The Price of the Ticket
Whatever your faults, your deficits, your shortcomings, it may help you to keep in mind that those things are only true of you in the way that you perceive them within the human world. In society. In history, memory or record.
Outside of the culture of our creation, there are other things happening. More subtle things. Examples in other living things about the purposefulness of existence and, by extension, our lives.
There is much to get to know. Yet, when I look out and at our societies, I wonder why so many people so casually take for granted that there is society.
People look back at history as if one day full grown humans became aware and were on Earth and there were buildings and laws and cars all made ready for them; and, not only did these humans know how to use those cars and readily perceived what those buildings were, but they had language. The same language. And understanding was made ready for them and they knew everything about one another all at once.
We know it was not this way. It is still not this way! We know humans did not make the Earth we walk upon. We know that no human was there at the beginning of this Earth, let alone at the beginning of the Universe. We know we don't know exactly what's going on here.
But we also know that humans have been making ourselves up as they/we've gone along. We've decided. We've also not decided. The first whatevers (I don't know what ancestor was at the beginning and I don't need to know) of our ancestry had to deal with the actual wtf of the bears and the mammoths and the saber-tooth tigers and the expansive bodies of water, earth and sky.
And because of their bravery and persistence there was a threshold of when our kind transitioned from "wtf is all this" to "this is what I want. " And we crossed it long ago.
That is and should be true of how age works in a single lifetime and it's certainly true of the collective history of humanity and what we have, over Ti, decided to do with our lives and the lives of others.
Maturity is a sure thing no matter how it makes you feel. You will either get it physically and can match that with equal efforts in the emotional, mental, sensory and consciousness/spiritual spheres. Or you can just grow old while the rest of you stomps its feet in denial and regresses.
I've never understood the point of not being neutral about the inevitable. And I'm not suggesting that most things are inevitable. Free will is real, though of course it has its parameters of functionality. But getting old? That's a sure thing so far. And yes, "humans are working on it." Ha. But humans are working on lots of things and one can be sure the price point of youth will be beyond most of us, if it is even attainable.
And what if it was? Why are people interested in prolonging their youth? Most people don't really seem that happy or satisfied with what they have had yet they want more of the same? Do we imagine if we are young forever human ways will change? And for the better? Would humans be satisfied with life then? Or would they demand to now live "forever" as well?
Then the next demand/expectation is to get rid of death (notice I didn't say "cure") too. What is the good in being young for your whole life if in 100 years you'll die anyway?! Humans are always seeking the eternal and not trying to be of it. And you know if they ever figure out the science and tech to make anyone live forever that ish would not be affordable. So, yes. Death, too, is still inevitable. And who cares?
Maybe that's disorienting, disturbing or horrifying to people. But it is what is going on. So, just, come to terms . . .
The uncertainty of embracing the inevitable is a type of faith. It only requires trusting how the greater world works. Not humanity necessarily as it is a human invention. Being human is natural, but humanity is an invention we are all participating in. But life and how it works in this world across genus and species and kind? There's nothing more straightforward.
You live, you die. It's not a form of punishment or a war you need to wage or survive. It's the price of the ticket. I mean, we didn't make the Earth. We didn't make all this life. So all humans can afford some humility on the topic of what we're all here for and what, if anything, is necessary "to do" about the fact that to be here we live and we die.
Taoism says, "If your life was a good thing, your death will be a good thing too." That can be understood a lot of ways, but what I get from it is that every human arrives upon this world in ignorance, helpless, not knowing what the world is or what it holds. Yet we find ways to embrace it, enjoy it, bide our time here and, by the end, some of us are even clinging to life. This thing we didn't know. This thing we had to arrive at to fathom as an experience.
Why, then, would death be any different in its function? Sure, it looks stark to us or we perceive it as such. But like life and the lives it begets, death, too, is a world. Another door. A chamber to enter and see what's inside. Or on the other side. Perhaps even something that, when it happens naturally, can be enjoyed and/or celebrated.
Why is that wrong? Why does that feel wrong to so many people when it has been true from the beginning? For the longest time we know of!
We—meaning our consciousness/spirit/energy/spark that walks our body around for however long we are each alive—had to come from somewhere. And so wherever our "it" goes after life as we know it, rest assured it's far beyond your imagination and what it knows how to behold. Humans don't even believe we can make human life up and we've been doing it all along! How many of us are truly capable of imagining what is beyond what we know?
And is that one of the major problem of these modern times? That humans with advantage take so much for granted that they no longer recognize how to behold the world? And those that could teach them are so far from subsistence needs that they cannot possibly explain or cohere communication to beckon the apathetic and inattentive forth because they are literally starving, or dying from dehydration, or worse?
Because that's not a good enough take on of this world. That's not a deep enough inquiry into being and what it can allow for. This isn't great enough honor for that which made way for us. We live in a solar system with a burning sphere of a star at its core! We need to get on that level: too much to comprehend and yet a sight to behold regardless; massive, present, centered, sustaining and known.
The disorientation, dysphoria and disturbance that many if not most people feel does not come from simply being human in this world. It comes from the human world not being in close enough alignment to Existence at large (the greater picture here. The ultimate reality beyond ours!). It comes from humans wanting to forget where we are and what we are.
Of course this creates psychosis. Of course this creates doubt and anxiety. We live in a fake world leagues apart from the worlds that came before it. We live in a world that seeks to be apart from nature and thereby misinterprets it, abuses it and misuses it. We live in a world that doesn't wish to know the worlds that begat it and that is an enduring problem for society and all the people who make their way through it.
Remembering what and where we are would require admitting that it is humans who are responsible for the suffering in the human world. Not nature. Not the inevitability of what is inevitable. But choices made before and now, by us and for us. BUFU; Boo, Fools.
Yet nothing could be more simple to fix. Choices can be changed. Poor choices can be corrected for; no matter how long they've been left unattended. What can be rectified will lessen in potency over time, but it will still be more than what you/we had when you/we were in deficit or lacking. In all circumstances regarding accountability, integrity and order: the sooner, the better.
The price of the ticket is learning and wisdom, but the reward is existence and learning through it. Peace is the destination of this journey, but only if you know what direction you're headed in.
Look at nature to learn how to sustain:
- Gain place by determining purpose
- Make yourself useful
- Be present so you can go forward
- Discern but refrain from judgment
- Function within the dynamic you're apart of
- Then enter into the next phase Existence has provided for you to inherit
It's all a gift.
Want more? Be more and do more; for yourself, for others, for those who aren't here yet and with consideration of those who laid the groundwork before you existed. Never stop developing. Never stop aspiring to be more whole and a part of everything. The Universe can and will go on without you, might as well make a life that is as soaring and mysterious as Existence itself. After all, it's healthy to acknowledge and honor your ancestors.
