die? Am I merely living a false memory of a life lost or could have been?
Is this death we all are experiencing, but the color of it is just bright enough to fool us into believing we are truly among the living?
Is that what death is? The eventual arresting of the human struggle as we succumb to that sweet and loving voice within which tells us:
It's going to be ok.
Just let go.
and we trust that when we do someone, something, will catch us.
If we freeze, the voice promises warmth.
So, if we drown, does the voice promise air?
If we burn, does the voice promise reprieve?
Too many chasms.
Too many questions.
Never enough answers.
Too many lines drawn in the sand.
As always,
Farewell, and Good Luck.
-Dark Philosopher
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