'Tis a day today

It is a day today. I find days interesting. They are the basis from which we derive the meaning of much of our time spent. Days form up to make weeks, (which are the the only unit of time to have no astronomical or physical derivative) and weeks make months, months make years. Years form to make decades and decades accumlate to make centuries, centuries accumulate to create millenia. And then it's just a long ass time after millenia, epochs and shit.

But time is a funny thing. I've been alive for nearly two decades, but if you ask if it has felt like a long time I would say no. When I think of all the individual memories I have, yes maybe it has been a good chunk of time, but relatively speaking this is the blink of an eye. This isn't even a blink. The time I've been alive has been the firing of the nerves that make the eye blink, and the signal hasn't even gone to the brain and back. I haven't spent any time at all here.

My, how I have changed though. I have gone from a fragile fertilized egg to a zygote, to an embryo without lungs or a brains, nor any motor skills. I have grown and changed, from an infant with rubbery joints and maleable bones to an adult-sized human with much stiffer joints and denser bones. I have gone from a pure, flawless, baby complexion to the complexion of an adult, with pores visible and stiff hair. What the hell?

It is an amazing thing, how life happens. And how much I have learned! I have gone from knowing literally nothing to knowing...well, lots of things. I have my doubts about knowledge and what not. I won't get into that. The part that I find fascinating is that I can be made of regular atoms and molecules and have the capacity to question my own existence. Who else can do that?

Right now I'm using an entire species' collective technology to communicate these thoughts, and what I'm saying is nothing new. Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, all sat around and thought about what the hell it meant to be. Shakespeare left his fingerprints all over the entirety of the literary dome of human consciousness with his philosophical musings translated to a thespian medium. It's such an old thing, to ponder one's existence, but it's so new at the same time. Has there ever been a definitive answer as to what exactly it is to be, why we are, or what we will be? No. Civilization has done its part in trying to fabricate trains of thought that explain this quandary, and it's called religion. For reasons I have already semi-discussed, and those same reasons I'm not about to stray from the topic. I say fuck religion.

I don't know what it means to be. I know what it's like to breathe, to wake, to sleep, to choke, to grieve, to rejoice, to kick, to eat, to poop, to puke, to experience. But I don't know what significance that has in the grand scope of anything. Even within this world, what do my experiences matter? They don't matter unless you make them matter.

To take a cynical route, about this world, and how we all want to make other things matter. Most people want their things to matter the most. We are all primal gibbons fighting for our share of an animal corpse, for our little patch of dirt to sleep on, for our mates with which to procreate. We are all struggling to eat a piece of the pie. All of this wanting to eat pie and struggling has resulted in countries, in wars, in prejudice, in much of the human condition. Many of the uglier parts, anyway.

Take a look at history. How many instances are there of widespread, genuine and lasting love for one and other? When was the last time there were no wars, no rape, no murder, or hate? When was the last time everyone thought, "Wow, this is just a great fuckin day to be alive."

I find it a little naïve to believe that the world is a truly pure and wonderful place. I think of those "The More You Know" commercials, the way they give inspiring and reassuring little tidbits. They are wrong. I know it sounds like shit, for me to belabor the point that the world is a pile of shit, but it's true a lot of the time. Not all of the time, but much of the time. I should add that this is the world through the lens of a human. Without humans or a human consciousness to question its existence and the society it exists in, all this is pointless.

Humans, with all their supposed complexity and fascinating qualities, are easily negative. It's easy to be negative. It's faster and more expedient to notice a thing's flaws rather than naming all of the things that are right with it. Humans do that to everything.

This post is frustrating me so I'm ending it. I may come back to this, I'd like to, but every time I say I definitely will I don't. So I say maybe.