Random rants and ramblings...

Existence is a funny thing. Have you ever looked at yourself or paused while walking down a sidewalk and thought; I can’t believe I exist? How weird it is to look at your reflection in the mirror or look at your legs carrying you to your destination while you are barely acknowledging it. To be…. To be one out of the billions of people on earth, you are your own physical body and consciousness, some cells multiplied and all that… and there YOU were. There I was. From a third person perspective, it seems alright. But when you think that some little mass of cells developed into all you are today, isn’t it just… weird!?

I thought about this today, walking to class. Are we not trained to go about everyday life like we train rats to go through a maze? Who said we had to go to class or work? What the hell else would we do in a world where if you don’t have any education or money you are pretty much shit out of luck? What are we supposed to do? How do we know that?

A question Lauren raised while shopping amongst the extravagant holiday mall setting on black friday, that I’ve often thought about… how did we come from, depending on which way you look at it, just Adam and Eve or a bunch of apes, in a completely natural world… to all of THIS? To a green natural world where people slept next to snakes to a boxed in, mastermind thought-up conglomeration where consumer is king? And where I would never dare put my head anywhere near a snake or spider! Once you have things, you can’t go back. This is us, this is the world. It’s pretty nice and comfy, but we made all this. It wasn’t given to us. 

To just be… a wandering entity. Each of us has the whole entire world to roam. Yet we may not roam far past the boundaries of our homes. Home is not a house, but where we feel comfortable and happy. I could say, screw all this, and just set off to Australia and cook shrimp on the barbie all day. Ah, but how will I get there? I’m not completely free. I have to find the money to get a plane ticket and then find a piece of land to use the “barbie” and maybe a friend or two and then I’ll try to pick up the accent because it’s cool. Your soul is free, your body isn’t.

Maybe I was straying a bit away from the point, though I don’t really know what the point is. I just love the book Nausea by Jean Paul Sartre. He’s disgusted with existence, but I am amazed, fascinated, and I guess also weirded out a bit like he is. Like I said, being alive is just so weird. To define life and being is just… impossible. It’s not like there’s a need to explain it anyways. Anyone you would bother to explain it to is alive just like you. Maybe they just don’t look at their fingers and wonder where it all came from and why. I’m used to fingers because I’ve always had them. But what about the horse? He only has hooves and to him, our hands might look like freaky octopuses! If I hadn’t always looked as I had, maybe I would look at my form and be creeped out.

Yes, this is what I think about when I should be writing a paper on King Arthur…