transcending ideas Posted by Stephanie on March 25, 1998 at 21:31:02:
I don't know what ancient people thought. I see their dwellings and their art and if I'm lucky, what they wrote, but I don't know what their ideas were, no one does. So what might I think today that they might have thought?
A man asked me once "Why are you alive?"
I said "I didn't think I had a choice."
Do I have a choice? I can take my own life, but that goes against every fiber in my being. I was made to be alive. Why?
No one has ever figured that one out and I don't think anyone ever will. That right there is the big one. I would bet all the pennies I have that at every moment in time since man's first self-conscious neuron fired, some soul has been quietly asking theirself, why am I?
I think all ideas and creating and communicating comes down to just being. We are alive, we didn't get a choice in the matter, and for the most part, we want to stay that way. We don't know why, and it bothers us at the times in our lives when we want the most to be left alone. But wheither we look it straight in the face and ponder it, or we turn our backs and pretend that it never occured to us, in both ways we are acknowledging it. So, throughout time, all humans had this question to grapple with. If you look at any idea long enough, you will find that kernel of why? in it. When we can't figure that particular question out, we turn instead to either exorcising it, or making an uneasy peace with it. It spawned art and literature and religion. It can be buried with the births of children and the rigors of routine and ritual. It was bypassed with science and athiesm. And maybe, just maybe, when you die, it will become apparent to you as was countless generations before.
And you can bet your pennies that the reason I wrote this is probably because I'm thinking about it. And then I guess you'd have to ask yourself, what are you doing reading it?