Life becomes so fruitful when you finally find that one niche you've already been in pretty much your whole life – but you didn't know that there was a place for it, a place for you. And that it is real. Possible. A little bit of the next step on your path becomes visible, life takes a good turn. I thought this should be a good moment to reflect a litte on this. You know how we, the people, can stop and think about bad things that are happening to us all the time? In fact, we don't have to sit down and provoque it, it really just happens to us. Naturally, intrinsically, annoyingly sometimes. So, I remember a few years ago, I thought it somehow didn't make much sense that we should always suddenly sit down, and seriously believe that life as we've known it should now forcibly change for good, simply because it happened to have taken yet another negative turn. Don't you know it, this gloomy doomsday feeling?
Now, of course, there is bad and really bad, but still, isn't this to some little extent how we generally seem programmed to think? I don't know about you, but it definitely applied much more strongly to me (and many people I've met so far) when I was younger. “Oh my god ...”, I would be shouting in my head.. or out loud. And it would slow me down, that “bad” thing that had happened. It would make me very thoughtful and careful. I'm sure you've felt it, and just like anyone, you have noticed the time it takes to bounce back to a good place. But then, I considered, when things are good – why don't we feel the same? We are happy about it, we are energized, but do we really stop to think the way we would when things are bad? And does it take us nearly as long to bounce back to the other extreme due to whatever's happened next? Do we also go to that one place, you know, that place the bad loves to frequent, one filled with alternatives each equally possible and fearful? Really, is it true that we arrive, nearly as fast, at a room full of alternatives, each equally wonderful and attractive? We can, we know we can, because sometimes we do.
Being accepted to a wonderful program, getting the perfect job, the ideal marriage. The shades of good may change the intensity of our experience, but have you also noticed how this very intensity changes our perception? We seem to frequent the alternatives room much less for the not so explosive type of good, even if we probably would when faced with an equally insignificant amount of bad. We can easily see the bad crawl into every pore of life. However, change is constantly happening, good and bad. All the time: day and night, awake and asleep. Life never stops as long as we don't. We, as in the human beings living on a complex and shared planet, that is itself part of a much larger constellation which is yet again part of an even larger one. Until, at some point we arrive at the universe in its totality, not knowing what is where it is not. So, maybe we should let all the shades of good flow through us in the exact same way we always let the bad flow. Love it, indulge in it, eat happy ice cream instead of sad ice cream in front of the tv. We should stop and think, and feel that somewhat less known gloomy newsday feeling.
Anyway, it's a really good little episode of the long show calld life for me right now. The best thing about it being that it is not just good for me, but for so many people around me. Things are “in place” right now, as if the universe finally took up that well known offer to "get off our backs". So, I sit down and cherish it in the same way I would contemplate the much larger cloud of negativity that had been hunting me and the others around me throughout this last, really strange year. Cancer, death, loss, unwanted and wanted change, divorce, alzheimer's. And despite of it all, it seems like now it is going to look good for a (at least a little) while. And I daydream, and contemplate. I am proud. Because I dealt with the bad so much better than I ever did before. Before I had this little vision, just a few years back. These thoughts, or much rather that feeling, despite what anyone says, were all very real. And they're becoming a little bit more clear with every new step along my personal way. ἔννοια
You must find it. The greeks were right! I always described this mind catharsis, this realization that the bad was just another type of good and vice versa, as a kind of “vision”. It was strange to say, because people don't believe in such things, even if the thing is insight – if it's not quantifiable it is not real! Yet, why did it then feel so different from other realizations I've had before? It wasn't until I read Cicero, and heard for the first time about the Stoics' views on life and the good, that it started to dawn on me what it had really been. And just like it helped me, it could help you. And you would not doubt whether the experience was meaningful or real, because you would just know and you would never forget that day, and what you did or where you were when it happened. Mainly, you will know because you will never be able to reproduce that feeling in words. Everybody will “know” what you're talking about, it will “make sense” and, of course, seem entirely logical to anyone when you tell them .. but only very, very few will look back at you and know.
They felt what you've felt, and they still feel it everyday. They know it's different, and that its power never goes away again. You will feel to what bizarre extent you're just a part of a really big universe, that may follow predictable laws, but that your personal life itself is far from predictable. You cannot expect life to be great, but you can be great yourself any time you want. In the end, good and bad should not change you, they should be you. A part of what you are, where you are, and who you are. The worst times, the best times, the neutral ones and the dreamy ones, the nostalgic ones, and yes ... even the ones you cannot give a name to, the ones that seem entirely crazy and out-of-place. The rock is you, your heart and spirit and your courage. You alone can view life as yours, you alone can construct it and learn to go with it. Accept fluidity – things and people in relation to you will, in fact, always change. If you need to predict, then that's really all you can predict. Some will stay, some will go and yes, some will even disappear. Yet, in the middle, there is you. You are your own core, your own power. So, next time, when life is good, let the energy hit you like that of bad and evil can, too. Let it flow through you and become an essential part of you.
It won't change you, it will make you become who you are. That core that always remains, and always knows what it is and what it wants but that can deal with all the outward changes along its way, because it's just another step of the way and you cannot know where it will lead you now, or ever. Because it is really not leading you anywhere, it is you that is leading and experiencing. The only solution to living with all the effects of change and the unknowable, is being. When you are, you can live and you can live through anything. You can and will grow from it. Good and evil internalized, they are no longer outward ennemies, they draw lines on your face and power to your mind. You will never let anything make you feel small, because you're the one who's living. Like anyone, and that is why you're no smaller than all those other ones of your species, you're essentially the same but intrinsically different from each other and from everything. You're complex like nature, and like nature you will always exist as a part of everything else – that is why it is not controllable, not simple, and never truly alone. Take all that passivity you are feeling and turn it into action. Be a person, you will feel empowered. You will become.
... with an exaggerated applause for Heidegger
& Spinoza deep in mind ...
... with all my love for the Stoics
& all the personal peace in life ...
ἔννοια
