The Paradox Part II

Part I

A Life of Quiet Desperation

I feel like I’m shouting at the top of my lungs, but everyone is deaf. I long for connections to the world. I want to interact, I want to take part, I want to participate. I want to help. I have spent countless hours daydreaming about founding various social clubs, or devoting myself to charity, or joining the Peace Corps or the Red Cross. I feel all of this compassion, all of this love for the citizens of this world. And that I see all of this suffering everyday and continually do nothing to try alleviate it, this is haunting me. I exist as part of a community.
And at the same time, I feel alone. I feel like I’m stranded on a rowboat in the middle of an endless ocean. Banished to the desolate wastes. Why should this bother me? I hate people. I don’t like gatherings, crowds, masses. The nameless “they.” People are ignorant. People are mean. People are dangerous. Why should I help them? These people deserve their suffering, they who would stand opposed to all I represent and hold dear. It is only prudent to avoid these demons, these lowly mobs. Or failing that, interact as little as possible and stay off the radar. Fuck everyone, I can do it all myself.

I don’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to be around anyone.


I feel like I’m cramped up. Enclosed in a cage that’s too small. All these responsibilities, all of these pressures, all of these stresses, it feels like I’m trapped. I long for open spaces. I read Walden with a sense of jealousy. I desire nothing more than to sit beside a pond and watch the sunrise. I want an enormous sky. I don’t need these complications and distractions, wide open nature provides me everything I could ever need. Straight out into the wilderness and live off the land. Wanderlust. No destination. I just need to escape.
But the bars preventing me from my dreams of simplicity are not physical. Moreover, they are not imposed on me, but rather, I have carefully constructed each bar and brick, every inch of my prison, myself. I am attached to my prison. It’s what I know, and where I feel secure. My prison is safe. And if I decide to run for it, to jail-break, I will have to tear down the walls that I myself have painstakingly built. And I would miss it.

I don’t want to stay, but I don’t want to go.


I feel powerless. Helpless. Resigned to my fate. Free will is an illusion created by the mind’s ignorance of cause and effect. “Everything that happened, happened for a reason, and couldn’t have happened any other way.”-Morpheus, The Matrix My “decision” to type these feeble words was set in motion when the universe was created in the Big Bang, I’m just too stupid to see the entire chain of events back to the beginning. I am nothing to the universe. Statistically irrelevant and captive to fate anyway, why should I care about anything? If I could magically feed every hungry child, shelter all the homeless, prevent every disease, it is all still meaningless in the end. The entire span of the universe from the big bang to the present is not even a blip to eternity. The difference between one second and one hundred billion years is indistinguishable to infinity. One way or another, we, humanity, will be gone. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a billion years. But either way, one man’s lifetime cannot even be measured, let alone count for anything, let alone actually accomplish something.
But I am also a God. I feel omnipotent and omniscient. I create entire universes in my spare time. Life and death, good and evil, darkness and light, love and hate...I have conjured them all. I am the pure light of consciousness, encased in a temporary mortal shell. “Everything you could ever want or be you already have and are.” – Bernard Jaffe, I Heart Huckabees The “I” that is the body, is only a small part, an indistinct speck of dust, to the infinite. But I am not myself. There is no difference between anything, everything is connected. I am you, and you are me, and we are everyone else. I AM infinity.

I feel like everything is within my reach, but nothing is worth the effort.


I feel like everything is going wrong. Nothing goes where it’s supposed to or does what it’s supposed to. God must have a vendetta against me. Why do these assholes have everything handed to them while I have to struggle so much for so little? I was good, I did my part…where is my reward? Life is unfair, I don’t deserve this pain. It’s too heavy, to much to lift, I can’t bear the weight. The hurt is too strong, my body is too weak. Life is cruel, torturous, unrelenting. I get kicked back down when I try to stand. No justice anywhere. I can’t catch a break.
But most of all, I feel like the luckiest man alive. I have led a charmed life. I have clean water to drink, good food to eat, and a warm bed to sleep in every night. I have this paradise of plenty, while billions and billions of other people around the world in every country are mired in abject poverty and want. And I have even more. I have my own apartment, my own car, and a steady job that pays my bills. I have music in my soul. I have cable TV, internet, books, movies, and video games. I am not worried about money, while millions and millions of other people live paycheck to paycheck. Who could ask for more? And yet I HAVE still more. I have a talent for athletics and a healthy body to pursue them. I have a good education and a love of knowledge. And I have the love of my friends and family. I have given everything. I am sitting on a jackpot, a winning lottery ticket. I am the definition of fortunate; I am eternally grateful. And when I awake each morning, I say a prayer of thanks to be granted another day in paradise.

I am cursed, and I am blessed.