Freedom in dispassion
Things come to me and it’s impossible to manage them all.
Every time I think something is important, and that I must “file it away” — hours later, it’s gone with the wind — just to leave me alone in the desert, once again.
I always return to this place: this thatched, unstable hut.
The straw pillow digs into my face, and joy comes when this is okay with me.
Limitless joy is then born of “thick skin”.
But not in the traditional sense.
I trust that you can see the two couldn’t be more different.
The essence of my learning, is learning how to live in this place.
Every attempted departure is just me going off the “deep end” again.
I have no shame in saying this.
Do you know how many times I’ve done so?
No, you don’t.
Countless.
Apparently, it must be so.
The irony is that this knowing itself is what grants me freedom.
It’s not masochistic. It’s simply the truth. And freedom comes from my growing dispassion towards it.
Everything happens for a reason.
And no, I do not mean that “it’s meant to be”.
I mean it in the truest, purest meaning of the words.
Cause and effect.
Things are the way they are, because they cannot be otherwise.
Imprisonment comes from any and all attempts to flee this.
What would cause one to flee this?
Not being “okay with it” comes to mind.
Why would one not be “okay with it”?
This is a rabbit hole in of itself.
Noise. Let’s just call it noise.
I really tire speaking of society.
I tire of speaking of a society that is sick.
I’ve seen enough to know this. There is no point in trying to relay this message to anybody.
The next step in my journey is a wholly inner one.
I’ve seen what I needed to see. And this is proven to me by my retreat from the world.
There’s something a part of me wants to declare, but another part of me is withholding it.
And this is because I know that declaring such a thing will only embolden that which prevents it.
Besides, why declare a pittance?
Understanding that I continue to fail to understand is what allows me to understand.
Not to be “humble” — not to display “how honest I’m being”.
Truly understanding that I’ve failed to understand.
And coming to understand this by catching a glimpse of the truth.
What prevents one from getting to this point? What prevented me?
The notion that one is actually getting somewhere. Even if one is.
There’s a thought that often plagues my mind, and it is that if I no longer experienced pain, if I no longer struggled, would I still be able to create art?
I suppose this very question proves that there’s pleasure in pain. Indirectly if not directly.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But the answer has seem to come to me.
There will always be something. It just may not arise from pain.
And not everything I do, or write about, arises from this place.
Just the most heart-wrenching. And I suppose I enjoy sitting back in reverence of such a thing coming through me.
I started this writing speaking about “things arising”, and not being able to “file them away”.
I don’t think such a thing is possible.
I think what really happens, is that these experiences, while they may have a profound impact on you — while they may shake your very world — they will always leave you, leaving only a fragment behind.
And though this fragment may be as small as a pebble: it is solid, and real.
And so in a way, I’m nothing more than a collector of these fragments. A geologist of the self, trying to piece it all together.
Perhaps it’s best to simply toss these in your pouch and move on.
Perhaps it’s vain to imagine that one’s notes, recollections, or memories of a thing could even hope to resemble, let alone preserve a reaction pertaining an infinite multitude of variables, in its entirety.
It’s for this reason that reading one’s own writings oftentimes feels like reading another’s.
You’re simply no longer that person.
What “we are”, is therefore, not clear at all.
I have no idea what we are. And I don’t know it’s fruitful even trying to know this, or to have an opinion about it.
All opinions have become irritating to me, to be honest.
When somebody has an opinion, I immediately think, “Who cares?”
Even when I do it myself. I immediately disengage upon realizing it.
If you know something, then I’m interested. If you’re simply reciting something, even if it’s technically correct — it’s empty, and powerless to move anyone.
This is another reason why I’ve really begun to close off from society.
It’s all just opinions.
I’d rather listen to somebody’s “subjective truths”, even if they’re nonsense.
Right or wrong, at least the person is truly feeling that way in the moment. It’s pure, and heartfelt.
Perhaps this is what I seek to have come from me. Perhaps this is what my “ultimate” is.