Tagged with 'existentialism'

Have you ever had someone say something so profound to you that it permanently effects your way of thinking? It could be the most minute of statement, but it just strikes you as so bold. On this particular occasion, a long time acquaintance of mine, Keith stumbled upon me early in the morning, both of us still up from the night before at a music festival.

The ubiquitous presence of emptiness in my life consumes my existence. It's so easy to pretend otherwise; it's so natural to represent the opposite of this. But I don't quite know what it feels to be comfortable in my own skin. Anyone who claims to know me will tell you that this is not me. They will ascertain that I am the epitome and self-confidence and self-comfort.

Life is much more difficult than it appears to be from the eyes of an innocent child whose only preoccupation is what game she is going to get to play when mommy gets home. Fast forward twenty-some odd years and the painful reality of a sinful and cruel world that was discovered at the onset of her teenage years still reverberates to the point of drowning exasperation.

Breath of air like a calming rush of life through the windpipes. It's when you know you've decided that everything is going to be ok. Shortly thereafter, another rush; this time a suffocating one; gasping for air you drown in a sea of red. You've made this choice and there's no returning to the original state. Staring down a spiral of nothingness your life flashes before your eyes.

I found this entry from 2 years ago in my personal blog and I'd like to take some time to conduct a retroactive analysis and identify what mechanisms have evolved or changed if any that have allowed me to transcend from dispairity into a more forward and progressive stance toward life and humanity in general. So here's the entry from 26 May 2008:

I have started a Great Philosophers Series on my Blog. My focus is of course The Existentialists of the 19th and 20th century. I am attracted to Existentialism because it is a philosophy that can be brought into ones life. These entries are my interpretations of some of the most profound expressions of these philosophers.

this body. am tired to carry around. wanting to escape beyond the suffering of myself and others.
feel like i am falling. through empty space. yet the space is filled with sounds. images. memories. feelings. emotions. a blur of lost meaning.
cannot stop sensation of falling as it goes by.
there is nowhere to land. only the sensation of falling.
to move on through.

Introduction
Have you ever heard the phrase "talking to yourself"?
What about "thinking aloud"? Which one seems to be accurate?

I’m trying to deal with the daily shock and dismay of encountering my mirror going “Nyah, nyah!” at me in the morning.

I wonder if there’s a way to turn time around, or turn the tables on it, ‘til it’s on my side.

He was very angry with me. He was reviewing my life.

“Now let Me get this straight,” He said (and yes, He capitalizes the first person singular when He speaks). "I gave you two good, loving parents; set you on earth within its most blessed nation (by Me, if I do say so Myself), at the zenith of its power; for 80 some odd years of healthy living; without any major hindrances (save for Betamax and that Cheney coup in ‘11)...

These past couple of days have seemed to follow some kind of weird script. I've spent them with a friend of mine who's been going through some internal malaise that could be described as depression, but that I might also term an existential crisis. I've been through quite a doozy of the same myself in the not-too-distant past, so on some level I can understand what it's like.

Let's continue blabbering about such things as "truth" and whether it actually means anything. The way I'm thinking (which is all over the place so you may want to back quietly out the door now), I think we'll need to drudge through random thoughts on the brain and whether it's concerned with this nebulous "truth" business, and what we can make of "truth" if our brains--which most of us will agree is our main source for the scoop on such things--has less to do with it than we tend to suppose.

[Apr. 13th, 2009|12:41 pm]
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As I get older and more aware of my health, I find that I become more aware of a certain sense of darkness pervading existence whenever I take entheogens...

While this trip was by no means a "bad" one, it certainly did have that foreboding quality of mortality lurking in the back of my mind.