In the last few weeks I have had an epiphany: I am done being depressed. I know, easier said than done, but to be honest, fuck it. I'm over it. A significant part of this is down to the most essential realisation, simply put, I was not happy, I was just stoned. All. The. Time.
Right now, I am trying not to be stoned all the time. It is a challenge. However, due to some external factors, it is easier now than it previously was.
As a result of this realisation, I want to start writing about slightly different things, slightly more abstract things, instead of going on and on about my difficulties with overcoming the collapse. The collapse is done. It is over. She chose poorly. I am worthy, of love, of happiness, of respect, of honesty. I am worthy. Yes, I have been shit in the past, I am still shit in many ways, but, I am putting in the work and effort not to be. So fuck the bullshit. She did what she did and that is her karma.
That said, it is still valuable to rigorously self analyse and self assess the past.
So here goes.
Sometime ago, probably ten years or so ago, we were in northern Uruguay, Punta Del Diablo to be precise. We were staying in a hostel run by some dreadlocked hippies. It was amazing. During the day we had met some English bloke and his eastern European girlfriend. They were somewhat crazy. We did some drinking and some smoking. At some point his girlfriend got a bit wild. If I remember right, she started doing some weird grinding sort of thing on me. It was weird and kinda inappropriate. As such, the hippies that ran the hostel kindly asked us to get her out of there. So we went elsewhere and carried on with the drinking.
Then it was time to leave. These were the good old days, when my ex and myself were a team. She was wrecked, I was less so. We needed to find our way back to the hippy run hostel. There were few street lights and less road signs to differentiate between one dusty road that looked the same as the next dusty road. Being the man, I had to get us home. Equally, I had to pretend that I knew how to do that. I did not if I am honest.
That is when I looked up. This is 100% true by the way. I looked up into the sky unaffected by light pollution and could clearly see an arrow in the sky made of stars pointing. I was wrecked. I interpreted it as meaning. I followed the stars. And we found our way back to the hippies, her leaning on me and stopping for the occasional vom or two.
I look back at this. At some points in my past I saw this as a clear indication of our suitability. In fact, many of the signs that I saw for us to be together were signs witnessed in various states of inebriation and intoxication. I know wonder about all those signs seen at all those different times. Were they in fact patterns in the sky or delusion?
Let us zoom out a little bit.
Pattern recognition is an essential component of biological life. In my view, biology is governed by fairly simple rules:
1 - everything is food or not food yet.
2 - Eat food, don't be food, reproduce, upgrade.
3 - Spend less energy, get more.
The ability to recognise patterns is fundamental to being successful at the game of biology. The lion that can first see and then predict the pattern of the antelope eats food and can then reproduce. The antelope that can see and predict the pattern of the lion's behaviour can successfully not be food, then eat food, then reproduce.
As a consequence of the importance of pattern recognition, biology engineered the pattern recognition hardware of the brain, which in turn programmed pattern recognition software in the form of thought.
Out of that line came forth the human animal, supreme in its pattern recognition ability. So good was the human animal that it was the first to not only recognise patterns, but also to invent new patterns. Not just in the mind of the Human animal, but onto walls, into tools, into words and songs and dances and clothes and worlds that had never existed until thought made them real.
With the human animal, biology shifted from the physical to the neurological. No longer did energy have to be predominantly reinvested into the body, rather, increasingly it was reinvested into a brain that saw patterns in all things. And perhaps, most significantly and unique in the world of biology, the human animal asked WHY?
We saw the pattern of the sun, the moon, and the stars and we asked why? We answered with invented patterns, patterns that made sense and we all agreed to these explanations Until some did not. Explanations of patterns went to war with alien explanations. Until one explanation could dominate all the explanations. But then new forms of seeing could be invented as a result of understanding patterns. We could see into the universe, we could see outwards at the universe. We could see inside ourselves, and all of a sudden, those old explanations to the patterns no longer made sense.
New wars over explained patterns were fought. Until again, one explanation could dominate. Almost as if the explanations themselves were governed by the same laws that governed the shaping and changing of all biology.
Here we stand, we have all this technology and science that have ultimately chased the presence of God as an explanation into the furthest corners of imagination that require belief as evidence of existence.
Let us now return to my arrow of stars.
What was I seeing when I looked up and saw the arrow pointing me home? Was it merely patterns of coincidence? Coincidence of astrological time coinciding with a homo sapiens under the influence of alcohol stumbling down poorly lit streets looking to the stars for guidance.
Or was the pattern placed, designed and intended? Or perhaps somewhere in between closer to one side or the other?
You see, I was raised in a very religious home. I went to church every Sunday until I was 16 or there abouts. Then came the substances to blur neurological frequencies and I started stepping away from such explanations as god and godliness. I stepped away from family and down pathways of errors and mistakes, lessons to be learned and scars to be formed.
I became certain of the idea that all could be explained by logic and science. If not today, then tomorrow when new lenses through which we can see the universe more clearly are invented and discovered.
However, now I question the breadcrumbs that appear to have been left. Left for us to follow or mere coincidence of time and space?
Knowledge is for the dead, belief is for children, if you are anywhere in between, the best you can hope for is to attempt to try to understand.
