‘Humans are tricky animals’, this statement validates itself in many weird and baffling ways, seldom received with a tinge of irritation and amazement. If we commit to tracing these rather odd seeming human behaviors, we would, in most of the cases, reach to one organ: the human brain. As cosmos to earth, so our brains to our bodies; we know so little of our brains and what goes on in there. Since knowledge is the only useful tool we have for improving in life, we it comes to our psyche and how it functions and changes, our little know-how of it makes for a miserable show from us. Nevertheless, with the help of brilliant research into the field of neurology, psychology, in mapping the brain, understanding the mind, we have travelled a significant way into building an understanding about ‘why we do what we do’. But even then, the question arises, is ‘knowledge’ enough to stop us from being “tricky animals”? Are we not programmed in a way where reason has humiliatingly little power over shaping our behaviors and decisions, from very small day to day ones, to the larger ones that shape our lives? In other words, are we not creatures of passion and emotions, albeit with a thinking brain?
Irony itself is one of the biggest ironies of life. The way
we unearth so many paradoxes of life and as we sharpen our wits over the years, it opens our minds to baffling experiences where what isn’t mostly is, and what
is, is mostly deceiving. We are seldom contradicting ourselves. Being pushed
and pulled between opposite directions, that of reason or desire, of believing
or playing it safe, of trusting ourselves or listening to others’ weighty
suggestions, we are always being torn between one thing and another, or between
one thing and many. Nature, on the other hand, seems almost mockingly
harmonious. Even its contradictions, if we are able to find any, present a
sage-like wisdom, a calm resolve, a temperament full of confidence, an eventual
‘aha’. Why then don’t we reflect the habitat we occupy and live in? Why have we
become so complex, so intellectual? Our contradictions being marked with bitter
doubts, frustrating relativism, and despairing nihilism? Have we drifted away
from our natural link to the nature, or is consciousness an evil breed?
That’s a lot of vague sentences and ideas. I had to get
started somewhere, and since I haven’t written in a long while, I couldn’t help
but pour my mind. But the title of this journal is really something that is
bothering me on one hand, and on the other it seems like a liberating idea. *Disclaimer:
I am returning to this article after quite a while, reasons being multiple: that
I am busy with the last days of my preparations, and that I didn’t quite know what
to talk about here. However, in that time, I have been on a weird, intense, and
intellectually overwhelming journey, and underneath it all this very topic slowly fell down on my 'to do list'. But the reason that I am returning to this article and not
quitting it, is that I think talking about something specific and away from
my ‘intellectual frenzy’ will help me bring some clarity to my mind and secondly
I have written down some points about this topic that I want to discuss.
So, let’s start with the word 'crisis'. A crisis of faith that
is, or of belief. My drifting away from the orthodox Islam happened gradually,
so I have nothing interesting to say about 'a crisis of faith' here, but I can
pin point another event that strongly shook my certain beliefs about goodness
and innocence - so we will start from here. A few years back, my friend disclosed a secret to me about losing
his virginity. I should mention right here that he was younger than me, and therefore
I was rather uneasy on hearing about ‘this taboo act’. I wouldn’t lie that I got
excited myself, and ever since, I have been passively wondering about when such
opportunity might knock on my door as well. But underneath there was something
more sinister going on. A year after his confession, we sat again, and this
time he disclosed even further secrets; I guess he had left his door open for
the opportunities to keep rolling in. But I noticed that once the excitement of
the secrets had given away its effect, the mood got rather gloomy. I sensed
that he was suffering from guilt, a guilt that now made him look at the world
he used to know from a completely different and, now, unclean perspective. To him,
the majority of the girls, whom he saw chastely a few years back, now appeared
ready for physical intimacy at the slightest of musings from the boys. Later
on, I found his guilt to be contagious; for once he exited my company, his
thoughts remained, and now I too saw my world taking on an unclean, deceiving appearance.
The opportunities never knocked on my door, neither did I have
the courage to go out looking for them. But a desire remained kindled; remains
kindled. Though the guilt that I was infected with bothered my conscience
greatly in the following months, I nevertheless remained a greater victim of
the envy that was now within me. The desire that is otherwise natural, now took
a more urgent and demanding stance that could no longer be put off with the help
of the internet. And if I used my imagination, it drove me even more robustly to my frustrations.
I wanted a body, not an image of it on the screen or its presence in my thoughts. Fortunately, life offers other activities as well,
the major ones being love, loneliness, job, and joblessness, all of which occupy
you significantly. But within me, an investigation of my unquestioned moral
values kept going on. I have now, though this is not the end, come to a detached
conclusion, an uninterested, objective realization that physical intimacy is a
biological necessity first and that question about its morality is of secondary concern.
The surprising thing is that even having reached this conclusion through reason,
I remain in chains of my moral upbringing and securely within my religious
boundaries – that is, if the opportunity doesn’t knock before I get married. I remained contradicted.
Let’s talk about literature next. The innocence of reading has
faded away from me. Its joys remain supreme still, but the childish excitement
and virtue I felt about reading books or talking about them, has to a
significant degree left me. Now, I feel a dichotomy between reading and thinking.
Reading is still there with all its promised pleasures, but thinking has taken
a more serious and less tender appearance. Yet one of the major reasons that I have
become a ‘highly thinking person’ (something I said about Yiyun Li) are the
books that I have read and owned over the years. Books transported me to this realm
of analytical, skeptical thinking and then themselves returned to the beautiful
land of joy and innocence from where I first started. Only a few years in, I already
hate being in this dry land of thoughts where there’s always a battle between thoughts,
where nothing is for certain, and doubts reign supreme. I want to return to the
land of beautiful, be innocent again, read merry poetry, and look at brighter
side of life where things make sense and have a purpose – that of enjoying
life. Fuck reason! fuck intellect! O, for a life of sensations rather than of
thoughts! John Keats.
Besides, what is holding me back? Why am I all complains and
no action? I don’t think I managed a smooth headway into what I want to say next,
which is ‘money’ and the way we acquire it these days, through boundaryless
jobs in an apathetic capitalist society. The active idea of living on a remote
island where I could financially manage just fine on a day-to-day basis came
from the movie ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’. But it was not just a thought that
went away. It kind of formed itself into a concept, seconded by ‘The Lotus
Eater’ a short story by Somerset Maugham, where I kept entertaining the potential
fact that I could, indeed, go and live on an island, either with someone, or, by myself and then make new friends once there. Talk about Self-Reliance, eh? Once there, I might
be able to pull off a balance in my life, a balance between sensations and thoughts.
I might achieve some calm, and live more deeply – even it requires me to live
all alone. You see, I contradict myself once again: I am someone who deeply fears being abandoned,
or in less intense words, I hate loneliness, but my mind is now making me the approach the very extreme opposite of what I’ve always tried to achieve in my life: love from other people, my family, friends, my significant other. I hope you
reading it wouldn’t might my incoherency of thoughts, because quite honestly, I
myself am struggling to make sense of what I am writing.
Yet I don’t need to marry, or be committed to someone. Love
hurts. Besides, you cannot trust people in the long run. Sophie Ward writes in
her book ‘Love and Other Thought Experiments’ that trust works best on a case-to-case
basis. And I say this not because I haven’t loved or I am ignorant of the
power that love holds, or its larger-than-life significance, but precisely because I have
loved and have seen love too closely. Love terrifies me, commitment makes me realizes
how close one can come to destroying oneself. Why can’t love be lighter, more
casual, insignificant, and merely something to fill out the boredom of life? I
am talking about the ‘friends with benefit’ concept, fulfilling each other’s needs without
any commitment of heaven on earth, or ‘forever together’ as we naively hope. I
owe much of my understanding and appreciation towards the ‘lightness of
relationships’ to Kundera. I love Kundera precisely because he is a sneaky, compelling,
and liberating hedonist; despite knowing what he knew, he chose lightness,
an insignificant way of living, shifting his focus from the breasts, vaginas, and butts to human parts as insignificant as woman’s naval hole and armpits. He was
chiefly bored with sex and its limitedness, and so he rebelled. He demanded
for more. And not only in sex, but in love too. He disclosed on me the cruel, yet
non-judgmental, aspects of love that goes on in the subconscious of the people
in love. We hurt those we love and we drive pleasure out of it, not because we
are sadists but because we love our partners so much that we want them to be dependent
on us, and their tears reassure our power over them. So, you tell me: knowing all
this, and more unfortunately believing all this, how can I choose love again
(although I know that I will choose love, its more traditional, religious
aspects) when the lighter versions of it are possible, and if sought, available
too?
On the brighter side, I also find myself contradicting with
my bad habit and behavior. I have grown displeased by the act of masturbation,
not because it has given away its pleasure (no, no) but because I’ve come to be
belittled by watching others have sex and me jerking off to them. What is it
that's holding me from having sex? Why am I exiled from heaven? Over the
years, I have also educated myself on masturbations and its inevitable effects
on one’s psyche on pleasure and how masturbation distorts it, and how it weakens
your body from certain areas and as well as you brain in other aspects. All of it, I hope, shall distance me from this objectively 'bad' habit.
If we talk about writing, I have come face to face with my
own arrogance about not taking, even if a little bit, of a ‘naïve approach’; that is actually educating myself about language, diction, grammar, and writing
style. Going forward, I think I will be improving in this area of ‘naïve approach’
to writing to a noticeable degree. I shall also take an active approach to editing my writings as well.
I should also briefly mention that my spiritual and transcendental bond with God has enrooted deeper into my philosophy of life. While I stay remain shamefully distant from orthodox Islam, I have nevertheless held firm to my spiritual, albeit individual, link to my Maker. I feel strong when I witness that I can hold onto my faith despite the teachings of philosophy and science. At the same time, I am a firm believer and student of philosophy and science as well; without the thinkers of the world, past and present, and without the inventions of the scientists, I couldn’t be here knowing, thinking, and writing - whatever it is that I am writing about.
Since that is a positive note, why not end it here?
I am going
through ‘a great sense of Understanding’ (with a capital U) and I don’t know as
of now whether it is a whiff, a metamorphosis of thought, or a calling for me
to do something – to Do. Time shall tell, although I will make sure that time shall not have
the last say. Finally, I want to say that at the root of every growth, there shall be found some conundrums,
some conflicts, some contradictions between and within oneself. A line that I remember
from the Facebook page ‘Mirror has four faces’ shall sum it up well: “When I battle with my consciousness
and lose, I win.”
PS: Humor, or even comedy, helps. Keep watching The Office and
start Arrested Development next.
Adios, January 18, 2023.