Something Is Very

wrong. My body is telling me so. My very corporal reality is suddenly shoved, full force, into my face and I am made to inhale its noxious stink. The biggest bummer about being a human is, after all, our physical presence: the life of the body versus the life of the mind.

It’s very early morning now. I went to bed a scant couple of hours ago, but my body—as a result of illness—has awakened me. I tend to get more work done in the quiet hours of morning than any other time of the day, and I would venture to guess that this is because mornings are always reflective for me. It is at once rejuvenation and decay. Wherever the idea came from that “a new day is here” is a positive thing, I can’t say; however, the way I understand it: the sun awakens life, life happens every day, and every day has its own life. It is a birth in a way, but it is also (and at arguably a more personal level), we are all taking one tiny step closer to the end.

Where does that leave us? It’s a question in my mind that goes back to the question of what is innate in humanity. Are the good of humanity and the continuation of the species more important than the continuation of the individual? Is that built in? Can we say that it really all goes back to the biological necessity of growth happening as a result of decay? Topsoil is millions and millions of years of decay, and rot, and…fertilizer. The decay of the past feeds the present that grows to decay for the future.

Somewhere along the line, though, I think we figured this out. We figured out that one thing we absolutely can do nothing about is the ending of our personal existence. This basically split the camp into two distinct factions. First, the group saying, “Well, it’s clear that everybody dies, and that’s not good enough. Surely there’s more. We enjoy living so much that we’ll sacrifice the life we know for a life we are going to hope into existence.” Let’s call them the eternity team. How this works is that we are beings with a soul that we can know exists, and that we can use to talk to the higher being that is in control of our souls and what happens to them in the end. Free will aside, your god of choice is in control because he (or she) laid down the rules for you to live by. If you don’t live by his or her rules, then you lose the game. That’s control. At any rate, if you do play by the rules, your soul (which is apparently connected to your singular conscious self) will be moved to a place where time does not exist—at least in an earthly, logical, rational sense.

The other group would be saying, “Well, it’s clear that everybody dies, and that’s not good enough. I guess we’ll have to take the time we can be aware of and attempt to truly do something with it. Let’s call them the present team. It is an active acceptance of our present reality as the one we can choose to know completely about. Our bodies are holding us down. They are a constant reminder to us that one day we will not be able to actively accept the present reality, but the mind can make it’s mark. It’s the only way to ensure that your time on this world was not ill spent: actively engage in life. Enjoy the physical pleasures of the body while you can. You won’t be able to in a little while. Question daily why you are doing what you’re doing. You won’t be able to question soon. Invent the wildest adventures to go on. You won’t be capable of adventure soon. Make your mind your mark that sparks decay for growth. Break down with questions, and suddenly we’re back to the Greeks.

Which brings up another question: is our decay also our growth? Or, alternatively, is our growth our decay? We clearly haven’t gotten much past the questions of the ancients. Socrates, Plato, Lao Tzu, Socrates. These men were all asking similar, if not more difficult, questions over two thousand years ago. It is almost as if we were locked in a considerable struggle to retain the life of the mind. Some would say that based on how we still study these seminal texts in quest of questions that we are only trying to keep pace with the Greeks, but that their understanding of existence was far advanced from ours. Yet, we look around at ourselves, our fifty-six inch flat panel high definition television sets, our iPhones, our word processing programs, our music, our art, our buildings, our telecommunication networks, our indestructible materials, our destructive materials, our stand-up MRI chambers, our Green automobiles, our organic food, our food production techniques, our war making techniques, our Vitamin Water, our Emergen-C, and we call it progress.

We are simultaneously growing and decaying?

I think I’ve managed to confuse myself.

Maybe the best we can do is manage to confuse ourselves every day, develop the mind a little bit, and balance out the decay that happens in that day. Balance, and we’re back to the way of the Tao.

Since the world points up beauty as such,
There is ugliness too,
If goodness is taken as goodness,
Wickedness enters as well.
For is and is-not come together;
Hard and easy are complementary;
Long and short are relative;
High and low are comparative;
Pitch and sound make harmony;
Before and after are a sequence. -- The Way of Life, Lao-tzu

Growth and decay are married. The principle of non-action has nothing to do with not doing anything. It’s more about not making mental decision pre-emptively and developing the mind to be capable of making the right decision. The way of the Tao is active non-action. That’s what’s wrong I guess: I don’t get it, but I get it. I’m not supposed to get it am I? That’s good because I don’t get it. But it sucks because I don’t get it.

In the quiet hours of the morning a great violence is being done to my head. It is growing and decaying simultaneously. It is confused and learning to study its confusion.