On Writing

Edited from excerpts of 12/7/23 – Continued Thoughts on Learning

What a painful and inefficient way to grow and learn it is, to be corrected by a faceless, general audience. And this is my lot because I have no peers among the people who know and respect me. All this cruelty, and such an arduous path, to end in what I suspect is an even better-informed kind of nihilism. I do not expect to find any solace on this journey, or a way of life for myself personally. The pursuit is what I seek, but the suffering is unbearable even to consider, it seems.

I want to write for people to read, but I am distraught to imagine the interactions. I am treated like an alien thing when I talk to others about my beliefs, and all there seems to exist on the internet (and for all purposes, humanity) is ignorance and hatred. I am terrified to imagine publishing some effort of mine, and in my mind perceiving it as exposing my heart to all the world- and then for any fraction of that response to be hurtful or ignorant. Not because I can’t accept the criticism (although it would also hurt), but because I will have placed the weight of “the world” and “humanity” onto that one interaction, the first public interaction any art of mine sees.

Are all humans worthy of compassion? Are we all the same?

Is there such a thing as an evil person?

Are we not all victims of this horrible place?

I struggle to find the energy to forgive, and it is all I have. I can barely forgive my loved ones, and I hope to continue to love them and all of humanity in the same way. Why can’t I find that compassion anymore? I think that I am continually exposed to the hopeless state of certain people, the idea of individuals who will never experience what they are, and they will be victims, and victimize others, through until their death. I am simply weighed down by the mindless cruelty we exert onto ourselves, on behalf of this place we’ve been abandoned in.

Hearing an ignorant voice takes me beyond the human beneath it, whom I have already forgiven. Beyond is the permanent, unending and unyielding source of ignorance.

My world is consumed by nothing.

Why can’t I be content to save even one person, or be heard by one person? If all reality is a machine which grinds to dust, and any dissenting voice is an artifact of cosmic indifference, what is it to me but a piece of all that noise? Or is it because I have been so successfully shrouding myself in distraction, that now the thoughts of the hopelessness and meaninglessness of it all have buried me to where I cannot breathe?

Is it not a beautiful thing that I am alive? That I feel, and am heard?

Can I not scream into those gears and teeth, whose churning make sounds like raving idiots? What do I care that the void has a face like my fellow man? Can I not let go of that one, and that one, and that one? Am I only fighting with a childish, impossible dream of saving them all?

My next step will be to learn, and accept, in letting them die.

I used to believe that ignorance was the source of all suffering, and that knowledge and understanding would save the world. I’ve accepted that any amount of understanding is insufficient to sate the restlessness that is the natural state of consciousness. Thus, knowledge and understanding can only remove undue suffering – in tandem with material plentitude.

…

What I have to offer is a celebration of humanity, from the perspective that I have, which is as an outsider. Or at least, it feels that way. I have a seemingly extreme position that I approach my experience of being alive, and being human from, which is (and I hope to continue to cultivate it), pure perspective. I want to capture the widest, most omniscient overlook above all of us and what we are, but still be able to describe what I see from there, and how I specifically belong in it.

My heart breaks to consider what a lonely walk that is.

I can already feel it, and I’m barely a man.