Anything Essential is Invisible to the Eye.

“What I’m looking at is a shell. What’s important is invisible.”

There are so many ways that one can know a person and it seems to me that the only ways which we are willing to recognize are very surface. I’m unsatisfied with how rarely people go deep with each other in popular culture. I think it’s because our society tends to base your value as a person, on what you look like. Now, I can see how we might have learned to do this. I think there is actually an element of survival involved. If we can learn what to expect from people, simply by looking at them, then we’d most certainly be safer for it. So of course, those people who have the ability to soften our eyes with their features, why shouldn’t we trust them more? Why shouldn’t we expect the most from them? Those people with qualities that we find aesthetically irresistible, they get away with so much. We forgive them for being less intelligent, for having ignorant views, for being assholes, because simply being in their presence is some kind of socially validating experience.

I’m quoting the little prince a lot, but there is a part of the book I’ll never forget. It says: “Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.”

I think, the more we stray away from figures about people, the more we feel as if we are on unchartered territory, the scarier things feel. Getting to know someone beyond what is surface requires confrontation. You don’t go deep without resistance on both sides. It’s funny, because personally, this is the place that I love to go with people. When you start getting to who a person really is, it’s similar to driving in the dark with no lights on, except sometimes you find that you and the other person are figuring out the road and navigating safely together without needing any lights. That’s a really special feeling. It’s when you get to this place that you can make sense of the idea that what you are seeing when you look at someone else is a shell, and the good parts are inside of it. That’s when you can really get the specialness in the sound of a person’s voice, and the games they like to play, and whether or not they collect butterflies. I think I became fascinated with the hidden parts of people at some point during High School, where I realized that understanding people, their motivations, pasts and fears, would help me to become a better writer. I don’t know if it did work in that way, but the desire created something in me that makes my life very interesting at times.

Except sometimes I wish it didn’t make me so aware. It can become so painful, so ridiculously boring to be always asking for more from people than they know how to give you. Most people go into a club, scantily clad, grinding to songs about frivolous sex and unhealthy relationships, while drinking alcohol without once considering the reality of what they are doing. Me, I enter a situation like that and my brain starts working. I’m thinking that, although I love dancing, that this space was created for people to find someone to sleep with. It’s created to get you into the mood for finding a mate—a temporary one. It’s a situation created to help you fulfill a very primal need without the responsibility of getting to know someone. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or a good thing. I’d rather not judge it entirely. It just makes me sad, I guess. Those of us, who simply cannot turn off our brains when confronted with artificial connections, have trouble feeling like they fit in during those times.

I just want so much more than being pretty, or sexy, or any other of those silly ideals our society places on us. I want more than text messages and tweets, and Facebook chatting, and Google chatting, looking through someone’s online photo albums, and reading through a list of their interests and favorite movies and favorite TV shows. I want a smaller world where I know everyone in my neighborhood. I want to stay up late telling stories that make me feel…fulfilled, not because they are about earth shattering matters, but because they are told between friends, with genuine caring. I want to see the glaze in someone’s eyes when they talk about something they love, and I want to see the way they move their hands when telling a joke. I want to spend all my time with the people I know, gathering up into my memory those things about them that only become precious after death. I never liked waiting until the end of something to see how special it was.

This entry feels a little disjointed, but I’ve learned I shouldn’t expect much from my eloquence when mercury is in retrograde. :D

Who Created Who?

A world without God seems bleak, shallow, unreal and dishonest—to me anyway. It feels like a world that doesn't recognize goodness. But that idea, I have to admit has been carved into our consciousnesses. Maybe a world without god CAN recognize goodness and it's just harder to see. Like the way we rarely see earthworms, but know they're there because the good brown soil is there to remind us of its work. Sometimes god feels like the biggest cop out of all—a reason to avoid the face of our destinies and expect them to float up to us without any effort of our own. God gives us the right to let go—but should we be letting go? The idea that there is a God in the sky guiding every moment of our lives is slightly oppressive. Did my unconscious self feel the need for that and ask for it, or was this care relegated on me. Is it possible that everything I am---body, soul, spirit, ambition---is all I need to create my very own destiny? I like that a lot, that makes me feel like the most powerful being in the universe. That makes me feel like Eve, who ate from the tree of knowledge despite the rules, and made a hard life for herself—yes, but learned to relish her suffering as well as her pleasure, and learned too that both feelings are so intertwined, at times it is difficult to distinguish one from the other. If paradise had been ours, what would we have learned? We would have remained endlessly children. But I don't envy children and I never have. I would rather be blissfully aware than blissfully ignorant. I think the fall was a gift. I think we ought to thank Eve for what she did because if she hadn't, we would have lost our ability to choose. Anyway, I don't believe this story ever happened.

But metaphysical speculation leaves you all tangled up in sharp wires. There is so much that it is impossible to see clearly. Once again, I come back to the idea of God and I can't let it go. Believing in God is the most natural thing in the world to do, indeed if he didn't exist he would have to be invented. It's a part of our nature to recognize there is a huge current under the ocean of our consciousnesses, and the only thing keeping us aware of it is a ripple on top of the water. Things are going on we can't see, and if we could see them we wouldn't understand. The thousands of years of our existence have been spent inching closer and closer to spiritual truth. The closest I've felt to God hasn't been in a church (and trust me—I've seen and worshipped in plenty of them). It has been in moments when I've least expected it; moments which I've spent with nature, feeling a deep and contented connection with everything. Feeling like nothing mattered, and like every molecule in my body was bending towards every blade of grass, aching to be a part of every individual star, opening itself to every last particle of dirt. Moments like those occur, and I think: There. That is what I want from God. I want him to remind me that I am a part of everything and in everyone, and that the world and our existences are beautiful because of that. I want spiritual fortitude, I want God to remind me that I am human and because of that I am flawed--but must love myself regardless of that. Still though, I don't think I'm being entirely fair. Being in a church makes me feel so very mystified, a feeling that I like. I don't think churches are dead and spiritually empty. I think they are very alive with something. Being in a church makes me feel like the sky is cracked wide open with hope and forgiveness. There is a connection with other people and with yourself that happens there, which can so rarely happen anywhere else. Actually, it is similar to the feeling I get on the subway, or whenever I am with a lot of people at once. It's the feeling of being connected. So maybe God is wherever that connection is. And maybe that's why we are always seeking to force ourselves under one banner even if it's by way of violence, because mysteriously we long to be close to each other. Mysteriously, we are all aware of the connection which exists between us, but don't know how to handle it or what to do with it. Maybe sometimes it frightens us, too.

All this talk reminds me of Socrates and his talk of shadows in the cave. How the world as it truly is exists behind us, and the world that we are actually seeing is only a shadow, a wisp of the representation of the real thing. But at least in this realm of existence we can create things and control things and make our own lives—or at least get the sense of it. I wonder, how many realities it is possible to experience at once.

 

I don't think all this existential talk will ever end for me. I don't think I will ever come to a permanent conclusion as to what God is—so far, every single definition of him I've listened to makes me feel restless, like there is something I'm failing to notice or simply am not aware of. With talk of God, inevitably comes talk of death, and I'm not quite sure I'm ready to comb through my feelings on that, just yet.