A Rambling on Meaninglessness

We use pots and pans as ashtrays because we cannot afford food, when this soul wants something harsher, something deeper. We live in snares of happy delusions and in smiled disappointments.

Tolstoy said, “The only true knowledge a man can have is that life is meaningless.” And Tolstoy got that one right. If you look scientifically, life is just a chemical accident, a grand result of evolution, all our feelings that we hold so dear are nothing but a few chemicals interacting in particular areas of our brain. And in the most reductionist of ways life is nothing but A, C, T, G, U (the base pairs of DNA and RNA). If Carbon was not the most fertile element of the periodic table, we would not be carbon based organisms. If evolution took a different course, we would look different and react differently to different stimuli. So the question that takes away our sleep arises, ‘what is the purpose of this chemical accident we are thrown into?’. And we all ask ourselves this questions, sometimes we just don’t know we are asking this question. This question makes people addicts or delusionary or depressed or cynical, hollow and dark.It haunts us when we are alone , at night when the trivialties of the world are done, when the neon lights have died ot when the blue computer lights of your virtual life has gone into slumber. Everyone wants to do something meaningful with our lives, but rarely do we find any. You could save a life, but that does not make a man immortal. Fact is our biology betrays us here, and as Camus would say, “Lucid reasoning knows its reasoning.” Or as Blake would say that if only our doors of perception were cleansed.

This absolute lack of meaning causes in us what the existentialists call angst. Or what Camus called the Absurd. The conflict that arises when we look for meaning in a meaningless life. Isn’t that the mistake we all make? And is that not why we want something more from life , no matter how much we get? We humans are indeed a curious lot. We spend our life looking for something that isn’t there. And then we become sad and bitter. Some drown themselves into oceans of vices , and some into the depths of their minds.

This is where Camus’s ‘ The Myth of Sisyphus’ fits perfectly. Sisyphus stole death from the gods and as a punishment he had to carry a stone up a mountain top. When he reached the top , the stone would be pushed down and he would have to continue the end of time. And yes, Sisyphus is the ultimate existentialist hero. We are all in Sisyphus’s juxtaposition.We live our lives , study our books , do our jobs , grow old and die , and then someone else takes our place , and then even our substitutions get substituted.  But then Camus ends Sisyphus with perhaps the most important lines ever written.” The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Here is what I think it means. Even the saddest of us have had some beautiful and happy moments in our lives. Something that makes you feel a bit wry in our most vulnerable moments. Maybe the summers you spent as a child playing with your friends, or nocturnal winter walks of solitude. Maybe it was your mother’s smile when you were just a kid, and if you are lucky enough you found it another person (lucky you!). So life, does not have meaning. So we are not truly free. As Sartre said,” Man is condemned to be free , because once thrown into the world , he is responsible for his actions.” But we humans have one quality that perhaps stops many recluses from becoming misanthropic. And that is beauty. Beauty in whatever you find it in. Some see it in art, some in writing, some in science , some in saving lives, some in the joy of finding things out. In chaos or order , beauty is beauty . It is not a disease to be classified. To quote Thoreau,” Let every man march to the music he hears.” You cannot make a dying man immortal, but you cannot deny the joy of a birth or the beauty in alleviating suffering. And that is enough to fill an man’s heart. They are like the summer of life in an otherwise cold winter. And yes porcupine tree got it succinitly right….’ Always the summers are slipping away. Find me a way to make it stay…’ You will slip into the winters , but summer shall come and you will feel that intense innocence of childhood summers even if your tongue has been burnt off to taste.

So ultimately, the only real thing in our lives is the beauty wherever we see it. Objectively , there is no meaning to life and the universe. Most people move around in groups of three or five and think the universe is concentrated in their groups. And these people will probably be the real living manifestations of Sisyphus. But you are not one of them. Otherwise you wouldn’t stumble upon this rambling in this corner of the internet. We just have to accept that we never will beat the absurd , but we cannot let it prevent us from experiencing the one singular beauty we find amongst so much angst. We are but grains of sand in a meaningless shore, but that does not deny us the right to experience the calm of the sea. Or as the greatest of troubadours should say,” Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind .Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach .Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow .Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free .Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands .With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves .Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”

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For some reason I don’t know why,

Everyone is born with a hole in the centre of the chest.

Everyone tries to fill it with something.

Some with religion, some with other people.

But I let it be

Because I know if you run against the wind ,

At the right angle it makes the most beautiful of whistles.

Beauty in Black

There she was. Her hair fell in her face as though hiding the pain that lay beneath her beauty, the pain that all of her except her eyes so very well concealed. Once locks of flowing hair revealing her facial features, almost accentuating them, now looked as though they were made for but one task. That was to cover as much of her face without seeming too obvious. Her body was draped in black against the white of her skin. Somehow in that state of hidden pain was not beauty but grace- the grand vestige of the past.

She looked on at the charades of the world around her. There were the imbeciles, in groups of two or five, in the utter tomfoolery of their youth imagining the universe to be concentrated in their little circles.

“ I am above these circles. “, she thought.” We all are but meaningless. How does it matter if I’m happy or sad if none of the pieces fit?”

But there was a time when the pieces fit. When she was young, pure and free. When her hair flowed down her back and not her face. When there was no burden of hiding the key to her mind’s secrets. But that was a different time. Logic and reason, slow to penetrate had robbed her of her illusions. She had lost faith. Then there was a time of crisis of faith. But now, there was no faith to lose.

But the only remaining vestige of these memories that mattered to her was freedom. When she was without a care as a child or in the most troubled times of her teenage when she felt she had nothing to lose-she had felt free. Sometimes in the most unpleasant situations, as the vanquished and not as the victor – she had felt free. It was just a feeling that she had had a taste of, but never was she able to define it. It was the feeling that would make her want to scream in ecstasy the feeling that would make these little Dante’s circles bearable.

Her mind went back to the days of the open hair, to when the pieces fit as the imbeciles continued on their  futile jests.

“Innocence “, she thought,” what a word! I wish I could go back to it! But here I am without freedom! My once prized possession ! And now I am tied down to society’s whims.”

There she was in college. Making her career- her bright future. But what was the point of this future as long as it was not free? She was told by voices with faces day in and day out – “Don’t think too much! Art! Freedom! They’re just the passions of youth! Do your math and read your science. Stand on your feet, become someone and only then will the world listen.”

“But what good is any money, any fancy degree without that feeling of innocence?”

And as this anger against her fate rose, as the poet within her, as the artist within her died, her hair grew to cover her face. The more did the key seem to become heavier.

“I must rebel this cannot be my fate! I am a free thinking woman! My fate cannot be spending days behind a desk and earning money! Money! What a shame! Money and success! That is all the world thinks of! That is how it will measure me! But I will show them something else to remember me!”

The increasing black in her clothing with the occasional graffiti of and  her face obscuring hair were , but translations of her thoughts. In all of this she thought she looked much better without her innocence. She wanted to be darker, more obscure, to defend herself against the judgements of the world. Her visage was her defence against the world. Nobody could look inside.

She had long thought of herself dressed in black, walking down a dark street with a cigarette in her hand! Alas she would have to wake up the next day and attend classes that would make her fit for an unfit society. So much so, to be fit enough to succeed in it.

She rose from her chair. One can only sit alone in a public place alone without feeling awkward. But then again, she exuded awkwardness.  Angst was her crown, anger her beauty, all concealed with one tuft of black hair.

But what was it that she could do to assert that she was not just a number with a percentage sign after it? How could she prove that she was not like the others, just another number and not a name?  The ghosts of the dead poet and dead artist in her played havoc with her mind. She had to rebel against her own inhibition she had to exercise her own freedom!

Then came to her the idea she had toyed with for some time now. Narcotics! Drugs! Nobody expected a prudent medical student to be on drugs ! That would change the way she was perceived. She would no longer be the nice girl with straight hair anymore. She would be the mystery lady in black holding so many secrets in those curls over her face. Yes that was who she wanted to be!- the black magic voodoo woman- bathed in the sensuousness of her mysteries-so deliciously degenerate – so well concealed.

She decided to gradually ascend the scales of her degeneracy .Tonight she was going to get drunk! Her steps traced the pathway to the liquor store. But there was something fighting the ghost of the dead artist. It was the little girl with straight hair. As she walked , this war increased in ferocity. This was a war between what she wanted to be and who she was and the casualty was her present.

“No I can’t give in to these feelings. You have to be bad to deal with this world.”At this point the alcohol would probably serve to drown the pain more than stating any point.

“ It must be done.”, she said to herself.” I must exercise my freedom”.

And her freedom did her in as good a stead as did her money. In a few minutes, she was carrying a bottle of cheap vodka covered in brown paper to her room. Whether it would drown her angst or set her free, she just didn’t know.

As she returned that evening, she saw yet another young girl, with all her sweetness and innocence and hair clear of her face. “Memories cannot weigh me down.” But the war of ghosts still raged in her mind.

She returned to her room, concealing the liquid of her emancipation. She sat down at her dressing table, in front of her mirror. The ghostly war was raging now. And the image of the little girl with her straight hair kept haunting her.

This was too much for her. Too much angst for one day. She had to drown it all away in cheap vodka. There, she had her first sip , straight from the bottle. Her throat burned from her miscalculation. But the ghosts in her head kept fighting.

And then she looked at herself in the mirror. Beauty in black. The better part of her face covered by her long hair. Now she could let her guard down, when the world was not looking down at her , judging her.  She gently lifted her hair and pushed it behind her shoulders – revealing her face in the faint glow of the lamp nearby. Her face still retained some features of when she was ‘free’. The same lips and the same smile. But her eyes told a different tale. They had seen faces, but her face was seen and judged by the eyes . Maybe it was the vodka, maybe it was the effect of the dim lamp, that it struck her.

Somehow, she again had a feeling, something she thought herself incapable of now. She understood that her hair looked better drawn back ,her face looked better without hiding in her lush black hair. That was the end of the war. The little girl had won. The innocence that she shunned , seemed to be giving her the same ‘feeling’ of freedom again. She drained away the remaining vodka. And in that semi-tipsy state she drew her hair back, behind her shoulders and her eyes again had that singular look of innocence.

It did not matter where she hid the key anymore. She now hides in plain sight , for all to mock , but for her to relish…..