6/6/2008 (Part I)

Sometimes I sit and reflect in the waning light of the day. It's a good time of day for us pseudo-philosophers. As I sit here tonight, alone, I think about how so many of the little facets of life are cyclical. Ups and downs. Ins and outs. Yin and yang. One season fades into the next without always leaving a definite line of juxtaposition. Some sort of duality exists in nearly everything we know. There are two sides to every coin...and story. Perhaps the Mayans were right. Maybe time isn't linear like we were led to believe from early childhood. Those textbooks were filled with their fair share of trite bullshit anyway. Columbus didn't discover America, and Abe wasn't honest. If one really thinks about it, the Biblical Eternity would make more sense as a single persisting moment rather than a time line extending infinitely in either direction. Perhaps time is just a grand illusion, a prison that we've created for ourselves in an effort to cope with something the human mind just cannot handle. After all, we are the only species on the planet that concerns itself with keeping track of it. Most everyone has heard the quote, "We stand on the shoulders of giants," at one time or another in their lives. Needless to say, without these "giants" of the past, we would not be where we are today, but it could be that in exchange for leaving behind the comfortable stasis still carried on by a select few tribal groups neatly tucked away beneath a handful of dense forest canopies in pockets around the world, we are instead building ourselves up on tower of isolation and driving ourselves farther and farther apart. Buddhism teaches that the key to enlightenment is living in the present. Some may think that is silly, but I have been doing that for as long as I can remember. It happened naturally and had absolutely nothing to do with the need of aligning myself with a particular philosophy or religion. One day when I was 20 years old, I went a little early to a college English course I was taking because I had nothing else to do that day. I went in and sat down. After a few minutes of perusing a magazine I had brought with me, my English professor spoke up and said, "Can I ask you a question, Brandon?" I quickly complied, and he asked, "Are you content with life? The reason I ask is this: I have never met anyone so engaged in the present moment." After a moment of thought, I couldn't give him a straight answer. I had never really thought about it before that day because I never saw the need. Even to this day, I don't have a definite answer to that question. I generally lean to the negative side of that question, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. After all, a content man has never left a lasting mark on the world. I just have to figure out what it is that I need to use to make my mark. As time continues to pass, I think more and more that my weapon (or tool) of choice is the written word.