He walked alone, again. Birds flew up above in the sky, away. They were flying in circles, yet he couldn’t tell. For the circle was too large for his human eyes.
We are so unable to see the bigger picture. But everything moves in circles, don’t you know? The birds, the events, the planets. He stopped walking, just to think, leaning one hand on a humid wall. The energetic work of the mind had liberated him and drained him and filled him up again, with questions. A city always wet with rain. He bowed his head as if to cry, but laughter came out instead. How he laughed! How he cackled! How he filled his mouth with sound so loud! Oh yes, again, but this time it was life changing and funny. You cannot live a life of tricks without being tricked yourself, they say. Escaping the pointless chit-chat to find meaning can be a comical process. Some dance their life to a music that changes its tune from a comedy to a tragedy, without even giving us a warning.
He was finally there, right in the place he dreaded all along. Nothing left. Nothing of the old... mind. Yet it didn’t feel empty, it felt free. Like an open path that has been cleared from all debris by a cold, strong wind. This is what life looked like right now. Empty. No compromises, no possessions, no ties, no drama. In believing, in thinking, in feeling, in living, you can lose it all and yet somehow, carry on. Always ahead, always on. He distrusted the liars, the church, the school, the government, the framework pre-packed and given to him, from early, innocent childhood. No more. With a reason, some reasonable people might say. He grew an allergy to pointlessness, and it showed in his face. Time becomes precious once you find something... something, something, something with meaning. That’s the shade he would use to paint it all from now on. Meaning.
Everyone’s meeting with philosophy is different, but when its life changing, it truly is. A read of a certain book, a pure philosophical work, or a novel, or a film even (why not...) can make you despise society, or understand it, or understand yourself further, you in your loneliness, it can make you breathe harder, love harder, it can disillusion you from the world, it can open your eyes to the world, it enriches your experience, and experience is what we are after. Our character finds himself in the middle of a nihilistic storm. The pointlessness of it all has been unmasked, but not everything is lost, you always have yourself, you always have love. Not a partner, but love, just love. The love of knowledge is one aspect of this. He laughed, he cried, he was so alone in his truly self-owned mind, and that was delicious. He could be anywhere, now he was in the middle of the road, but he could be anywhere. Have you heard that even in the darkest jail you can be free? That he was now. Free.
Eliza Veretilo
The Philosophy Takeaway 'Open topic' Issue 40
