Often times I think about things that could have been. Questions such as why am I here? and Am I missing out on something? occasionally surface when I am contemplating about such aspects of my life. This perpetual quest to find some sort of meaning to my existence is unremitting. No, my life is not filled with ornate luxuries, a wall full of admirable trophies or an abundance of wealth in which I am able to expend on society's more extravagant expenses, but does that really measure the quality of life I have lived and am living? Recently, I have self-examined myself and have mused over the many "things" that have brought me happiness, both genuinely and superficially. After much brooding, I have concluded that I have repeatedly searched for happiness and meaning in all of the wrong places. Perhaps when I am much older, when I may have fine-tuned this idea of mine--that true happiness comes not from material possessions and the things that I own, but from the abundance of experiences that I have lived through, the lessons I have learned, the wisdom I have passed down to others (knowingly or unknowingly) and with whom I have shared them with--can I truly be absolute in saying that I have found the reason by which I exist; an eternal place of my own in this life alongside the infinite number of those who are searching for the same truth. In the meantime, I can only live for the now, be happy for what I do have, appreciate the people among my small circle of friends whom encompass me and share in my experiences, and just expect that tomorrow will bring the unexpected. As Christopher Johnson McCandless has written in his journal:
"The Joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."True happiness is to live, to be and to closely share it with others, nothing more. It is all the seemingly small things that make it all so worthwhile.
I always wanted to be an Astronaut when I was a kid. I had a growing fascination for space and humankind's collective desire to explore the unknown. I would stare into the sky for countless hours at night, mesmerized by the otherworldliness that somehow felt so close yet so far away. The millions of stars spangled in the sky were like tiny pinholes upon a sheet of black construction paper draped above the quiet suburb where I had lived, hiding undiscovered secrets behind its total blackness. Almost every evening, probably since I was ten years old, I would direct these fixations into the open expanse of the universe above and wonder, sometimes out loud, whispering softly: is there anybody out there? And often times I would answer myself: there must be.
The first time I had actually seen some sort of alien-like phenomenon was when I was twelve. I remember while staring into the sky one summer evening as I was playing with a handful of robot action figures on my front porch, a bright ball of light appeared slightly above where the sky abruptly hits the horizon. The oval shape radiated brightly in the distance and hovered in a particular spot for at least five minutes. The brightness fluctuated as it stood suspended in mid-air until finally it drifted sideways, a few feet to the right and then disappeared. At first perhaps I thought it might have been an airplane or some sort of military aircraft, but a few seconds later, a second light appeared in the same exact place the previous light was and once again slowly drifted to the right and disappeared. I wasn't sure what it was, but I knew what I saw was not "natural"--and it terrified me. I ran in the house throwing my Transformers into a pile on the ground, slamming the door behind me and headed straight for my parent's room. My mother, laying on her side underneath a thin blanket and eating soft batch cookies from a package of Almost Home, was hypnotized by the television set and immersed in an episode of Jeopardy. "Who is--hey, stop running in the house!" she yelled, looking at me in that firm parental scowl. I nodded submissively while catching my breath and slipped under the covers next to her in comfort that she would protect me. I never said a word about what I saw, not to her or anyone else for that matter.
Until I was about nineteen or twenty, I would wake up from mid-sleep to visions of grey, shiny-skinned figures with triangulated faces, bright hospital-like lights and strange noise that resembled whispers and clanking of metallic "tools." During that period of my life I was thoroughly convinced I had been abducted by alien life-forms--probed, tested and experimented on--until I came to the realization that those horrifying visions were just interpreted hallucinations from a disorder I had been suffering from called Sleep Paralysis.
As an adult, my condition has significantly diminished to once or twice a month, and even though I know exactly what it is that I am facing, I still frighten myself on occasion. To this day I continue to lose myself in the night sky, contemplating the possibilities of whether there is some sort of intelligent life-form existing beyond the infinite boundaries of the universe. While there is no physical evidence, I cannot deny the feasibility of such a thing. If we humans are here today in this world, intelligent as we are, it would be arrogant and ignorant of us to think that we are the only ones. If we are here now, then so are they (wherever they may be.)
Phoenix: At age 82 you finally kick the heroine habit! Congratulations. Unfortunately you stopped because you died from an overdose.
On a serious note, I have recently been pondering on the idea of what happens to us when we, as human beings, depart from this mortal life. By no means am I a religious person, but is there life after death? Do our souls go on to another plane of existence? Are we bound by some karmic web and reincarnated into new life on earth until we reach Nirvana? Or is this life just a series of meaningless experiences and that when we die, there is complete nothingness; that we as entities simply cease to exist. Others rely on the faith of their religion and that by abiding to the practices of their particular beliefs, they will either be blessed with salvation and be given passage through the gates of "Heaven," or be condemned to torment into the fires of "Hell." Personally, the concept of "Heaven" seems too unlikely and quite frankly a little boring; and what could be worse than the cruelties in which we, as humans, bring on to each other? We punish ourselves much more than any loving "God" ever would.
Someone once told me they believed that when we die, we just die and life ends. But how can that be? I know that there is no possible way of providing any kind of evidence to support this and that the mere idea of life after death is pure speculation, but how can anyone simply accept the fact that nothing exists beyond this life? I have contemplated on all the different theories of the "afterlife," or lack thereof and I simply cannot comprehend why anyone would believe that once we die there is just darkness and utter nothingness. There are too many experiences and too many enlightening "lessons" that we have encountered and will encounter during this "mortal" journey and it brings me to the conclusion that life itself is way too short for us to even reach our full potential, so there must be something beyond the black veil of death that gives substance to our perpetuity. The particular concept of reincarnation is especially interesting to me because I believe we all are interconnected in some way or another and events of past lives transcend into the next in order to fulfill some sort of karmic lesson. Why do we connect with certain people more than others? Is it really because of personality clashes and personal interest similarities, or is it deeper than that? Perhaps we connect with some people more than others because they unknowingly teach us specific life lessons, as we do to them, that we may not have yet mastered in our "previous" life. We each have a great responsibility and however small and insignificant they may seem, what we do in this life may not just affect us, but everything and everyone around, pulling it all into one perpetual string of motion. When we die in this life, there will always be a part of us that will go on, stretching into the boundaries of the infinity.
