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I often wonder how the world will come to an end. It’s only a matter of time. The real question is whose hand it will be by. Scientists say it won’t naturally happen for at least another 3.5 billion years, when the sun expands and burns hot enough to vaporize our oceans and, by proxy, eliminate most if not all land-dwelling creatures. But of course this is circumstantial, as astrophysicists have also said that if, by any means, the sun creates even a single atom of iron somewhere deep inside its boiling belly, the whole thing will blow up, and our solar system at large will more than likely cease to exist. A comforting thought, to be sure. The Mayans predicted it was going to happen eight years ago, or so some people have said. Still others say that if we continue to hurtle down our path of climate change, it will only be about fifty years at best before our world becomes nigh-unlivable. People of various religions claim it could happen whenever their respected God decides we’ve had enough, and from there things are to be determined.

Certainly I think we’ve all had enough of this year, one with enough bad stuff to spread liberally across the entire decade. But I’m one who likes to think concisely, and be one to have an answer, even if said answer is an unfathomable one. But we don’t have a definitive answer on the end of the world, nor an unfathomably vague one. Who is there to believe? There’s truth in everything. My father taught me something important when I was younger that I still live by to this day, though I’m sure he isn’t the proprietor of this teaching. He told me that when there’s an argument, it’s best to hear out both sides, because each side will inevitably have some truth and some lie in it. You take both sides of the story and consider them. Somewhere in the middle, between the opposing thoughts, is the truth.

So I take into consideration all that has happened to us as humans this year. How polarized we all are about this and that. How unwilling so many people are to work together despite our differences. And truth be told, it’s really scary to be somewhere in the middle. It feels like you’re the bone between which two stray dogs are fighting over, threatening to snap you in half. Here I find solidarity in the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien, spoken through the mouth of Bilbo Baggins:

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

from The Fellowship of the Ring

On the one hand, both sides of the argument threaten to “cancel” you, to shut you down and ensure you never have a say because of a single slip up, or an differing opinion that doesn’t follow the rhetoric. On the other, you have a philosophy that you want to live by, and things you want to say that make you expressly human. I want to be able to think freely and not feel the threat of someone getting angry at me, or breaking off what seemed to be a good relationship simply because I don’t always agree with them on everything.

I’m a naturally cautious individual, certainly not shy. So many introverts such as myself are misidentified as not wanting to speak up because we’re shy. Instead, I like to think we bide our time. For in those very few moments where we are able to actually fit in a word edgewise, we have to make it count. We have to make sure we don’t slip up and make ourselves look dumb, because there are precious few words left to fix those mistakes. Then if you take a look at the current state of society, it makes it that much harder to want to speak up lest you look dumb or uninformed or even just unbiased on hot-button issues. I spend a great deal of my time alone with my own mind as my only companion, crafting up my next statements so as to ensure I’m not sidelined or made irrelevant.

It’s hard to write this even now, because I’m speaking from the heart instead of from the mind. Being on the Internet usually helps, because you are just one person in a murky crowd of so many others, each with their own thoughts to share. However, given the circumstances, I’m here, offering my thoughts to a limited pool of people, people who really don’t know me well, but well enough to judge me based on my words rather than my character. I’m not being trying to be critical of those who will read this rambling. I’m not saying that by expressing myself I will be immediately be written off and never heard from again, but rather that every time you speak, regardless of who to, you always run a risk of it.

On the topic of words, I’ve wanted to be a writer from a very young age. So naturally I have words to offer to the melting pot that is society. That is my gift to contribute to humanity. However, those very words are under threat of being rejected, extinguished, diminished, and eradicated just for existing. Of course, this scares me. If all I have to offer is words, but I say the wrong thing, I won’t be allowed to offer those words anymore. I fear if that happens those words would well up inside of me and I would certainly explode.

I want to be able to share these words with people, and not at arm’s length. I long, especially now after weeks of being inside and away from the people and places and things that I love, for the ability to sit down with someone and have an intimate conversation. I want to be able to pour out all these built up emotions that I have been holding back without fear of hasty repercussion. I want to feel like I belong amongst the whole of humanity, rather than be part of the group which is fought over for the benefit of this or that. In other words, I don’t want to feel like that butter, spread too thinly across a piece of bread.

This has been an extremely cathartic experience. It helps, but only temporarily of course. Soon I’ll learn of more bad news, which calls to mind the meme that has been floating around the internet courtesy of The Simpsons, in which Bart says:

“This is the worst day of my life.”

To which Homer replies, with finger extended to emphasize his point:

“The worst day of your life so far.”

And I think, “Wow.”

I mean, when The Simpsons are right, they are most certainly right. Who’s to say 202o surpasses all when we have anywhere from a few more seconds to 3.5 billion more years ahead of us? Maybe it’s time to think a bit more positively. I personally think about all the time I’ll be able to spend with friends and family when lockdowns are finally let up, all the stuff I’ll be able to encounter and the things I will be able to learn in person. All of the different foods I’ll be able to eat again, and the list goes on.

Coronavirus sure has sucked for everyone, though undoubtedly more for some than others. In fact, to say that it “sucked” for those who lost their lives to the virus is an extreme undermining of their sacrifice. In this case, I’m not trying to be offensive to those who have suffered an exorbitant amount. Truth be told, COVID has stolen lives, jobs, relationships, face-to-face social interaction, and everything else under the sun. But it has (for the most part) united us all under a common goal: do what we can for our fellow humans and for ourselves to ensure a healthier world. We’ll all come out of this changed people, and it might be a positive step towards unification. After all, it’s through suffering that change is brought about. I think back in history to times like the Spanish Inquisition, the Black Plague, World War I, the Great Depression, the Spanish Flu, World War II, et cetera, et cetera. Did we not come out of all of these moments of great suffering stronger people? Certainly just as many people lost their livelihoods and, for some, their lives at large, but many came out of it with great lessons to pass onto the next generations- lessons of friendship, of community, of the pure tenacity of the human spirit.

And so I have no doubt that we will overcome all that has been thrown at us over this year. We’ll have lessons to pass on to our children and in turn they will pass it on to theirs.

And if worse is to come, we’ll be ready.

This past year has been one to eat away at a sense of progress, a belief that, in the end, we come up ahead. For the most part, we are fed myths of victories and great accomplishments; most fiction preserves the myth, essentially creating a positive feedback. Doesn’t the hero (in most works) always come ahead? Aren’t insurmountable dangers always surmountable in the end? Don’t we look at images of lone warriors facing enemies taller than mountains and just know that the warrior, at a millionth of her enemy’s volume, will defeat the giant in battle?

And at the same time, we only have to check the news in whichever way we do to feel something like despair—or outright despair, helplessness, loneliness, darkness closing in (or light leaving you; the description is at your discretion). I know, this is a huge generalization, and certainly some readers will be quick to disagree—perhaps even the majority. But these two things are not mutually exclusive: we may die, we may be defeated, our country taken, our people devastated and pushed close to a fate of darkness. Still, in the end we may remain. We’ll be stories or teachings to kids who will never have to face extinction of their people.

There! That’s where tape is peeling off, where the shadows flicker and we realize we’ve been hidden in a cave our whole lives and we await anxiously, shivering of cold as we emerge from the exhausting sleep and terrifying nightmares, waiting for Plato to come and undo the shackles, as we try to stretch legs and arms that are all but petrified, turned to stone, and there might be a beautiful Sun or it might yet be another show but I can’t turn my head, and Plato promised to guide us out and why are the shadows on the wall laughing and—

And so on. Or, why, if we always come ahead, is everything still going to shit?

The Weather Will not Change

Some 8 years ago, I found something I still treasure to this day. Before telling you—as I can’t help to—, I’ll show you:

“Last night Boris discovered that he was lousy. […] We might never have known each other so intimately, Boris and I, had it not been for the lice.
Boris has just given me a summary of his views. He is a weather prophet. The weather will continue bad, he says. There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves. The hero, then is not Time, but Timelessness. We must get in step, a lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. The weather will not change.”

Thus begins Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Of the hundreds of books I’ve read, only a few passages have impacted me enough to spontaneously come to mind now and then (and most are Henry’s). The passage, to me, has change shapes since I first read it. Good, I’ve learnt something.

In a sea of love stories, of heroes that limp through the finish line, of underdogs who always end up in some pinnacle, Miller acknowledged the rest of life.

Because it is true, isn’t it? The weather will continue bad, it will not change. For every headline that describes humanitarian relief in a country stricken by a hurricane, there is a hurricane and thousands left without a home, children scarred by a horror only many unfortunate others can understand. And more extreme, violent hurricanes are sure to follow. For every grand discovery in cancer research, there are approximately .0001 novel therapeutics that (in the U.S.) will set you for a life of indebtedness. For every tree planted a thousand more are burnt for the delicious Nutella we will shit out tomorrow.

And so forth.

Time

Moreover, there were no more heroes. Back then, I was still hopeful, despite everything. I held grand dreams not just for me, but for everyone, too. In time, bruises would leave marks, broken bones would mend with only a callus to show, and the most peaceful time in the human era would only more peaceful. In time, economic development would reach every country, and decency would become a human right. In time, clever minds would correct climate, fix food insecurity, grant us all a 4-day-workweek. In time, there would be no use for hate anymore, no need to defend what little we have from others; no envy, no jealousy, no loneliness. Not that there would be no pain—even then I was sure pain is a necessary human experience—but any barriers to self-actualization would be demolished, leaving us free to be in just the way we wanted to be.

My dreams, at least, would happen in my lifetime. For the rest of humanity, it was a matter of time.

Things here and there began taking huge strides backward. The most impactful would be two Presidential elections in two different countries that, through dissimilar means, arrived at similar leaders—an ugly flaw of civilized era. It is not necessary to say more—those who agree are too familiar with the feelings of being warped into an absurd dream, and those who don’t are helpless at understanding.

My hopes vanished. No, we haven’t been annihilated in nuclear war because of one rambling tweet at odd hours of the night, but it is naive to ring the bell after the fact… Of course, a lot of people would not think twice before calling me an alarmist, among other things. The clouds above are getting heavy, and it seems that the few that have some certainty of the trouble ahead are getting drowned out by those who are unmovably confident in their own ideas and pride.

I could easily continue describing these things, but it is not necessary. The weather will continue bad. We can’t steer the ship ourselves. What can we do, then?

Timelessness and the Creative Process

A couple of sentences after the paragraph above, Miller continues:

“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am.”

Unlike Boris and his lice, I am not a weather prophet. I am, however, a writer–not because I like writing (finding a writer who likes to write is rare), but because I feel like I have to write, if just for myself. Writing is a shortcut.

And as a shortcut, instead of hurting your eyes with my words, I’ll leave another passage from Henry Miller’s Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I. The sentence I’ve emphasized is enough to make the point.

“The creative individual (in wrestling with his medium) is supposed to experience a joy which balances, if it does not outweight, the pain and anguish which accompany the struggle to express himself. He lives in his work, we say. But this unique kind of life varies extremely with the individual. It is only in the measure that he is aware of more life, the life abundant, that he may be said to live in his work. If there is no realization there is no purpose or advantage in substituting the imaginative life for the purely adventurous one of reality. Every one who lifts himself above the activities of the daily round does so not only in the hope of enlarging his field of experience, or even of enriching it, but of quickening it. Only in this sense does struggle have any meaning. Accept this view, and the distinction between failure and success is nil. And this is what every great artist comes to learn en route—that the process in which he is involved has to do with another dimension of life, that by identifying himself with this process he augments life. In this view of things he is permanently removed—and protected—from that insidious death which seems to triumph all about him. He divines that the great secret will never be apprehended but incorporated in his very substance. He has to make himself a part of the mystery, live in it as well as with it. Acceptance is the solution: it is an art, not an egotistical, performance on the part of the intellect. Through art then, one finally establishes contact with reality: that is the great discovery. Here all is play and invention; there is no solid foothold from which to launch the projectiles which will pierce the miasma of folly, ignorance and greed. The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful−thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless.”

Though Miller is a writer, and certainly, the passage is with respect to writing and other arts, I would argue that it is not the expression which commands the artist, but the state of development in which creation occurs. We have to tap into the internal life to create something of value [for ourselves]. Being in this state, touching what is intangible, untangling what exists only as a shape-shifting mass of cords, we alter what we explore. Or perhaps we find better ways of navigating these internal waters. Nevertheless, spending time there we become more adept at realizing the figures that lie just beyond our grasp. We build upon things that are already there.

But it’s the process of creating what compels us. It’s a shortcut to self-actualizing. Long ago, millennia before Maslow devised his hierarchy, artists all around were in on this secret. A lot of artists work on empty stomachs, actualizing themselves with each stroke of the paintbrush, feeling the need for little more–at least for those timeless moments.

Inevitably, the outer world bleeds into this inner world; thankfully, the converse is true. Exploring our inner world, our ideas and the ideas of others, is a way of adapting to an inadaptable world. Exploring the outer world through our ideas is also advantageous.

This has been a year full of death, of despair. I no longer have the certainty that we have accrued favor with the gods, that Time is on our side. These years have been a reality check for the societies we’ve built up, to these monuments of what the human spirit is capable of with hard work and a sharp eye.

Though there is no end in sight, and though the sky will not clear even after this pandemic is past us (not to speak of the ones to come), for me, it’s enough to dream of being a writer to remove myself from the insidious death that, even almost a century after Boris prophesized it, continues to triumph over everything.