Forgetting about the internet

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my room reflecting on the beauty and tranquility of nothingness when I realized something that had slipped my head for more than 15 minutes: I could check my email. It’s a tough thing to do, forgetting about the internet, even for just a short while. Staring off into space, space in this case being a turned-off TV, I remembered that amazing tool to the universe, where school is free, where ads rule all, and where one word could turn into more than 2.6 million web pages in less than .0000256 seconds. Thank you, google, for all that you do.

We had gotten back from clearlake, another marvelous get-away situated north of the bay in a tiny little town called Kelseyville. There isn’t much to do and I imagine the locals like it that way. Sitting on the deck, staring at the water, trying to get lost in the depth of the mountains, letting the atmospheric perspective blind out the furthest object that we try to make out. The vanishing point, from nothing to infinity, our spectrum (and who says it’s limited? A few hundred nanometers is more than we need!), our world in a little town next to a big lake. Time never showed and that was good, because he wasn’t invited.

Usually I sit around the house or walk around the city, waiting for many an idea to jump from the pool in my brain and hit its head on the top of my skull. It passes out from the excitement and if I am not careful it might fall back into the pool, a coma of sorts. I hold on to it for a few days, hours, and contemplate why on Earth I think these thoughts. I imagine we all do, but that normally our brains work with a filter. Those devious or too abstract thoughts get pushed aside because they aren’t practical enough, those radical and evil thoughts get called radical and evil, and the ones that are too mushy can’t stand on their own. I’ve tried (somehow) to get rid of the filter, and I think that there are times where it’s either malfunctioning or not functioning at all, and wouldn’t that be the same thing?

Chasing ideas, that’s what I do. About a week ago, taking a shower (being alone the mind starts to wander and instead of questioning or looking for a distraction I like to let it peruse the strings, ultimately leading to me talking to myself in one of the most fluid and expressive ways possible, or a whisper) a thought came to me: does one have to have values (or fears) in order to be happy? Or phrased differently and maybe even a little more easier to answer, since we can’t help but answer the questions we pose. Is it weird to imagine that the problems we face are ones that we ourselves create?

Again, phrased differently: can someone with no value nor faith in life be happy? I immediately want to say yes, and I don’t want to have a reason. But I still put all this pressure on happiness, isn’t it as well another invention, another belief, another dogma that doesn’t have to exist? It surely isn’t wrong nor right, indifferent. I see happiness as being indifferent, and that idea just made its way forward now. Is nature happiness, is nature indifferent? I know that when you don’t water a plant it dies (the kind of plants we keep as pets), but it knows it is going to die and so it does. It does what it has to do, even if that means to cease to exist. Is survival the only mechanism keeping us doing what we are doing? I surely think not, as we can get rid of many things (especially those in the current market trends) and still be able to survive, which continues to be both temporary and timeless. Is it strange to think that one day ipods will be obsolete just like horse drawn carriages, walkmans, and now analog television? Change, death, so often, so underappreciated I feel. The death of a star is beautiful, is it not? The explosion, the gases, and colors, the vastness of it all, as if ignorance and pure splendor were all we needed to be happy. Not logic, not knowledge, not even survival. Again, the dogma continues. I’ve simply covered up truth with happiness. Earlier it had been logic and philosophy with truth. The lie. The lie.

Is lying telling the truth? A good excuse, yes, if understanding that the lie is what someone wants to be true, a very tricky way of telling someone what one wants by telling the other what he or she wants to hear. But most often what one wants to hear isn’t what the other one wants to be, unless the lie could be read as: I want you to think that this is true. Truth is still there, it has to be, just like life at every funeral, darkness at every candle, happiness at every tear.

Psychology: these ideas, we tend to bubble them up, put them in piles just like papers, getting to those that will progress our lives first and those that are mere dreams-we humor them, keep them hidden, never speak of them for fear of losing them-are left secretly behind. Progress, but to go where? If there is no relationship is there no universe? Can we measure something if we do not have something else? I think this has to do with relativity, as we can observe whatever we want and then compare it with whatever else we want, but some things are deemed non-comparable or otherwise illogical, mistakes: apples to oranges, miles to seconds, time to desire. Those too are relationships, ones that are rarely discussed. Are they just hideous or is there something we are missing? I would consider the latter as it would take a little more effort to cover this one up.

These ideas, we tend to surround ourselves with ones similar to ours, generalize as to try not to include ourselves in the matter. Take, for instance, feelings, perception, the stress model. Our perception begins our reaction, the only person making me whatever I feel is myself. This is agreed, in a general context, but the minute I start getting mad it all goes away, the theories, the “bs” philosophy, something isn’t right in the world because something isn’t right with me. My fault, my responsibility, but again the almost accepted response is to project, to blame others, to channel the anger into something or someone else, as if it was a liquid that needed to be drained and not drunk.

Ideas that counteract our ideas, that make them seem like mere-dare I say-ideas; where pride comes in, our securities, our self-esteem, our building blocks upon which we have constructed our own lives, and those that interfere with this standstill are treated not as such but worse. To say god is dead, to say he is alive, as pros and cons are with everything, is both right and wrong at the same time, depending on which team you are on. Wouldn’t it be more rewarding to see the truth and lie in both from both sides, or from all the sides, or to even get rid of sides, there is no right and wrong?

The need to label and destroy those ideas that make us feel insecure, that question them, “make” them scared. Like this email, a politician, a diety. To see right and wrong doesn’t seem to be profound anymore, but to see how close they are, to see its unifying characteristics, to see the nothing that interlaces our being, our sense of self, the doubts that cloud and try to support our dearest dreams, the house of cards our world, a gust of wind the question, and our bodies the shield. To sit and watch our ideas die, to watch them live, to let them change, I think is one of the most beautiful experiences we have created so far. And it will change because,“All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.”

As a parting gift I would like to say that yes, it is commendable and worthwhile to fight for what you believe, to never give up in your quest for truth, but I find it even more exciting to realize that what I think is true isn’t, to stop walking in a circle, to stare at the sky, and to get lost. Forever is all we got, the unknown, the un-educated, the blissful, the damned, in one word: the internet. Is it indifferent?

-Anthony