beyond the blanks
The beauty of life is that there is beauty in life. That wherever you may search, even in the darkest corridors that make up your individual life construction, you will hear pleasant whispers professing an admiration for the human adventure. I suppose that this is what our case is – some sort of odyssey, perhaps a pilgrimage into the heart of all that there is to see, touch, smell, taste, and hear. Certainly, it is in engaging our senses that we live up to our name – the “human beings”. This title, which we have not-so-humbly bestowed upon ourselves, necessarily alludes to the fact that we are in continued existence. Perhaps in the process of becoming [something] – the very “blank” that I sit down to write about today.
This [something] appears to me as a sinister unknown that has perhaps eluded even the brightest minds that have toured our earth. I feel that its obscurity complements its elusive nature, and somehow, this is precisely what licenses us to fashion the desires of our hearts from whatever boons and banes we engulf ourselves in. As you may be well aware of, my dear reader, we all have a fair share of prosperity and turmoil, for we never have absolute emptiness before us. Even in the floor of the deepest of abysses, there is an abundance of darkness and a hopeful distance to some light. And in the vacuity of the vastest of spaces, there hangs the newly-formed starry cosmos within billions-of-years-old galaxies. Naturally, this means that when, not if, you find yourself wrestling with a void-like existence, be comforted in the knowledge that the creator has designed our universe such that you are never truly without company and at the mercy of boredom.
The very fact that true lonesomeness is nonviable points to our sense of “being” in connection with [something], or in this case it could also easily be [someone], [some people] at [some place] at [some point] in our human time. So on the surface of the scene I have set before you, it appears that you are surrounded by expansive blanks, but on a deeper level… behind the curtain, if I might… you are immersed in a pool of potential.
Now, this word “potential” is not a uniform gleaming horizon, but instead it is the very means through which we exercise our will. I do not wish to get into whether or not we have a will, but suppose we do… suppose you are so bold as to claim that on most days, whether or not you swallow your saliva is entirely your doing. Of those days, I can write that there are nodes in our journey of potential… multiple nodes with multiple networks that call unto us. Networks whose paths echo the desires of our hearts, also in being with us.
Certainly, the charm in this is that there is some will to the trajectory we find ourselves in. Now you may present to me, but we do not always have the recourse to determine neither our origins nor destinations. I would affirm, absolutely we do not. Yet it is indeed what lies between these two terminals that we necessarily need to draw our minds’ attention to. These are the words, deeds, and thoughts that fill the space between our comings and goings, mornings and evenings, beginnings and endings. Januaries and Decembers. And today, I present to you that we do have a good sense of what will happen in between these points.
Now you may point out, but what about all the unexpected events? Must I explicitly mention, my dear reader, that the very fact that there will be “unexpecteds” is an expectation? And no, I do not mean to convince you that we have some sort of prophetic abilities. Yet, this our “being” involves holding at any given moment the past, present and future in our minds, hearts, and souls.
By way of illustration, take the decision to eat when you’re hungry. You eat because first, you know from past experiences that eating will rid you of hunger pains. Second, you eat because you find yourself, in the present, craving for some food to fill the void your body is crying out from. And third, because you anticipate some relief from your hunger, shortly after eating, that is, in the future. There is some form of satiety that you are almost sure of and you have convinced yourself that having three or four bites of an apple will bring you closer to it. And you will be right about this, at least in ninety-nine out of one hundred cases. And just like that, you have traced the journey from hunger to fullness. This is a sample made from the basic template of pursuit. The very activity that is evidence for our mortal coil – but also the categorical epicenter of the earthquake that is our individual form.
This being the case, your being comes to a halt only when your pursuit ends. And of course it works like some form of a mathematical function, like an n-shaped bell curve. The higher the number of your pursuits, the greater your force of being… up to a certain point where your journeys’ qualities begin to diminish. And now I feel that we have arrived at the point I have been attempting to make. That the potential adventures available to you and I are forever expanding while the time we find in our mortal banks is dwindling in perpetuity. It’s tempting, nay, seducing, tantalizing, to behold all the titles we can add to our names and all the sentences we can add to our diaries. Yet what is far more important than the facts of these acts is the depth, complexity, breadth, and chaos that will inevitably accompany each choice you make. It is these qualities that produce the verdict of how beautiful your life is to become.
As a matter of course, if you are to harvest the most handsome fruits out of the land of life, I suggest that you opt for a detailed life. And not in the mere sense of its contents, but to go deeper into the fecundity of every deed, word, and thought. To think ahead and question whether the notes you play by day will release sweet symphonies when you lay your head at night or whether scenes from your mechanical day will parade themselves at the nightmarish theater of your mind. It is by doing so, by actively seeking intricacy, that your life becomes less of a template. And isn’t that worth a try?
