(Non)sensical Rant as an Ode to the Human Condition

There is no difference between us and nature, no end between time and space, and we understand reality to be nothing more than a magic show.

He held up a mug and asked if the mug was really a mug. Though it had been many days of objective questioning—Is this a pen or an arrow? Is this knife a weapon or a tool? Is this fish rotten or a delicacy?—this was the beginning, when the allegorical scene began to realign, and we all got swept away in the paradox of understanding that there's no such thing as reality if reality is defined as the state of things as they actually exist, because nothing exists the same for both you and me. This is the moment we abandoned the definition of objective understanding and accepted that everything we intellectually process is influenced by our own perception.

I do not like you because you are loud. You do not like me because I am quiet. Are we both unlikeable?

You hug me because you need human connection and show joy and love through touch. I cringe away because I don't like to be touched and find your physical affections to be a tad dramatic. 

Can we accept our preferences while acknowledging they are fleeting?

The wind blows, a gale force formed by the heat of the sun on the Earth's surface, energy causing air to rise, a reaction of pressure: cause and effect. I feel that wind on my skin—but the wind moves beneath my skin, too. My blood ebbs and flows, my nerves synapse and fire. Wind is defined as the natural movement of air of any velocity; thus, wind is movement. Is rain wind, as it is only defined by its movement, or is it otherwise a stale puddle at our feet?

If wind is nothing more than movement, but we cannot always see it, and we cannot always feel it or hear it or smell it or taste it, does it exist? If it exists, then why do we deny that which exists but cannot see or hear or feel?

Does time exist? There is no end or beginning—time, as we understand it, is a construct. If we age at one rate during a calendar year (what even is a year?) but travel beyond the Earth's gravitational force and our aging process slows, do we still process the passage of time the same way? Is one calendar year on Earth the same if we travel to Mars (or beyond)? 

If time is neverending, then impermanence is inevitable. And yet, as humans, we avoid impermanence and change because aging, sickness, and death can be painful.

Still, we have to find a balance between our experience of change and the misconception of control because there is no other option. It’s like fighting nature, but how can we fight nature if there is no difference between us?

Every day, I watch humans search desperately for good health. I scroll past articles of fads and quick fixes, pills, and tips and tricks that promise happiness and longevity. 

It is unlikely that humans, culturally and as a whole, will abandon the promise of ease when they discover one small pill and one expensive gadget doesn't fill the hole in our chest. It doesn't provide good health or loving kindness or community. Our phone doesn't substitute or replicate the experience of the human condition; it worsens it.

We avoid change within our bodies because even though it is inevitable, it still takes time to pass, and if it is too difficult, we'd much rather take a pill or use an expensive gadget to ease the burden. We don't use our inner intellect and mindful intelligence to process that which can be named; therefore, we pass each day more deeply entrenched in painful ignorance. 

If a man who holds a piece of paper declaring himself the authority on your health tells you to take a pill, is it because he believes that is the best option to cure your pain and rid you of disease? Do you take it? Does he care that you found this pill through an ad on television, and together, you decided this was the best path forward, even if the side effects listed are in some ways more harmful than your initial complaint? Does that doctor, with an education declaring himself so, know that preventative medicine, to take a walk and to eat well and manage your daily habits thoughtfully, though it may not work as fast as swallowing a pill, may offer a lifetime of not just good health but true wellness?

If he knows this—because he has that piece of paper declaring himself qualified enough to guide you through your human condition—and he's too overworked by an overwhelmingly depleted healthcare system, will he carve the time out of his already busy day to tell you there could be another way, even if that other way will take more time and not be as easy as swallowing a pill?

Balance within the cosmos and the Law of Energy state that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. That which we give will be taken away, a karmic action and reaction, cause and effect. There is no difference between us and nature, no end between time and space, and we understand reality to be nothing more than a magic show. 

We can say, as Shakespeare did, "Why, then, 'tis none to you, for there is nothing, either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. To me it is a prison," and ruminate this existential crisis, overthinking and contemplating everything around us as a way to help us accept reality as nothing more than a created concept, giving us the illusion that we have control over our environment, ourselves and each other. When we look around and see that the world is on fire and that the winds are raging—both literally and metaphorically—we get swept away in the consequence of it all until, thinking we can make a change, when, in fact, it's all already burned to the ground around us.

Until we've shrunk so far into ourselves that we forgot to ask the skillful question, not the existential one. We can instead ruminate on the fable of the poisoned arrow: I've been struck, and I must know these answers: Who poisoned me? Why did they do it, and how? Why me, what have I done to deserve this poisoned arrow? And while I lie there dying, contemplating and asking questions about this poisoned arrow buried deep in my gut, I forgot to simply ask someone to pull it out and help me.