By all outward appearances our life is a spark of light between one eternal darkness and another. Nor is the interval between these two nights an unclouded day, for the more we are able to feel pleasure, the more we are vulnerable to pain-and, whether in background or foreground, the pain is always with us.
- Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
I had a small shift in the way I looked at things when I was about 18. I became aware of how lonely the experience of life is. Now I don’t mean that in a morose sense. But isn’t it amazing to feel ownership in the sense of being? I wake up everyday and I simply feel distinctly me. We have this notion of life having a start, middle and an end. But for most of us, the middle is the end. How do we deal with end? Insert how do we deal with endings quote here.
The more one studies attempted solutions to problems in politics and economics, in art, philosophy, and religion, the more one has the impression of extremely gifted people wearing out their ingenuity at the impossible and futile task of trying to get the water of life into neat and permanent packages.
- Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
The task is futile because does it does not last. Knowing this however, shouldn’t discourage the need to solve the problem. I think we do that by nature or necessity anyway. But I do think it should give us more pause on how we ask that question. Because the nature of the question also defines the nature of the solution.
The Universe is change, life is opinion.
- Marcus Aurelius Memento Mori: