Will anyone read this anyway?

Late night thoughts

I remember lying there trying to convince myself that I was getting up because I felt inspired to write. Actually, I’d always felt most alive in the hours when most others were asleep. I liked to picture London in my head, all those houses and flats squashed together full of sleeping human bodies. Relaxed, in their dreams. And me, lying there, alert, thinking. And then I would think of all the other people lying there, thinking. Wondering, if I get to sleep now, how many hours sleep will I manage before I have to get up and pretend I’m a normal person functioning on a normal number of hours of sleep? It made me feel part of an exclusive club. A club of night thinkers. Who would never meet, but who would fill the London night air with hopes and worries. And who would never know the others who surrounded them, awake and alone. But always oddly be aware that each other was there. Well here are some night thoughts, this is my contribution to those quiet but raging clouds.

I watched the motion in the mirror as the white track disappeared off it, like an old layer of dust blown off a treasured memory, tucked away somewhere safe. Only this dust was headed somewhere rushing, busy, and tiny bodies with clutching arms would unknowingly deposit its relief in places where it would be clung to and appreciated. 

I had been feeling low, and decided I would take wisdom from others who had felt this way. If only to prove that I was better off than them. I have started to read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar and am trying to figure out why this uptight and closed minded woman has inspired female writers with her stories of frigidness and judgmentalness. I felt insulted as I listened to her shallow whining, condemning those around her to fickle words on a page. So what; your idealised boyfriend shagged someone before you, get over yourself darling. And one of the most inspiring events you find to write about is food poisoning! Wowzers. I know the book gets deeper and ‘Esther’ attempts suicide a few times, but I can’t help but feel frustrated with Sylvia Plath for writing with such a lack of feeling.

The world has changed so much since Plath, and yet she remains an icon for deep and thoughtful women. I wonder what kind of persona she would have embodied had she been alive in the age of chat rooms and blogging. Would anyone have listened to her bigoted nonsense? Will someone think the same of this in years to come?

I have grown up into a world of internet and social media. Where a thought that would once be contained in your head can now be projected into the mind of a total stranger, on the opposite side of the world. I feel we are hurtling towards an age of greater understanding. Where those in power will have to have justifiable reasons for mobilising a nation. But I also have the advantage of knowing a world without instant feedback that I lived in as a child. Where my diaries were tangible and physical. Where reflection and meditation (even if they weren’t recognised as that at the time) allowed people to have faith in their own values. I like to think I am free.

But I see Islamic women every day who wear their headscarves and feel that they are free. And yet I know they are not, but they probably feel the same about me. I know I am a slave to money, and yet I have more than many. I think I understand money better than others because I spend it when I have it on things that bring me and the people around me closer together. And yet I live far away from those I love the most. I find myself envying the tribes we consider to be ‘primitive’ who live in the jungles and rainforests, because they live so simply. Do they have existentialist thoughts? Or do these thoughts only come with education? I don’t think they do.

We live in a world where people are judged for wearing the wrong clothes, having the wrong friends and not assimilating themselves into what is 'normal.' Is it part of Homo sapiens' evolution that we exclude those who don't fit the mould and celebrate those who supersede it? And then try to emulate them? Are we a product merely of survival of the fittest? Or can we branch off from that? What if there were another segregation of humankind? Would those who cast aside the beliefs and norms of the homo sapiens be a more evolved human species? How do we know that the neanderthal man wasn't a kinder, more Earth-loving being that the homo sapiens? We know they lived in small family groups, like all other Earthly creatures. It is only the social connections of the homo sapiens that has spawned our over-population. 

Life is such a strong force that it has allowed a species to grow intelligently, unrestricted. How do we convince one another to slow down? To appreciate the lives we have? To discard monetary gain and focus on love? Those who are in power seem to reject the 'mind altering' drugs that open our thoughts to what really matters. How have we let this happen? 

Author's Note

Does anyone have any answers to these questions?

Reviews

[Jamie R. Robillard Sr.]

The answer to your first question is yes.

“Everything alive is dependent upon the death of another living entity to survive. Even plant life and microorganisms require nutrients that are only provided when a living entities' life cycle has completed and they decompose. Is life in itself intrinsically destructive? In a universe that cannot exist without death to feed it, is it realistic to attempt to stop destruction. The very nature of existence is death. Is it a circle of life, or a circle of destruction? Such matters can only be resolved in the discerning of your perspective that forms your reality.”

The subject of a treatise I am working on, the last is the first in importance.

If you want to change the world, then change yourself. You are not only the only part of it in your complete control, you are also the only aspect of it that you are directly responsible for.

[Alys]

I think death is necessary to allow life to have hope. But I think the point of existence is to LIVE and to experience and to interact. The necessary death of all to allow life for the 'new souls' is what should give us hope. That death is not in vain, nor is it the goal, but that it is a necessary occurrence for life to prevail.

[Jamie R. Robillard Sr.]

Wonderful, then you understand my perspective perfectly.