MEDITATIONS ON SOMETHINGNESS

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Anxious over something I am stuck with. Thinking to myself, what is the point anyway, why won't I just end it right now. And the cold dark night outside agrees with me, saying in a low guttural voice, 'sleep, and be done with it, do not worry, everything shall pass.' The usual justification process goes like this: since the universe is so vast, and human life so brief and insignificant, why spend it all worrying? In a cosmic time-span, the Indian kalpa, or that unit of time Mayans use that are probably as long, it is so utterly pointless to worry about anything. Schopenhauer, quoting Plato: "Nothing in this world is worth any great anxiety." Schopenhauer quoting Voltaire: "We will leave the world as cruel and heartless as we have found it." or something like that. See? What we seem to need is a healthy, humorous cynicism. But again, how does this all connect to writing? Why did I mention my depression. This is because I am searching for a justification as to why I, or anyone for that matter, should continue with existence. One of the most circulated images on 4chan, the dark twisted heart of the internet, is this text conversation in a forum, or thread, basically arguing for living one's life to the fullest since one no longer has any hope. Since one is going to take one's life anyway, why not spend that worthless life into doing something fun? or at the very least awesome? like saying to someone you love them, maybe even going so far as to purchase a firearm and assassinate some hated politician. The problem of course is when you're depressed, you barely have the strength to get out of bed, much less talk or interact with people. That's another problem: people. Sartre, french philosopher guy, post-world war II: 'Hell is other people." So kill them, I would add, but seriously folks... It takes a certain aesthetic feeling to fully appreciate what it means to be alive. When you see people following this dogma, and by this I am talking about religion, they are basically limiting themselves to certain feelings and moods and turns of the mind. This is an unfair assessment of course, and anyway I think that over time people would be bored with mainstream Catholicism or any sort of

orthodoxy. This is why heresies occur, this is why heterodoxies exist, this is why people do weird shit, like those French nobles who engaged in weird kinky sex, just so they have something to do beyond staring at the immense void of boredom before them. I would like to submit my thesis which is: more than say, the perceived corruption and venality of some of the Catholic priests and friars, boredom played a great role in the rise of the Protestant movement. For sources, I propose to look at the diaries of parishioners and their comments on the priests and other aspects of the ritual of the mass. This is why even though the Church only prescribes this ceremony first and then that ceremony, someone would say, hey why don't we do this or do that, and consider that it is not always that this innovator does this out of some sense of great and powerful necessity, but simply our of pure boredom with the way things have been done for centuries. It would not surprise me to see, in the future, Catholic priests wearing vestments embroidered with gangsta-style letterings. Boredom, that great modern demon. Inspiring art, goading people to kill themselves, basically kicking people into a creative mindset. Otherwise, all these well-fed, well-housed middle and upper middle class and upper classes would have nothing better to do than keep reproducing themselves. Another generation subjected to the same boredom, the same ceremonies, the same rituals, the same movements of the priests and his acolytes, etc. etc. They should start playing gangsta rap worship songs at church, incorporate gangsta rap into the actual hymn books, maybe the priest conduct his sermon in a rap song. Make the language more accessible to the youth of today. Inject in modern issues such as abortion, or population explosion, make some sociopolitical commentary about all these corruption and the global injustice we encounter everyday. But as we see, the Philippine Catholic priesthood ain't that cool (yet? one can only hope). If they do start becoming cool, instead of the reactionary, right-wing, conservative organization that they currently are, then maybe I would start going to church again. The void calls, whispers: 'crawl once more into the depths, back into the beginning...' Would it not have been better if one had not existed in the first place? That whole philosophy schtick about how somethingness can arise out of nothingness. See, when you're depressed you tend to take a cosmic view of things. You, shall we say, go out of your head and gaze from up above, all the sights of the universe. You tend to Generalize, something my professors frown upon, saying look at the specifics, the devil is in the details, yadda yadda, etc. Then you answer the void, you say, at least, just to have something interesting to do: 'look, I did not choose to be here. had I known how fucked up this place is, I would not have allowed myself to exist, but since I already exist, I will deal with it.' Schopenhauer states that pain is a positive thing. That is, when one builds an ethical-moral system it is better to use the

foundation 'as far away from pain as possible' rather than 'towards the greatest happiness.' it is more logical to state the negative, since the negative is something we should not lose sight of, it is something real, it is something people experience daily. Not all people achieve happiness, but everyone, at some point in their lives, has been miserable, or at least annoyed. So the SECRET TO LIFE then is to avoid pain, to make sure that one has the ability to withstand suffering, to be able to face all these calamities while not being destroyed by them, rather than chasing after dreams. Because dreams man, they always stay dreams. That's why they are dreams. The wonders of tautology. To the void we should say, that however meaningless and absurd this existence maybe, this is not a cause for losing hope. I once answered this interviewer guy who asked me something involving God that, instead of worrying whether we are following the right creed or dogma, we should just focus on 'being kind.' I was trying to subconsciously convince him why he should stop pretending to be researching on student attitudes and openly admit that he was trying to convert me into Protestantism. Also I was thinking out loud while simultaneously trying to talk to him why the Buddhists were right when they said just 'be kind.' A more accurate formulation, thinking of it now, would have been, 'do not be an asshole/piece of shit/scumbag/bad person.' Since we are all already here, the best that we can do is make this existence less miserable for others and ourselves.