Of Life and Embracing Every Priceless Moment
Trends and hype are useless. The secret is already within you.
"Every Breath You Take" is the name of a song, but it could be a poem, a recitation, or the beginning of a letter.
Say we have to do an exercise about it. Who decides what to write? Is it us, the brain cells, or the neurotransmitters in the brain?
Is consciousness free will? Where does creativity come from? Some people say it's a gift from God, but nobody knows, not even science. Why? Because there is no proof of beyond-reality consciousness. There is no evidence of it one way or another.
The most fantastic things that have happened or are happening on this planet cannot be explained; there are not enough scientific papers or studies for them. It’s the ultimate WIP (work in progress).
We lack the tools to verify the greatest mysteries, which are marvelous in and of themselves.
We don't know anything. The more you think you know, the more you realize it is an exercise in arrogance. We're simple people; we're not that complicated. We make things complicated because of our unnecessary dramas and the chaos in our minds.
Almost every thinker would agree that what we have tried so far has only worked for a handful of people: The rich.
We should be evolving by now; we had all the tools to be almost super-magic beings, but they ruined everything because of profits and greed.
Here, we have these questions, which are essentially existential ones. Who are we, what are we doing here, and where do we come from?
What makes us who we are, what determines what we do, and who decides our actions or behaviors?
Why do we do what we do? Why do we lack direction, and why is there so much confusion? If we had all the secrets in the past, who took them away, and why did that happen?
We are not exempt from blame. We, as parents, for example, need help understanding our children. How can we, since we hardly understand ourselves? After all, we have also been victimized. We’ve been told nothing but lies all our lives. We repeat what makes us comfortable and call it a day. We missed the bus.
We have no idea how to guide them properly, so we let a deplorable school system do it for us. It’s easy. We are off the hook with our responsibilities.
So the kids will do what they’ve always done. It’s not about not having enough tech toys, enough time online, or anything else they might be throwing tantrums about.
It’s the lack of creativity, the fundamental neglect we subject them to, and the lack of parental care.
Enter video games.
That’s how they escape us. And dangerous liaisons with the wrong crowd. To keep us away from them. It’s a loud, “Leave ME alone!”. Anyone who’s a parent has heard it. Believe it or not, it might be satisfying for them to say it, yell it, even, but it’s a cry for help instead.
We’re blaming others for our problems, and that's all we seem to have today. These are issues that you’d think, after at least 30,000+ years of recorded evolution, we would have figured out.
And we keep on reproducing; babies are having babies, causing another set of problems that we are not prepared at all to confront, much less solve.
Keep on going just like another day in the sun; thinking everything is alright is pure denial. We can get out of this situation if we try a little harder. But we need help. We need help from our so-called leaders and the institutions created for that purpose. To help society advance. To help parents cope with a new reality brought by a new world they never had themselves.
Letting go of pettiness, denial, and “not my problem” syndrome. But it is your problem if you breathe the air like everyone else. It’s yours as well if you live on this planet.
Because at this point, we know it's not alright. We know it is backward, inside out, upside down, and sideways, but it’s not alright. We must stop acting like it is because we still have “Monday Night Football” or midweek “Dancing with the Stars.”.
Whatever happened to wisdom? Whatever happened to common sense? Where did it go? Have a look at other societies—Aboriginals, for example—and you’ll notice they have a profound respect for nature and a deep understanding of life itself.
Not us. We have been manipulated not to. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that more, bigger, and faster is better.
Buy, buy, and then buy some more. These holidays are the perfect example of such excess. It’s corporation time. It’s sales, discounts, coupons, and bonuses. That’s their game, and we’ve been doing it for so long that people are numb to the notion.
After all, it's the norm.
Because of the norms that we follow, we find ourselves in a world like this.
Our offspring will continue doing exactly the same thing we're doing since that is what we’re teaching them, and that’s what they see their friends doing. The ones running this show got us exactly where they wanted us.
The “have and have nots” are like in feudal times or a caste system. No difference. We just don’t use titles like Count, Baron, or Marques. On top of it all, we still have to pay taxes to keep this imaginary, fantastic economy going. And to pay for all the wars we create for that very purpose.
We feel impotent because we can't do anything about it and because we cannot change the way things are. So, the excuse always at the ready is: “It’s always been this way.” That is the perfect example of a misnomer. Firstly, folks who live in the impoverished Far East can’t comprehend how 40% of food goes to waste in the capitals of the West.
The same concept applies to the Global South, as well as in Africa.
We had all the wisdom that we needed back in the 6th Century BC. Ancient texts, with so much knowledge within their pages, should be studied in every classroom when the level is right.
That was, in many scholars’ opinion, the true age of enlightenment. History will tell you we had supreme existential questions revealed even before that time.
Over 3,000 years ago, what have we learned? We wake up tomorrow, and we'll do exactly the same thing we did today. We follow the rhythm imposed; we follow the grain.
Now we have super trends, viral this and viral that, and influencers to tell us what to follow and how to live.
We are doing it all wrong.
Even art has been desecrated. We appreciate and honor a fiat value declared by someone in the stock market. NFT is the new art currency. What’s next, a hologram?
Multi-million-dollar transactions are being made on a digital image without a real creator. That has become our new creativity.
AI is the new arist-a-la-mode.
We have stopped using our brains.
We don’t even stop to consider the foolishness of staying in debt for the best years of our lives just to pay back a college loan, as another example. We followed what everyone else has done since—who knows when? We just hope and pray that our lives will improve because of it. But if we get lucky, and it does, we start comparing ourselves to others and spending beyond our means—with a car we can’t pay for or a house we can’t afford. Even so, we still have that old college debt on our shoulders.
And yet, we still follow the crowd; we still go with the flow.
Isn’t it time we reflect on our condition and try to find a better way? Because this one hasn’t ever worked for us and will not magically start working now.
What is the most profitable entertainment about? Violent movies or violent video games. Blockbusters that people can’t wait to watch and make lines around the block to purchase a ticket. And we happily take our children to watch them.
We can do better than that. Every day is one less living day in this extraordinary life we have been given.
But if we follow what trendsetters and advertising say to follow, we fall for their trap and call that "life”.
It is not; it has never been. It has always been THE lie.
It’s up to every single one of us to evolve accordingly.
It’s time to stop following all the nonsense that keeps us stuck, repeating ourselves daily, and learning nothing new.
It’s time to grow—for ourselves and humanity at large. We are all in this together.
In this upcoming New Year...
Can we give it a try?
If you enjoy my posts, I’d appreciate your contribution. Thank you!
https://ko-fi.com/renevolpi