I sit meditatively atop the tomb at the edge of Solem Oaks Cemetery. It is morning and I watch as the first rays of the sun cut through the mist enveloping around the graves. Pondering. My humanity actively philosiphizing, rationalizing to confirm my existence even after death. The mind desperatley seeking to continue it’s unfinished quest that death obstructed. But some stories do not end after the cessation of breath.. Some stories live on even in deadworld.
Humble Ghost reflects over one of his journals, an entry he wrote as a human youth. Struggling with depression, feeling isolated and full of despair. He walked through the cold autumn evening, nebulous..And like a flood-gate opening, words just filled his mind. He got home, crawled up the stairs into his room. Slammed his door and confined himself to his writing desk to the late hours of the morning. The sorrow flowed onto pages. Pages of memory that he turns over now in his head as a disembodied spirit:
” We are all meant to die, it’s what makes life so beautiful. Without death there can be no appreciation for life. A world without struggle breeds a judgmental and lazy mind. There is no innovation, no creativity and no passion. There is only contentedness. Unconsciousness rewarded with social esteem, the illusion of freewill is broadcasted through the media. We purchase it thinking we made a wise investment only to realize we’ve just sold ourselves into a conditional slavery. Slaves to a system we were born into. One that took away our ability to exert our freewill at a young age and put us through the institutional refining process to manufacture productive citizens who in turn the system sells back their freewill in accordance to how much they can perpetuate its agendas.
We go to pursue higher learning but what is the peak the institution of higher learning provides? A career to help make the world a better place and reward us with a handsome salary? Sounds beautiful and appeases the hedonistic obedient citizen identity within us all, but a career is just another slot upon which you fill helping to maintain the efficiency of the system.
Does the institution teach us about truth outside the system? How can it, when the institution is just the extension of the system itself?
Do the professors teach truth?
Why the professors only teach to the extent of what they know. And so what do they know but the extent to what they have experienced? And what have they experienced but the same processing through the system that has led you to their doorway of knowledge. The system’s knowledge.
To implore the student to search for truth beyond the system would be prescribing insanity. It might produce an individual capable of getting closer to the truth, but the individual would not be able to efficiently contribute to the system. This would become a burden on the system, and thus a threat towards the expenditure of it’s ” finite” resources.
The individual must be able to contribute and serve the system first. Secondary is the individuals search for truth. If every citizen sought for truth who would preform the menial roles that are required to make a functional society? He who can’t function properly in society is labelled as incompentent and mental impaired. Even if this man is closer to the truth the others will not listen, because to listen would lead to the collapse of their own beliefs in the system. And so it would spread like a plague, people awakening to a truth beyond social structure. This would result in the collapse of this “system” for ultimately it is each and everyone of our beliefs that give it power and maintain its reality.
So what if one sought for truth for the sake of changing the system? How would this be carried out?
He would ultimately realize that his dependence on the system for his survival would in some way affect the quality of his search for truth. He would only search for truth so far as what he found allowed him to maintain a productive and comfortable place in soceity. But the would he ever find truth? Or only the truths he wanted to see? The truths that perpetuate the system but do not change it. The truths that kept him satisfied, kept him fed and pleasures under his roof.
What would he have to foresake for the truth?
Why he would have to foresake the things that impede his search for the truth. He would have to question the system and remain skeptical and unmovable by it’s empty promises of grandeur.
He would see that the cosmetic industry does not slow aging but only hide it’s effects.
He would see that musicians protest against the corporations that give them voice. That commerce ultimately dresses up rebellion.
He would see that people celebrate to hide their sadness. That alcohol promises you the sensation of joy, but only supresses the awareness of the pain.
He would see that the news is scripted. And the news that is not scripted is still told from the bias of the speaker who speaks from his own scripted thoughts.
He would see that people search for others to validate their own fears and beliefs. That “love” is a mutual arrangement of give and take. A constant power struggle.
This man would see that the people struggle for a socio-economic status, not for true intrinsic value but for a transient extrinsic label of self-worth. He would see that they all wear smiles and that they were all happy and he would remain skeptical. He would know that their self-worth heavily rested upon their material status and that their hapiness could easily be lost.
He would know why they sought for lost hapiness in every bottle yet remain perplexed when they reached the bottom and found only the glass reflection of their own sadness.
He would hear their suffering, when the rest of the world heard boasting.
This man would walk alone in search of truth. It would always ellude him and he would sacrifice much only to be perplexed and frustrated. He would exert his willpower towards his goal of truth. When all around him those he loved fit themselves into square holes. He could never share what he saw or realized, for the pride that masked their fears would lash at him with contempt.
This man would have to always remain watchful of his thoughts. He would live surrounded by illusion but would always remind himself that his search for truth was more virtuous than his desire for material wealth.
Who could love this man? When love was just a silent contractual agreement and he could promise nothing in return.
Who could trust this man? A man that didn’t support a system that shaped their beliefs, that gave them jobs and would be required to feed their children.
Truth was a curse this man would seek untill the end of his days. He would be forced to endure the labels, the solitude and humility. He would see all the beautiful lights and wonderful senses but could not dwell in them for to long.
He’d catch snapshots of beauty within the spheres of peoples lives he’d cross paths with. He would know that noble compassion and beauty lay like a buried diamond within them all and feel great sadness that they would always search for beauty elsewhere when it was within them all along.
He couldn’t tell them because they wouldn’t believe him. And even if they did, words could not equate to the experience of discovering it for themselves.
He would feel a great desire to show them the faulty designs of the system the worshiped but would understand that to do such would impose upon their free-will to live whatever way they saw fit.
Truth to them was the pursuit of hapiness. Hapiness was evaluated by the senses that sought stimulus and pleasure. Hapiness to them was the absence of misery. But misery was the teacher that could lead them to the true hapiness that lay within themselves that was present even in sadness.
And so they would sleep, and in sleep they would dream.As far as they were concerned life was perfect. But they looked through eyes that would only see perfection. Only half the coin would be sought, but it was enough. For it was the side ot the coin that was worth searching for. The side they placed all of their bets on.
And this seeker of truth, what would he see?
Great joy and great sadness. Experience that was raw for what is was and unfiltered by the lens of desire. Only there would be no hand to congratulate him for his conquest. That hand would have to be the quiet voice within himself that kept him moving onwards. The quiet little hand that was faith. He would not be patted on the back by the hands of others. He would only hope that the hand of faith would be there at the end of days. But did this man even need an applause? Or encouragement for that matter?
What led him on this search even though it was completely irrational? What drove him forward when it meant each step took him further from the dream of perfection? Was this man truly an idiot for seeking such a truth that could exist beyond the system?
……………………………
Batted lashes stared at him from across the dancefloor.
They belonged to a beautiful face. A smile rested there, doing the best that it knew how.
Red lips parted to ask him to dance with her briefly.
To just let go and hold her close for a few minutes in the darkness.
And so they danced and the world slowly turned.
She asked if this would all come to an end?
‘All things come to an end,’ he said. ‘It’s the endings that make beginnings so beautiful.’
She smiled, her eyes were closed. “
-Humble Ghost
