Unimaginable numbers of tiny particles, atoms, and molecules interact together, combine, rotate, bounce off, and change; one second they group to build things, the next second they break down and disintegrate… Numerous cells ‘live’, divide, multiply, consume other cells, fight, and die… Billions of ‘conscious’ entities, breathe, eat, gather in societies, think, utter sounds, move things around, fight, love, hate, orgasm, age, give birth, and die; they lead their lives in what falsely seems to be nothing short of a systematic manner; with purpose, and a logical progress of events.
It’s suffocating me, burying me alive. Every day, it’s the same people, the same events, the same ‘happenings’, the same ideas and hopes, and the exact same disappointments. Life, it seems, has lost all traces of originality, randomness, and of course sense and meaning. And now, even after reaching the conclusion that it has no meaning – that it is completely up to me to accept that fact and through my actions create whatever purpose and meaning that I see fit – I am left with nothing but sad emptiness, the sort of emptiness that was previously filled by purpose, by checklists, by schedules, by the cozy plan that I had, and by simply losing myself in the flow of events of what then seemed a highly systematic and logical life. Now I realize that it is up to me to press the pause button. And I have.
I look around me now and see everybody doing what is supposed to be done; everyone is active, and yet so idle. People, it seems, have willingly buried their heads under this cozy blanket of ‘life’, and have filled the emptiness, the emptiness born with them, with a series of events that seem to have been tailored to occupy their minds in order to avoid facing the emptiness itself. And so I lifted up my head from under the transparent blanket, and for the first time sensed the chillness of reality, and waited in vain to get adjusted to the new conditions. Like a spirit leaving its body, I slowly rose up, and realized for the first time what it feels like to simply watch things, see them for what they truly are, and hear nothing at all.
I kept rising until the whole universe was nothing more than a crystal ball that I held between my hands, and I watched with the eyes of a passive, bored god. I brought it close to my face, and watched those atoms, cells, and entities, moving around, and bumping into each other. Now it all seemed random. Now it all looked too fragile. All the petty worries and problems I have, and everyone else has, are nothing but silly events, that could have simply not been. I saw events happen, and I saw events about to happen, and I witnessed the stupidity of it all. One stupid thing leading to another stupid thing, and a collection of similar events giving rise to complete lives… How fragile was it! How insanely fragile. I even went back and witnessed the day the term ‘purpose’ was created, after which, and funnily enough, those ‘conscious’ entities seemed to be a bit more relieved.
Suddenly, the happiness I briefly felt, having seen and understood, was replaced by great anger. Anger at the time I wasted playing along and blindly leading my own set of events and worrying so much about reaching my ‘destination’, rather than realizing that there is no destination, and that my enormous problems are nothing but empty events shaped by chance; they could have simply been someone else’s problems, or even nothing at all.
And so I started shaking this crystal ball, the crystal ball that has it all. I shook it madly, I shook it so hard, until not one atom stayed where it used to be, not one entity retained its ‘identity’, and all events changed. Everything flew around and swirled. And when I stopped, everything started to slowly fall down and settle; the pretty snowflakes inside my crystal globe. Then it was all silent.
Of course, that only lasted a few seconds. For in no time, atoms were bouncing off again, cells were replicating, and ‘conscious’ entities were leading new lives. Quickly, people found purpose again in the ‘meaningful’ events around them, and things went back to ‘normal’.
So what should I do now? Should I stay here and watch? Should I shake my globe one more time and see what happens? Or should I go back, beneath the blanket, and join the random flow of events?
With a mixture of hope, sadness, and excitement, I gave the globe one last shake, then closed my eyes and dove in. The way I saw it, I will either be reborn as another blind entity, oblivious to the true emptiness of being, to lead my life, worry about my problems, and die happily. Or I could realize the beautiful and stupid randomness of it all, know that I can never leave the globe, then lose all my worries, and live a miserable life that only lightens up whenever I choose to play with the cells and molecules around me to create a temporary spike of meaning, beauty, purpose, or whatever you may choose to call it, and then hope that it will last forever, or at least stay until everyone and all things that have interacted with it, myself included, are long gone, or transformed into other entities and events. And as I descended, my cells and molecules disintegrating and mixing with the random mess of atoms beneath me, I secretly hoped that it would turn out to be the latter case.
