Originally posted on the Internal Rumination blog.
There are days when I feel it. Days where my continued existence shifts into view like a lense refocusing. My heart thumps beneath my ribcage, blood flows through my veins, heat travels to every corner of my being. I can see, hear, touch, smell and think. I’m a fixed point, a fact that exists within the infinite depths of outer space. I’m a product of a universe that shouldn’t exist by any means. How’d I get here? How’d any of this get here.
On other days, the feeling isn’t so rosy. I’m the product of a world soaked in agony, trapped in a vessel prone to decay and pain. My body will whither, it will hurt, it will die. I will cross paths with others who will hurt and exploit me for their own gain. I slipped into being without any say in the matter. Now I must navigate through reality whilst dealing with whatever obstacle of pain slams into me. These are the days where I want to run from my feelings, shut down my nervous system, and do all I can to avoid whatever hurt awaits me in the great outdoors.
We are alive, you and I. Falling through reality at an incalculable speed. None of us know how we got here, or why we are here. Is there a purpose for our being? Is there some greater intelligence that stems beyond the lens of this universe? Or any universe for that matter?
Days like these can go either way. On the good days, emotion ignites my soul like an ignition kick-starting an engine. On such days, my existence feels like a miracle which knows no limits. An impossible entity who fell into being after an infinite number of coincidences made it so. Now I exist, I’m free to seek all the pleasure and fulfilment in my limited run on this earth. Like the other 7 billion and counting souls, the world is mine for the taking. A reality I’m free to roam and explore until the number is called.
Reason tells me that no, there is no divine purpose. Then again, reason also tells me none of this should exist. We shouldn’t be here. None of what we feel or think or dream should be conceivable. Yet here we are, free to laugh, cry, hope, dream, hurt and be hurt. Impossible entities clinging to a damp sphere of sea and sand, dreaming of bigger and better lands that may exist in tangent to ourselves.
Some days terrify me. Some days electrify me. No matter which way the wind blows after each waking moment, one constant persists; I am alive. Impossibly, hopelessly and startlingly alive. My brain a hub of electrical signals, firing on all cylinders since the day my mother conceived me. A vessel of organs and tissue, hurtling through time and space until the day it ceases to be. For all the pain and hope that jolts through me, I shall remain in this state until I am no more, by which point, none of this will matter.
Today we exist. For how much longer is anyone’s guess. Yet by the time this fact changes to something else, meaning as we know it will no longer apply. Here we are, right now, in this reality, at this time. We are witnesses to a realm that should have no witnesses. What a strange and bizarre land this truly is. A land of infinite possibility.
The universe is ours. At least it is for now.
Enjoy the good and the bad, whilst it lasts.
