This is the content of an apiphany that occured on the 19th of November 2009 whilst walking back from Spar in the night and the rain after buying tobacco.
I live in my own dream world. I know this and have known for some time. I live in this dream world because all else is meaningless.
Life is short. Too short. The only way I could be content is through immortality; an impossibility and therefore my happiness is impossible. Life is short as there is not enough room for experiences. I want all the experiences in the world. However this is something I cannot have in this world, but can have a fraction of in my dreams. Hence, in this only way I can be somewhat content.
I can read books or watch films or listen to people and through these abstract modes feel emotions I can never feel through my own life, see things I can never see and hear things I can never hear.
Home is an illusion. Home is a concept based on a building, possesions and people. The building with eventually become delapidated and be demollished to be replaced by somethings else, something of another new moment, of other people. The possessions will brake, be thrown out; they not be worth anything to anyone as the people to whom they were so special will be long gone, forgotten, meaningless. The people will grow old and die. They will be the old generation who were so ignorant. Home only exists in one moment to one person. This is too fleeting, too unstable and therefore it is much wiser to separate ones self from the concept alltogether.
Home can however exist in ones mind, and this is the best place for it. One should be at home in ones mind with no connection to a place or a building or other people.
I have studied my family tree quite carefully. It is something in which I find great pleasure, however it only serves to confirm what I have stated above.
The people, my own family, are dead. They are gone. They lived their lives, they experienced great emotions, saw great things and yet this is all gone. It only ever existed to them, in that moment. When I read about them, read their birth, baptism, marriage and death certificates I read of some of the most important moments in their lives. Moments that shaped who they were, what they did and how they thought; yet now these moments are only remembered through pieces of paper. Paper which cannot hold anything but names and dates and other details.
What is even more worrying is that when I look back so far even these mere pieces of paper are lost. The ancestors who's lives have made mine possible are lost. I don't known their names, where they were from, how they felt, how they thought. They are lost. And this is the effect of only three hundred years. Three hundred years from now will I be lost?
Will anyone bother research their family to find some ancient grandmother who's name was Daisy? Will they care? I will be merely a name and a few dates. Everything that makes me me will be gone.
If this is true then what is the point of life? Of an outside life at least. I can live in dreams which matter only to me. Through these I can feel fullfilled. There will be no documents to record them yet they are intrinsic to my very being. And that is what matters. I will be content within myself. I can collect information, thoughts, emotions, experiences and relive them all through my dreams.
I will grow old and die. The things that were so important to me, which shaped my life will be gone. The buildings in which I lived, where I was educated, where I laughed and cried will also be gone. Eventually they will be remembered by no-one. I will be remembered by no-one. If this is true then is there any value in anything I think or do?
Yes. For one simple reason. It matters to me in this moment, and that is all there is.
