Thoughts

Plane flights can get me pretty depressingly philosophic. Here's where my mind went on the five hour flight home:

Sometimes it seems like life is made purely of decisions. Do I want the Ham or the Turkey? Should I get a car or a van? Most of the time these questions are decided on the spot or at least with very little deliberation. You decide based on personal preference or just logic. You had Ham yesterday that wasn’t that good, so maybe you’ll try the Turkey today, or I have five kids and three dogs, the only way I can get them places is with a van. But what happens when you come up to a question you have no idea where to start deciding. I suppose that’s why I call myself indecisive, because when it comes to the big decisions, I can never bring myself to make a decision. And that always makes me turn philosophical.

There are so many questions we don’t have answers to, and just as many answers we don’t know answer what. The answer to the meaning of life, 42, just being one of them. Is our life planned out from the moment we’re born? Are all the choices we make really choices or is there some great author out there who knows exactly what it is we’re going to do even while we’re debating? Do we have free will? And if we have free will, do we have some way our life is supposed to go and our free will just gives us the chance to fuck ourselves over?

It would be so much more comforting if I believed that everything in our lives was written out the moment we were born. That the fact that I’m typing this now was already determined to happen by a greater power. Then I wouldn’t have to be so worried about making the wrong choice, if I chose to go to a party the night before a final, got drunk, and ended up flunking that class, none of that would be my fault, it would have all been part of the universe’s greater plan. Personal responsibility in general would be out the window. It’s a lot harder thinking the universe has some greater plan for us and the short-sightedness to give us the free will to screw everything up. Then if your life sucks, it’s all because you made the wrong decision. Maybe that’s why some people are so dedicated to religion. It’s so much easier when everything’s just planned out by the almighty. You don’t have to think, nothing is your fault because they’ve give you all the answers right there in a handy little book that with modern printing techniques can come small enough to be carried around in a pocket so you never actually have to think or make your own decisions. I just think the world is much too screwed up to have someone controlling everything, unless they were supposed to but went out on a coffee break and never came back. That, or they’re one millennia away from retirement and just don’t give a shit anymore. In my opinion, someone started the universe made us all so that things would go a certain way, but messed up on the logic to emotion balance and figured we’d be ok taking care of ourselves for a couple million years.

I personally can’t think of one person in the history of the world who has been happy with the human race. You can argue if we are the way we are because of our natures or if it’s because of us producing nothing but more and more little miniatures of ourselves. I suppose there is some difference between the generations. I don’t believe exactly what my mother believes, she doesn’t believe exactly what her mother believed, and we have progress that way, but its glacieral progress. A couple inches every few generations, so none of us ever get to the end. And then we go and sabotage ourselves, fighting and destroying things that took thousands of years to be compiled because of ignorance. The knowledge of the Incas, the great library of Alexandria, I know we’ll come across that knowledge again, but we’re forever walking three steps forward to have ignorance come and wipe what progress we’ve managed to come across. Like Sisyphus sentenced forever to try to roll a boulder up a hill to only to have it roll back to the bottom every time we get close to the top. It’s amazing that more people haven’t just given up at this point. Maybe part of the reason that I don’t fear hell as that I think we’re already doing about as poorly as we could. Burning forever in eternity couldn’t be much worse than living in limbo like we are now. Physical pain is awful definitely, but with enough time I’m pretty sure you could get used to anything. Like a hot tub that’s just so hot it hurts when you first go in. You get used to the heat. Have something enough and everything sort of goes numb.

I think the best time in your life has to be when you’re a baby when everything is just brand new and brilliant. It’s too bad you can’t remember that time, because the older you get the more depressing life seems to get. As a child you don’t care about what other people think. You’re taken care of. You can dance naked in your front yard and no one thinks twice about it. “They don’t know better”. For once I’d like not to know better. Dance in a supermarket without getting weird looks. Talk to animals without sounding like a crazy cat lady. We get to do more when we get older, stay home alone, date…but we give up so much at the same time.
-Lia