Morning Rambings

Is it okay not to be okay?

I grew up thinking life was some status stream that I gradually got permission to begin swimming in.

That somewhere, out there, the doors of adulthood were waiting to be opened, and I could soon participate in this theater of life.

Meanwhile this stream of life, this world stage filled with adults acting their parts, that I anxiously idealized has never materialized.

I’m not sure what dreams or whose dreams I’ve internalized, but they don’t appear to map onto the the world.

There’s this social reality that envelops the whole of my experience, as if it paints the canopy at the farthest reaches of my awareness, giving life an insular feeling of familiarity. There are in fact many of these social realities, depending on where I cast my attention, which preoccupation or niche fills interest.

This social reality is defined by all these narratives. Call them bubbles. Social bubbles, of different size and quality.

There’s a history to these bubbles. Political and professional. And a progressive evolution that almost escapes the eye.

The ideas permeate these social realities and percolate throughout the narratives, destroying and marginalizing some, synthesizing others into a unified bubble.

All the while things change.

My personal reality, derived from these bubbles, is constantly refreshing, or should be.

Often it doesn’t. Often these bubbles remain static, like stained glass, frozen in beautiful color, trapped in time.

Survival. What does it mean to survive?

Paying bills, having babies, creating something. Maybe the world rewards you for this, maybe it doesn’t.

I wake up and I wonder what history will say about these moments, these years. How much will be retained and recast in the future narrative of the world and it’s victors, it’s champions, and how much will be forgotten? And how many times we will have to repeat history before we learn from our errors in judgement. Is there progress? Or there there an eternal return? A repeating cycle? Or is this the zenith of progress?

Are we at a turning point in history?

Are our dreams OUR dreams? Or were they peddled to us? How much of myself do I own? How much did my family raise me, and how much did my culture raise me? And how much independent liberty did I take to raise myself?

Is this the zenith of living?

Are we here?

Is this the stuff dreams are made of?

I wonder if there’s a social reality that ever satisfies humanity.

But I think there is. It’s one with purpose. And I believe it’s social purpose, something beyond ourselves.

God? Nation? The enemies abroad? Is it spiritual development?

Some cause, some unifying purpose.

I feel we are a culture without a cause.

Or causes that are bankrupt. Material causes and purposes seem empty.

What to die for? What is worth dying for? Do we as a culture believe in anything worth dying for? Relativism.

History… there’s an arch, a subtle trajectory to the fate of nations. I wonder where we’re at on the arc.