time and circumstance

The ways of time and circumstance are entirely elusive to me. Why should the sweeping tide bring two people together and then randomly sweep them apart? There doesn’t appear to any purpose at all behind triumph or tragedy. The victor and the vanquished find themselves equal in the grave. Each individual appears without purpose, flails about for a time and vanishes again. Many of man’s struggles emanate from pride. There is no more perfect idiocy than pride. Behold the proud amoeba see how it flails its magnificent flagellum. Observe how it devours its neighbors. Watch it die. That is sound and fury signifying nothing. That is man and his pride.

What marvelous tricks we play to wring meaning out of the shadow of shadows. The copious crocodile tears shed in an effort to twist tragedy to political advantage cannot inspire outrage because the potentates are impotent. All the wars and politics on this speck of a planet inspire little more than dolorous humor, and that too is only a passing fancy. What can they mean by it? Do they imagine that if they stack bodies upon bodies they will stand on the heaped gore above the reach of death? Does cancer or plane crash respect wealth and power? Pathetic beyond warranting sympathy is all the useless flailing of humanity.

Pathetic, purposeless, useless, impotent, but extant life revolts reason. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. So what? Beyond this assertion of my existence I can make no headway at all on the nature of reality. Do amoebas ask why? What’s the point? Is there a purpose? Yet, a sense that there is a purpose is tenacious. It is common to conflate goals with purpose. Goals to pursue are legion but they can be changed, accomplished or missed without ramification to the meaning of existence. On the other hand, the very meaning of existence, to have a point, a use, a reason is purpose.

Possibly, only I exist and everyone in the world is a function of my imagination. Good and bad in the whole world may be only fluctuations in my opinion of existence itself. In this case, moral action and consequence would only affect my self-esteem and all of morality would subsist in self-preservation instinct. I say it may be only instinct because, absent purpose, I find no desire to climb above oblivion. I mean, self-preservation is unreasonable without a purpose yet the ubiquitous search for significance is the search to find purpose. The ubiquitous searchers cannot be purposeless since existence is a function of purpose. Purpose must have existed before my existence.

There is a painting of a pipe with the words, “Ceci n'est pas une pipe” this is not a pipe. This is perfectly true, it is only a painting not a pipe. On the walls of my mind hang the words, “Ceci n’est pas une vie” this is not a life. I know that it is true that an infinitely small mote of awareness floating in a vacuum is not a life, but how do I know this? How can those words be there? How could I conceive of life if all of life is only in my head? This knowledge has no apparent source. There is nothing in reason or experience to indicate it. This knowledge suggests external existence. It suggests that there may be an I, that is not I.

This ‘I that is not I”, this ‘other’, managed to plant a clue to his existence on the island of my awareness. This feat is not duplicated by any acquaintance or relation who could all be mere imagination. The other resists being relegated to figment and must be powerful indeed, for he managed a trick I cannot do. He communicated beyond himself with the awareness of having done so. The closest I ever came to this was a mere shout into the void with the hope, but no conviction, that there was some other to hear. Does that sound ego centric? It should. Reason requires an object to reason about. It taught me nothing until I admitted my own unreasonable existence and it took me no further until I found the imprint of the other. There is the undeniable existence of two persons, myself and the other. The other has at least one less limitation than I do. The other knew of me and communicated to me. I could never have posited his existence let alone attempted to communicate. I could only discover the communication and finding it decide what to do about it.

Action and reaction, contact, is required for perception. The other initiated, so let us refer to him now as the Initiator. How does one point of awareness reciprocate contact in what, only moments ago, was a metaphysical vacuum? I don’t know how the Initiator contacted me and I can’t duplicate his trick of leaving an imprint. I don’t know if he is close or far or what direction he may be. As one lost in darkness, I cry out in the echoing hall of consciousness, and wait. I wait because without further contact perception remains miniscule. Another thing occurs, the Initiator, he may also be the purpose.

Now we go off the edge of the map. With only one thin edge of undeniable impression to cling to I must attempt to distinguish Initiation from imagination. In this is a clue. Messages I find unimaginable may be from outside, from the Initiator. A second clue is that purposes outside myself, reasons, not goals, may be from the purpose that precedes my existence.

If there is such a thing as reality it exists with this Initiating, Communicating, Purpose. The Purpose is the gravitational center in the metaphysical void. All that reason is powerless to provide, the heat and light of life, comes from this source. In the distinguishing light reason begins. Deduction, extrapolation, comparison are possible in the light of purpose. Now in the light, I ask, to what end? What is the purpose? Strangely, I find that I am the point. Not that I am purpose itself but the point of the purpose is me. The interaction, relationship initiated by the Initiator exists for reciprocation. I reciprocate and the ways of time and circumstance resolve from random to incisive clarity. All the time he was trying to get my attention.