Friday, June 24, 2011

Intangible Things

We enter this life with nothing. I've heard a lot of people say you'll exit it the same way, because you can't take any of "it" with you. I think it's probably somewhere in between. Basically no one knows and they are willing to make up or believe whatever will comfort them in a world that makes no sense.

I feel a genuine connection to certain people. I can't dismiss these feelings and I'm reasonably sure that many things happen for a reason. It's easy to assign those feelings to what is probably an evolved state of the species that allowed us to survive much of prehistory. Stay together, work together, form unbreakable attachments and similar. It's the instinctual circuitry that would allow an ancient human race to survive together what the individual never could.

I see people who operate with temporal perspectives clashing with folks of various faiths who possess eternal perspectives. The secular and the spiritual unable, in spite of all their vaunted enlightenment, to reach the basic conclusion that they need each other. Inevitable and tragic as that might be, people spend their entire lives attempting to validate or ignore their identities.

I think that we each enter this life with a quantity of intangible things. These rough stones will be carried everywhere we go, growing smoother with time and use. Some carry a greater number than others, but those people also carry a greater weight in this life. Regardless, we choose the person we will be even if that choice is to follow the legacy of our societies and families.

There are many circumstances that we do not get to choose. There are always things we cannot control that make us feel alone or isolated from other people. That being said, those are likely moments of clarity where we are seeing ourselves in the truest state.

All of our instincts, faith and circumstances aside - we are utterly alone in this life. I find that I enjoy the quiet of that circumstance more now than I ever did before. I need to be more choosy about what I am fettered by in this life to be sure.

One moment at a time.

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