From December 2007
I think that wasting time is criminal. Somehow, there has to be a purpose to everything. And when there is none, I feel like I don’t deserve to exist. They are the true criminals-those who waste time. So I take a book everywhere. Or I study people around me. Why certain faces are more pleasant than others. How so many people make the same gestures for the same things and what that reflects about them. My mind has to be running, wondering and analyzing.
I need to exist. I need to do or think to exist. That is my definition of me- my brain, my body. So is that who I am? Was Rene Descartes right about the criterion for existence? The mind dies with inactivity. That way, the body, the brain and everything dies.
What doesn’t, is the true self. Or rather, what doesn’t, isn’t the self. The self is an imaginary identity just like most others (just as people now acknowledge that nationality and religion are not real) in the world. Identity itself is only a means by which you reassure your existence. You identify your body in the mirror and learn mentally that that’s you. You grow a mind that sees itself as separate from other living and non-living things. Then society teaches you to see more differences. The mind is thus tuned to look for one’s uniqueness. You divide yourself from your mother first then the whole world.
With this division comes conflict. A fight to push ones own sense of reality into another’s. So conflict is the contradiction of different people’s sense of reality.
Our fear of death also arises from this fear of losing our self-made identity. Isn’t it disturbing to consider that in reality, nothing is. Not you. Not the room around you. Not the words you are reading. Not the world outside. Not thought. Nothing.
No wonder we fight. No wonder we are threatened by boredom. We want to prove our existence.