Untitled Thoughts

Since each day is a New Year’s Day, on this New Year’s Day I find myself quite sickeningly introspective and challenged to forsake my boyish sentiments; those pious admirations of morality and integrity which have thus far been my spiritual ball and chain.

Don’t know why every self I thought I saw in everyone becomes something of a ruse, safe for the evil that won’t vanish into mirrors that I stare into each day.

I still watch my will torn down in sweet flaws and marvel, for the perfect are the most at fault.

I observed with great attention the vanity of my altruism, for I have become a mute witness of the imprudence of lending a hand to fellow men.

The inevitability invisibility my blackness endows me is an indelible anathema that I carry like so many, but another added yoke is of inadequate financial reserves to please material needs of those close to me.

And this insecurity, that is followed by emotional ineptitude and fear of companionship in an age of conspicuous consumerism is ultimately what undoes all efforts at building long lasting relationships not tainted by lust and lies. 

But my question is why do love’s actions always have to be determined by a fulfillment of material lusts often disguised as needs?

And why is security always determined by inexhaustible access to financial means of satisfying those lusts?

Comfort is the quintessential human desire since time immemorial, from paleontological times when our forbearers devised methods of shelter that also served as fortresses for collective protection.

And with the impending depletion of earth’s resources through our pillaging for comfort, the present age of humanity sees us now preparing for departure from a planet that is rapidly becoming uncomfortable for habitation.

Humanity seems incapable of thinking against its own self-interest, and acting there against seems to be a flaw that evolution wants to discard in the quest for creation of individualistic persons designed to serve purposes mandated through trends disguised as norms.

Man cannot concede to discarding his most destructive of technological devices and perilous tendencies for the betterment of an irreparably damaged environment, but seems pent on continuing with his alluring empowerment attained through such devices.

We will not in any way reform our ideological preoccupation with accumulation, which is now precariously signified and embodied in the accumulation of money.

And money has been the most influential object in the dissolution of pure will among many as it continues to dictate desires, aspirations and actual endeavors geared at acquisition of such desires on our soon to be depleted planet.

The abundance of money is often purported to quantify affluent living standards, while the lack thereof is equated to an inability to fend for oneself on a uniquely fair playing field.

Lack of money becomes therefore a form of cowardly laziness that hinders one from acquiring their share of the earth’s ever exploitable reserves.

But I always recall an analogy made by a Tibetan Monk about what he termed Active Laziness, he writes:

‘…there are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practiced to perfection in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so that there is no time at all to confront the real issues. If we look into our lives, we will see clearly how many unimportant tasks; so-called "responsibilities" accumulate to fill them up. One master compares them to "housekeeping in a dream." We tell ourselves we want to spend time on the important things of life, but there never is any time. Even simply to get up in the morning, there is so much to do: open the window, make the bed, take a shower, brush your teeth, feed the dog or cat, do last night's washing up, discover you are out of sugar or coffee, go and buy them, make breakfast—the list is endless. Then there are clothes to sort out, choose, iron, and fold up again. And what about your hair, or your makeup? Helpless, we watch our days fill up with telephone calls and petty projects, with so many responsibilities—or shouldn't we call them "irresponsibilities"?’ (From The Tibetan Book of Living And Dying – Sogyal Rinpoche)

The modern world has derived much of it traditional codes of behavior more specifically from divine injunctions, and today’s irrational search for credible sources of guidance suggest parallels with that addiction to imported religions.

And people only need a slight or occasional encouragement to persist in their religious beliefs in which they are brought up, and more often than not, mental calibers of most people would therefore crash bewildered at finding recourse in personal interaction instead of interventionist miracles.

Averting any progressive loss of faith in any agency external to man himself which man might look towards for determination is another of man’s own retardations.

And the deepening shadows of life’s struggles seldom unite persons with values higher than the immediacy of survival, and this selfish self-preservational rational is what is taking human towards the precipice of oblivion.

While proven less pleasant being the myth of impossibilities that intellect breeds, more often than not, personal stories of human victims always draws man towards superstition’s disingenuous ends, and the uneasiness of superstition does always survive intellect.

Restrictions of civilized life have become profitless and cumbersome, a simplicity in life that by-passes all errors of my rational self is what I need. Not days spent besieged by demands of affluence, where life is the sole origin of a million crimes.