I'm striking any intention of attaching a preamble to this, aside from
stating that this is no definite promise of continual update; rather, this
is a resultant of my overactive thought processes and the loose, untameable
energy I sometimes possess to write.

In Melee

There is an innumerable amount of musing on the concept of the abstract idea
of being alive, living -- Philosopher after philosopher will spend his life
attempting to place definition or understanding onto it. Which, I may add, personally,
I find ironic, in that by spending their lives striving to define life, it
somehow inadvertently gives their own lives a tangible meaning: to comprehend
life. As convoluted as that idea is itself, it is my primary reasoning for lilting
through day after day without fret over a meaning to life.
I've been called a nihilist before, and a fatalist, but I don't really consider
my overall outlook on life to fit into either one of those definitions neatly,
for all intensive purposes -- For that matter, nor for extensive cases. Admittedly,
I have fallen into slumps of holding strongly nihilistic or fatalistic views on
the world and its seemingly mechanised workings, but that is more of an emotional
despondency than a rational fletching of my self. So, except for when a curveball
breaks my jaw, I am not all that warm on the premise that life is futile and
without meaningful goal.
Invariably, conversations of this nature tend to divert into the religious (or
agnostic, or athiestic) realm, drawing inquiries as to whether or not there
be a God, diety, dieties, supreme directive, universal soul or conscious, ad
naseum. Having developed in the midst of an areligious -- Not necessarily amorale,
as the extreme conservatives are so keen on saying -- generation, I have come
to realise from all my observation that the falliblity of the modern church is
that it fails to emphasis the positive qualities of its respective religion.
Also, another effect of being born in a crowd of kids so quick to renounce
God, is that I have grown weary of even speaking my beliefs outloud, too ready
and too aware that it will be in the face of unbridled adversity, for the most
part. Having established the aforementioned, I will skimp the conversation in
regards to God and do it a well-intended injustice by leaving it at "If you
believe, if you don't, if you have faith, if you don't, whatever your point
may be, it is your's and not mine, as it does not carry from individual to
individual with any homogenous substance or consistency, therefore muddling
and fogging the view and window by which one could see eye to eye; life is
larger than one, it is all."
So, setting aside the connotations of that, let me continue on to write of
the denotation of respiration and biological renewal: life. Are we alive, are
we not? Is life a manifestation of mankind's own mind, or is it a higher, spiritual
(spirituality is not equivocated with God or any religious canon) image of
existence? Is everything we weave each day adding up to an equation that is
equally distributed and balanced, or is it unfair, cruel, malicious, and a
nightmare more macabre than any of Edgar Allan Poe's works of literature?
Nobody seems to be able to answer any of those conundrums with any certainty
that can be backed up with legitimate argument or support, but it is a quandry
held dear to all of us; after all, without any sense of why we're here, be
it bright or dark, it's almost as if one is indistinguishable from background
scenery.
How about love, or the emotions stirred by the discovery of what is popularly
referred to as one's significant other. Many poets seem to believe, or, at
least, it is what is conveyed through interpration of their works, that love
is what we thrive upon. It's true that one gets a deep sensation in their gut,
whilst in the presence of love, that their soul, mind, body, and life has
become more . . . Complete, I suppose. Speaking rather clinically about the
whole ordeal, one could point out that it may be a hardwired genetic complex
that stems from the most root of all needs: survival. Copulation and propogation
of the species is the only way the population doesn't dwindle down to nil and
vanish, you know. Then again, how romantic of a notion is it that all the warm
and fuzzy feelings of being close to someone is nothing but a condition instilled
into us by instinct, alone? It's much more appealing to attribute it to the
intangible and ambiguous state of being known as lovesickness, instead of
chalking it up as something bestial. We should all take a moment to pause and
reflect on our superiority over the animals via possession of reason and, moreover,
ability to love and care. There was a time in my life when I scoffed openly
as such saccharine displays, but all of it does have its merit, in the end,
much to my chagrin and urge to cynically bash it all. Still, I must look past
my bitterness, once in awhile. Hell, I think I'll even go ahead and argue the
premise out, for arguments' sake.
The number one fault in the idea that love is what we live for is that
"life is short and love is fleeting." People fall in and out and over and under
and around love each second, its an emotion as fickle as the Shakespearean Roman
mob of angered citisens. If life is about love, then why would love be such a
difficult end to attain. Or, in other words, how can life's labour be in such
small proportion and so skitting in reward? On the other hand, some say the
reward of love is greater than anything else man can feasibly ascertain, but
others point out that some of what society considers the greatest humans never
found a mate in life. The first crowd shoots back, though, that love is not
necessarily limited to another person, perhaps, to a certain degree, love is
not solicited just by the beautiful or enviable, but also by the idea of a higher
joy, the intellectual satisfaction of education and self-improvement. To be in
love with what one does, who one is, and the station in the world one has
chosen can be said to be the meaning of life, with being in love with another
person and raising progeny to carry on one's legacy and name a bonus. That's
a rather comfortable position to settle on, when you think about it.
Oh, but wait, then you realise that love is as undefined a term as life, so
you're back to square one. Maybe life is being aware of being alive and struggling
to find a source to blame all the tribulations of day to day activity on,
so being alive is not knowing what being alive is, thus creating a great spiral
of questions that never ends until your mind ceases to function. Which brings
me back to my first paragraph: Philosophising about the meaning of life is
unintentionally giving life a meaning.
Given that as a shaky truth, then if you spend every minute turning it over in
your brain, one could overthink it to the point of breaking, since it is as
neverending an act as a dog chasing its own tail. Hence, I usually go for long
periods of time with an apathy towards the matter of what life is, instead
focusing on who I am. Which is an entirely new essay of its own.

EOF

You may notice that this entry has a lot of hard returns, forming a margin.
This is because I wrote this one in my all-time favourite word processor: Edit.
Additionally, it would be a pointless pain in my ass to go through and remove
all the hard returns, so, if you don't like it . . . Deal. I'm also hoping
Blogger.com has finally fixed the template problem I've been having since
they changed the format of programming a few months back; you can tell exactly
what month that is by the last time my archive was admended.

Adios.

"What is life?" "Life is being." "How do we know?" "We don't."