kmonk

fighting

some random ramblings...

As my high school vice principal could provide ample evidence for, I have always been a fighter. In our society, it seems that the natural progression is from rebellious teen to wild undergrad to frantic early adulthood to a calm content maturity that breaks suddenly to midlife crisis, then a gradual acceptance and fade away to sleepy death. As I sit, firmly now, in my frantic stage - I wonder what is really going on here? Is this just the inevitable process of maturing to understanding the reality of life, growing up then growing old? If so, it is a comfort.

Yet, it is not so. As children, we see life the way it truly is - but understand none of it. We gradually learn to process our sensory input, eventually associating concepts to what we see. At this point, we see the trees but cannot see the forest. As our independent natures come out, usually in the teenage years, our minds mature and we begin to put the concepts in context. Yet, we are still children and not truly a part of the world. For a brief time, we can see the true nature of the world - but we do not have the skills or knowledge to change it. I believe that seeing the hard reality of life is what gives rise to the idealism and rebellion of youth.

So what happens? I think that as we see how the world relates to us - through sex, through money and through whatever status we are trained to believe is important - we become more and more hypnotized by it. The stress of the typical college experience helps, the lack of sleep and experimentation with drugs that are at the normal experience puts people into a pliable state. We learn what is "important" to us (money, power) and what we "desire" (sex, toys). Rather than seeing the objective world, we start to subjectivize (yeah, I verbed it.) our experiences according to these new axes (axis-es? whatever) of importance. We graduate and frantically try to discover our place in the world, become content as we climb up whatever ladders we set up for ourselves, panic when we reach the top and see only death below us and finally accept the inevitable and take the final leap.

Is this the truth for everyone? No, of course not - but I believe we all have a tendency to be hypnotized by the world. I don't know what's really out there, but it is always better to see the truth when your life is on the line.

Some people are natural fighters, never satisfied with the way things are but always pushing towards some ideal. Often, at least in my case, the ideal is misplace - but this does not mean that the fight was for nothing, because only fight I really get involved in is with myself. My nature wants to be lazy, hedonistic and make half assed efforts at the things I do. I fight, even though I am in the dark, so that I don't forget how.