An Old Conversation About Man, Personal Universes and Belief

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I was thinking about other stuff while I was in the train.

Amazing how man is no? I mean, we make beautiful things, that's for sure. We make them in all sorts of ways; tangible and intangible. Like architecture and music. It's like man has the entire universe for options and when he makes something, he picks out distinct things to work with, and he ends up with something else that's greater than its parts. I think they call it an ouevre.

And these ouevres, you know, if you come to think about it, are all basically definitions. An encapsulation of the enormity of everything. We can make it pretty, or make it sound great, or whatever you want it to be. You hold it in your hand, proclaim it's the entire existence of everything, and I don't think you're wrong. Then, when you, uhm, release it (to your desk for example), it becomes a part of every other thing. But in that moment when you had it in your hand and you're looking at it, it's the entire universe. Am I making sense?

What's amazing is that man has the ability to create these definitions for himself and has the freedom and intelligence to do so. It's like we're all gods. Or maybe pro-active observers or something.

Wow. Pure poetry. :)

We are gods. Though some replace this power with apathetic existentialist whining. That doesn't change the fact that we're still relatively insignificant in the grand scheme of things of course, but still, like you said, we are gods, if only for a particular fleeting moment that is, for oneself, as long as Time and as far-reaching as the universe.

Thanks. :) You got what I said pretty well. I was afraid someone might read whatever I wrote down in a Christian context. (Like most people would. Not that it's bad, but it's way off course).

But when you mention the universe as this vast, ultra-incomprehensible big, big space, and compare it to man, you are talking about man as a material body right? I mean yeah, we're not even a speck of all that. But when you take man's ability to create, it's like time and space cease to matter, you know? I mean, why must we all think the universe is this super big place? Why can't it be whatever we see and assess and only that? It's actually difficult to explain without contradicting myself... sigh, but I think you get it.

We need to think in both contexts, I believe. My own personal universe gives me power, but in the context of the (material) universe it stops me from being a narcissistic megalomaniac who believes is better than everyone else.

The thoughts do not really contradict themselves. They're two very different things concerning two very different logic systems.

That sounded pretty good. Why can't I phrase my thoughts and feelings like your first paragraph? Lol.

Although, I'm not really keen on the idea that man has a natural inclination towards becoming a narcissistic megalomaniac when he (only) considers his personal universe, or maybe I just don't want to believe that.  I mean, somehow, he must have already translated his experience of his personal universe as something that other people already have experienced.

I also think that this interplay of personal universes is extremely fascinating. Funny how there's a lot of conflict and compromise just to arrive at the same basic notion or idea.

You're right I guess. Empathy is usually a great way to stop oneself from becoming a narcissistic megalomaniac.

On a related note, I've always found my relative insignificance to the material universe a source of power. Put it this way: If everything I do will in the end ultimately be unimportant, and is only important to me and my immediate surrounding environment, then it becomes terribly, terribly important to me. Thus, I get power from it.

Some people, on realizing their insignificance to the universe, are paralyzed. These are usually people who believe in power and a certain grandeur i.e. heaven, money, fame, armies. Then there are those who gain power from it, like me, who enjoy their relative obscurity to the world at large.

I agree. This relative insignificance DOES make you consider your actions to be either meaningful or meaningless no? That's a great point. That's something I've always believed in, although this is, I have to admit, the first time that belief of mine has ever been put into words.

It is pure self-empowerment I think. A very humanist way of looking at the universe. The world revolves around you because when you die, it really does end; well, at least for you anyway. So everything is important.

So I believe in making a difference and trying to achieve something. But I'm not foolish enough to believe it will become more important that what it really is.

I don't know if I believe it just ends when I die. Maybe, maybe not. It ends in one sense that's for sure. But I'm alive now. And every time I reflect on the "now", that for me is infinity.

Same affinity. But, for me anyway, the threat of death (not necessarily my own) makes me look at things for what they are, without having to worry about stuff that really doesn't concern me now. Maybe death isn't the proper word. I think what I really mean is when anything important (including my own life) ends. The threat of the important thing ending gives that important thing (whatever it is) a new dimension of importance and urgency.

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Original, unedited conversation can be found here.

Musings

The first time I told JT I loved him, he asked me if I knew what I was saying. It was too soon he said, and he was afraid I was too caught up in the moment, not realizing the full extent of what I said, the commitment underlying the simple declaration. He told me that maybe I made a mistake, that maybe I didn't really mean what I said. He gave me an opening to take it back.

I didn't, because there was no need to. I loved him then, and whether he loved me back wasn't the issue. It was the truth and I needed to say it. I thought that he loved me (and he did) but more than that, I needed to take stock of what I felt, and I realized my pride was a small price to pay for something as important as having his love.

And this is what I learned: we sometimes sacrifice the possibility of our happiness for the illusion that our arrogance has more value than what it is really worth. Why do we put too much importance on our pride? Our dignity and self-worth are not necessary sacrifices before the altar of love, but our pride, at least the part that teaches us the lie that no one is truly worthy of us, is.

It is necessary to put up walls sometimes, but it is rarely a good idea when it comes to love.

***

Love is not sacrifice, and it is a mistake to equate the two. Love is not the annihilation of the self, and to believe that it is necessary to lose one's individuality in order to satisfy the whole is to mistake love for slavery, and to love is never to be a slave. Love is the elevation of the self, where the sum of the parts are greater than the whole, but the parts are already whole in themselves. If you are looking for love idealizing the emotion as the pinnacle of self-sacrifice, then you are not really looking for someone to love; you are a slave looking for a master. You are incapable of love; an incomplete man or woman cannot claim to love someone when they are incapable of loving themselves.

***

You laugh at the idea of soulmates because the concept was not written in a dusty book that a bunch of old men has declared was true. You emphasize the silliness of the belief in a one true love, because the belief wasn't repeated every week for an hour at a day declared to be sacred. You admonish the difficulty of believing in a kind of love so lacking of proof, thinking how silly it is to believe in something so utterly untrue.

 
Yet in the same breath you talk of faith, and how faith necessarily means believing in something that has no proof. As if faith was a concept only applicable to a religion thousands of years old. As if love wasn't older than the religion you so easily profess your faith to. 

I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just hoping you appreciate the irony.

Photo taken here.

Failure and Success

Here’s how I ended up in law school: I lost a bet with my dad. I told him that if he helped me finance a small business and it doesn’t work out, I’ll study law as a back-up. He agreed. The business failed, so I found myself taking an exam. Obviously, I got in.

Please don’t read too much into what I’m about to say, but I’m really not accustomed to failing. I’m one of those people who never had to try hard to excel. And in those few instances where I really did my best, I usually came out on top. The fact that the business failed wasn’t that big of a deal for me because, at least this was what I thought; first, I didn’t really try, and second, I felt that if I really tried, it would have been successful. I figured, whatever, it doesn’t count.

Besides, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and lawyering seemed as good a job as any.

When I started, I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. I’m sure that the other 249 students felt the same way too. Which was why we were all so shocked. At the end of the first year, almost 50% quit, or got kicked out.

Here’s the thing. The first lesson law school teaches you is how to handle pain. Mind-numbing excruciating pain. Physical pain, in the form of headaches and ulcers because of sleepless nights and skipped meals due to non-stop studying. Psychological pain, because the professor will make you feel like an idiot for every mistake you make, and you’re bound to make a mistake each and every day. Emotional pain, because each day is a battle between your sense of worth, and the constant pressure to do better. In law school, there is a tendency for you to be defined by your grades. The school will not look at you as a person who is artistic, or interesting, or charming. It can only see you as that guy who failed Obligations and Contracts, or that girl who got a perfect score in Negotiable Instruments. It’s very difficult for a normal person not to question his significance when every day they give you a number as a yardstick for your value. “Here, you’re 74, the guy who almost passed."

There’s a reason why half of the first batch of law students leave or get kicked out; not everyone can handle it.

“Sleep is for the weak,” one professor said, and we believed him, at least when we were freshmen. We never slept. We had no choice, there was too much that needed to be read, or written, or understood. Each morning I woke up wanting to quit.

But I didn’t. Which surprised me to my core. How can the perennial quitter, that guy who never failed because he never truly attempted anything, stay the course for something this difficult? It was mind-boggling.

But this is where it gets weird: the more difficult the course got, the more I wanted to finish it. It became an obsession. Every morning I woke up thinking “fuck I want to quit,” and then I’d change my mind right after. Against all odds, it became a dream. I plodded on, with 3-4 hours of sleep, a couple of Red Bulls, and a Venti Caramel Macchiato everyday. I was miserable, but I wanted it so badly the idea of failing was unimaginable.

It came with a lot of sacrifices. My then-boyfriend broke up with me. I fought with my friends. I barely saw my family. My social life was practically nonexistent. And my already short temper was made even shorter. Every day, I blew up for no reason at all. I almost lost my best friend.

And why sacrifice so much? Why would I put myself in a situation where I could fail in the truest sense of the word? Why would I put my heart and soul into something so badly that I sacrificed so many other things that were also important? Why would I do that?

The answer was simple: Because I wanted to, and it was my dream.

The idea that one can achieve something significant or important in one’s life, grabbed me. So I took a chance. I’m still taking that chance. It’s very possible I will fail, but I will make sure, at least to the extent of my capacity, that it will not be because I did not give it my all.

There are successful people, and then there are successful people. I want my success, if I would be given the opportunity to reach it, to be defined by the idea that I took a risk, and won. That I poured my heart into something I really, truly thought was important, and I managed to come out on top. I don't want my success to be an accident. Success, without the real risk of failure, is not success at all.

Happiness

I used to suffer from intense bouts of depression. It came in waves; there would be months when I was normal and happy, followed by days (or moments) of crippling loneliness. At some point I learned to anticipate it. Every time it happened, I locked my room, turned off the lights, and wallowed.

There is always a certain poetry in the experience of emotional, abstract pain. It is distinguished from the physical kind in the extent of its subtleties: sadness is not just sadness; there are depths and layers. When you wallow in your pain long enough, you learn to discern the differences.

When my depression came, it usually didn't last very long. The worst was three days (I skipped school and just slept. Sometimes I played video games). In one case, after 24 hours of not moving, I got hungry, so I started to look for something to eat. I rummaged through my kitchen (I was already living alone at the time) and found nothing. I saw this box my friend gave me two nights before. Nothing was left in it except for the few paper cups that used to contain cupcakes. I scraped off the few crumbs remaining and had that for lunch. I even chewed on one cup to get some of the cake out. Because I forgot to buy water, I drank directly from the tap. I crashed in bed, and slept until midnight. By the time I woke up, the depression had lifted, so I took a shower, went out, and had goto in Chowking in Salcedo.

The depression was not always triggered by something. Sometimes it just came, and I had no choice but to deal with it.

I had a conversation with my friend Ron a few years ago. He was telling me that maybe my depression was not legit; that is, it's not clinical depression. I told him it's possible; that maybe I'm addicted to the pain because I considered myself a writer, and I wanted experience in order to be able to have something to write about.

Another anecdote: I was much younger, and I was writing my first short story called "A Few, Unimportant Things". I had a soft spot for neurotic, emotional and quiet characters with a lot of internal struggle. In my early short stories, nothing really happened in the physical world; the issues were mostly in the character's head. I found dwelling in their psyches emotionally thrilling.

Anyway, I wrote that short story in three weeks, inhabiting the character of the protagonist fully: his life was constantly running through my head. At that time, a different type of loneliness settled in my life. It was subtle, but the world, and everyone who inhabited it, seemed sadder. It was as if every person I met was being crushed by the weight of mysterious, depressing circumstances.

Fast forward several years later, and my depression is practically gone. At the very least, I haven't wallowed in a dark room not eating for years now. When asked about it, I tell them that I realized at an earlier point in my life that my happiness was more important than my art. One day I woke up and I decided to be happy. It didn't happen immediately, but I got there. I explained that I still understood why young men would want to go through such sadness: a lot of great art are produced everyday, all over the world, because these artists have such a profound well of experiences to draw inspiration from. I said I used to dream about that, and then I realized it's not worth it, at least for myself. I was content with being content.

Photo taken here.

Morality

I find it interesting how most people can stubbornly take perspectives in life for granted as 'good' or 'bad' without thinking why those values are deemed 'good' or 'bad'.

People are like sheep in that way, I think. When another person whose morality is supposedly 'superior' to you says so, people in general just aren't capable of questioning the foundations of such statements; they'd much prefer just to follow.

So what happens when that moral structure, where that other person whose 'moral superiority' you follow bases his supposed superiority, is questioned? What if it is ultimately shattered? What happens next? Is your 'humanity' destroyed as a consequence?

Maybe that's why people are so afraid to not believe. Not believing gives you two things, a paradox: on the one hand, a vast, expanse of sea where you can chart your own destiny; on the other, a lack, an absence, a void. The former, freedom; the latter, emptiness. The first will test your capacity to face fear; the second will test your capacity to overcome nothingness.

And both gifts scare people. People are afraid of too much freedom; most prefer to be slaves. And the illusion of "realness" for some is much better than real absence. A promise of a shadow of a thing, though an empty hope, is better than the very real knowledge of its nonexistence.

Photo taken here.