Random Thoughts
Being retired, I have a lot of time on my hands to think—way too much time, actually. Hobbies? I've screwed myself out of my most engaging and rewarding pastime: modeling. Writing? Recently I dusted off a novel I'd started many decades ago. After a week or so of drafting an outline, I came to the awareness that I'd be dead long before I could finish it. So, why bother attempting to write something no one would ever read?
I do occasionally set virtual pen to virtual paper composing reviews of films and television programs I've seen, and most recently I've been putting the final touches on a complete top-to-bottom review of my all-time favorite science fiction show, The Expanse. It was an enjoyable task, albeit not one I expect will see much readership. But at least I had the satisfaction of being able to complete it.
But I still have quite a bit of spare time, and all too often I spend those hours contemplating life and death—mine, specifically. Deep, definitely, if only because I attempt to look at things from a great many different perspectives.
What have I accomplished during my six-plus decades here? Nothing earthshaking, obviously. I'm no Elon Musk (thankfully). I've made no mark on the world that will outlive me. Well... I take that back. Actually, I have made a mark—albeit a tiny one, in the grand scheme of things—in the form of a house. Of course, once I'm gone, someone else may come along and erase it from the face of the planet in a bid to leave their own mark. In fact, since it's not mine anymore, it could happen before I die. So be it. There's nothing I can do about it, even if I wanted to.
I often think of that place. Indeed, this essay began with a memory of it. As I was drifting off into a half-awake state (which I'm wont to do while sitting at my desk), I recalled a conversation my ex-wife and I were having while sitting on the swinging chair I built for the cabin I built on my (former) property. The conversation wasn't the crux of my recollection; it was an image I held of the place. It hung in my mind (no pun intended) for some time, and it slowly morphed into a philosophical meditation on mortality and the things we leave behind.
Not that it matters if I've left anything behind in the first place. What difference would it make? Even if humans manage to avoid destroying the planet (which is highly unlikely at this point), Earth still has an endpoint, that being when our sun winks out of existence. We are but a fleeting flicker in the Universe, equivalent to a camera flash. And given the unimaginable enormity of the Universe, and the unimaginable enormity of time, we may as well never have existed. The Universe has no memory.
Nothing is immutable. Nothing is forever. Not even the Universe itself. So, the burning need to "leave a mark" is, in the grand scheme of things, irrelevant.
People live to satisfy themselves, by whatever means, for whatever reason, and the attempt to leave a mark is what matters, not the mark itself. Because the only thing that's real is the fleeting flicker of consciousness that allows us to say, "I exist.". However, we do not actually live in the here-and-now; the persistence of memory—upon which we rely for our very existence—is our reality; we can only ascertain our existence based on a memory of what we call "now," but is in fact already in the past. (This is why people who experience an accident that involves head injury cannot recall the accident, because the memory of what happened didn't have the chance to form.)
Consider: we can recall a dream as vividly as what we just had for breakfast. Further, we can recall things that never existed: visions of thoughts we might have about our future, such as how our house might look nestled in the trees. And since all of these things—real and imagined—are equally clear in our minds, and since we only distinguish between them though yet another thought process based on other memories, it's impossible to say, with absolute certainty, what constitutes reality.
All of which is to say, reality is merely an illusion; it's only what we make it. (I'm not breaking any new ground with these musings; it already has a name: phenomenology, brilliantly explored in the underrated film Dark Star).
Of course, it would be considered irrational to claim that nothing is real, since nearly eight billion of us have what could be considered a "shared illusion." And no one has been able to levitate in defiance of gravity, so there must be something to this thing called "reality."
And then comes another "deep" question, the perennial "What is the meaning of life?" Don't bother to go looking for it. We create the meaning. It's not granted to us, or bestowed upon us, or decreed by a deity or by "fate." All because of the word "meaning", which is only a word, not a concrete thing. It's a label for a concept that, ironically, has no meaning.
You may be wondering where I'm going with all of this nonsense. Actually, I had no goal in mind when I embarked on this essay; it's pure stream-of-consciousness. But here's the thing: it's just another way for me to assert that I exist. I'm attempting to leave yet another mark to prove that I existed. It's a vicious cycle I've never been able to break. There must be some gene or fragment of DNA that drives so many humans to do such things. Why do composers compose? Why do painters paint? Why do writers write? And... why do madmen ask such questions?