we are nothing and everything
For quite a while now I’ve been feeling like my life is out of my own control. That I am simply a passenger in my own life car. I don’t know if it’s a post 2020 feeling or if it’s my father passing away last year or if it’s simply just an inherent flaw in the way I’m put together, or even if there’s even such a thing as “being in control”.
Meditation helps, so does having some routine and structure to your schedule. I have neither. I struggle to force myself to adopt healthy habits and get back into the driving seat. Perhaps it’s just resistance to change, or fear of failure, most likely both.
I think about the world and society and our place in the universe. The cosmos brings me serenity. Thinking about how small we are in the grand scheme of things really humbles me. every society, every historical figure, every modument erected for marking history and screeming to the future “WE ARE HERE! WE ARE SOMETHING!” will disapear just as fast as it appeared. It really makes all the daily stresses and egos and disputes and wars seem so petty. I really wish more people could see this. The cosmos is my religion, it is the only true way to experience “God”.
The cosmos is also within us, we’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos, to know itself. - Carl Sagan
This quote always resonates me with deeply. It saddens me to see how much time we spend in the rat race, fighting against each other and putting so much of our most precious resource, time, in the pursuit of a “better” life, yet our lives are constantly filled with stress and anxiety and fear, how is that in any way “better”?
Losing my father has awakend something in me, this realization that life is more than working and making money and buying stuff. I’m very grateful that my parents sacrificed a lot for me to be able to leave Egypt and start my life in a “heathier” society, That I was able to establish a decent life and eventually allow my parents to also leave Egypt and move next door, and I still can’t get over the heartbreak of losing my dad. After 10 years of living across the planet from each other, 1 month after moving next door, he gets diagnosed with cancer and I spend the next 6 months watching him slowly fade away.
Is it better to work your entire life and save for retirement? in the hopes that you’ll still be able to actually enjoy it, or do you choose a life of adventue and risk while you’re still able to and just die young? Why are arists, artists? what is this deep desire to create? Where does it come from? Does everyone have it? Can one aquire it or is it only embedded in your being?
I look at my wife and her own artistic aspirations and endavors. A great photographer, she eventually gave up on it after a series of expositions. she often says she would like to write or draw or have another form of creativity, but she never seems to have same fire for creation I constnatly have.
I’ve tried many times to quit. but the need to create burns hotter than any normal logical decision can control. sometimes it feels like it physically hurts me when I go on long periods without creating. I’m not good at any of it, but the end result isn’t as important as the actual act. Simply creating something or expressing something through art is satisfaction enough. And yet this deep (what feels like) fundamental need is pushed down all the way to the bottom of the daily life priority list.
I often day dream about selling everything and moving to the beach in the Mediterranean sea and live in some artist commune and spend all day creating art and experiencing life. is this escapism? am I just running away from my problems? Or am I prioritizing a healthy life away from the artifical needs created by western society? How does one reconcile the two?
