Monday, August 18, 2014

It doesn't matter that nothing matters

It's funny.

I never thought that my desire for connection to the universe could subside.  I never imagined that I could ever give up.

I have.  I know I have.

It's more because things didn't happen than because anything did; the world is constantly evolving and shifting, and perhaps it has always been that way.  I wanted to be an active force in it.  I wanted to change the world, save it somehow, make it better.  I used to really think I could make a difference.  But it's all just writing on the shore as the waves come in.  All things in the world are temporary, and the world doesn't exist anyway.

I only see my own perceptions, and they are skewed and untrue.  I can't trust my perceptions, my interpretations, my feelings, or thoughts.  They are all miscolored by preconceptions.  They are all distortions.  The moments of clarity I cling to in my memory are in the past.

The thing that has always mattered to me is figuring out what I am, what the universe is, what/if God is, and why.  It looks like different questions, but it's all the same answer.  And it's unanswerable.  There are no words that will be able to encode it, there are no feelings to express it, no thoughts to contain it.  I will have to dissolve this bizarre persona to even come close.

And then I find that other things matter to me too, things tied into what I believe myself to be:  a writer of fantasy stories; a human desiring of camaraderie with others; a being with a physical form who must figure out a way to continue to survive in a physical world.

Compromising those drives with the constant thought-parade that insists none of it matters results in a sort of hitching pendulum swing:

I want to write all the stories, and draw all the pictures, make all the films, and design all the things!  But why?  Why do anything?  It doesn't matter.  Even if I like it at one moment, knowing that it doesn't matter, doesn't accomplish, or doesn't actually make any difference one way or the other saps the excitement out of it completely.

But here's the thing:  it doesn't matter that nothing matters.  I think it does, and it destroys my joy, but I'm not thinking clearly.  I'm thinking that if I do something, I will think better about myself.  I will become better for it.  I'm not going to save myself from anything by accomplishing task 1, 2, or 3, but that isn't the point of doing anything.  This is what I need to learn, and the easiest way to do so is by playing video games.

Video games (like everything else, really) are self-contained universes.  We look in, we play around, we think about them.  Our ideas about our experiences are the only things we take with us.  The events therein don't affect my outer life except in how I think about them and use them to relate to other things.  That's all.  One day I can go steal cars and rob banks; another day I can give gold to beggars and bring down an ogre plaguing a town.  It doesn't matter.  I do it because I like to.  No pressure.  That's what I could be doing instead of plaguing myself with how much I'm failing at life because I'm not doing x, y, or z.

Look, man, it's not going to matter when I'm not here anymore (or even tomorrow, really) if I drew a picture or wrote this story, or painted a picture no one else ever sees.  It doesn't matter what I do.  I might as well enjoy it.  There's no pressure on me from anyone anywhere except the crushing pressure of my own self-scrutiny.  I might as well just do what I care to.  It doesn't have to be grand or revolutionary.  Humanity will go on.  The Earth will go on.  Celine Dion's heart will go on.  I will go on.

And if I don't--if I simply dissolve into what actually does exist, whether I know about it or not--that doesn't matter either.  There's nothing to be upset about.  There's no reason for concern.

I'm here now.  That's all I have.