April 17th, 2004

I try, as much as I can, to refrain from thinking. Not from the normal brain processes though (which obviously will lead to the death of me), just your usual, rather philosophical-political type of thinking. Thinking (from now on, for the life of these passages, so to speak, shall we equate ‘thinking’ to that which we have discussed in a quasi form—the deep, deep, penetrating analysis of life philosophically and given contemporary day, politically?) gives me a major headache. It is true: over-thinking can make you insane. Take one look at a globe, a picture of the Earth and you see this sphere, blue, white, brown. Other than awe (for most sentimental fools just like myself, I’d like to think), you see not something simple, you see something on the verge of complexity. But when you really think about it, the complexity of our planet’s structure as seen from afar (photos taken by an astronaut, photos in National Geographic, replicas in museums) is in no comparison from the complexity taken, inhaled within its rather cancerous atmosphere. And with every complexity are tens and thousands of trucks carrying a gazillion ideas each. It can make you sick.

That’s why I try to refrain from thinking.

Then again, just like right now, I find the urge to justify why I must refrain from thinking. This process then sprouts into other deeper, and sometimes out of whack, out of topic thoughts. To simplify the general path my justifications run into: I might go insane. But then again, given this, one must have to think: what is the problem with being insane? When your state of mind has gone off to a subliminal level, normal human patterns are then discarded. Hygienic and social issues and fears are thrown into the wind. Most arguments from people who have thought of the same things (and as of the moment, a new train of thought has choochooed in my mind, and a new word has been coined by me—‘choochooed’—isn’t the brain marvelous? A multitasking, mucous membrane) go this direction: to be insane is to be free. It is true, too. Free from everybody else and what they might think. There are of course cases where an insane person might be enslaved to unwanted thoughts in his brain (I’ve read about this somewhere, but I was too bored to continue reading the darn thing), but I’ve always thought about how it is always better to be enslaved to things out of control as long as it is within you, not anywhere or anyone else.

How many people in the world are thinking the same things I am thinking right now? I always wonder. No scientist, archeologist, whatever you call those kinds of people, will ever know. How many people in the world are thinking these things I am thinking right now and typing them up on their roommate’s PC, all alone in their rather uncouth little room on the fifteenth floor of a condominium located on a long, rather polluted avenue in a Third World Country striving to make things better for the people and hoping by this next election, things will work out better? How many? I would like to meet them.

I bet you have a dark impression of me now. A quiet, limber, somber human being playing lonely, dragging music in a dark room. Perhaps it is all my fault. There are a lot of things to smile about, given this place, given this existence. People keep asking, people keep asking, what is the point of all this? What is the meaning of life? A question so popular even my younger brother asked me this during his fifth birthday. (It’s depressing, really, if you ask me. Such emotional and intellectual attacks should not harm kids, let them enjoy the few years of their lives worry-free. Let the thinking begin when their ages are ripe.) The point is, don’t look for the point. I certainly cannot come up with a general definition, perhaps other than a biological one (which doctors, scientists have concocted, of course), of life. No one can. Another point, besides the discontinuity of looking for the point, is the search for your very own, personalized point. Nothing is ever general. Now that I say it, I may have generalized, and people might argue otherwise. Given that possibility (of other people arguing otherwise, that some things may be generalized), my first point comes out true: given the lack of consensus on a generalized point refuting universality (or generalization, on a smaller scale), nothing, once again, is ever general.