Thoughts on the Atrophy of Mind and Time

You would measure time the measureless and the immeasurable.
You would adjust your conduct and even direct the course of your spirit according to hours and seasons...

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance...

Gibran Khalil Gibran

And they expect us to live happily in a world where time is everything, when all you are and all you can be is measured by your minutes, your days, your years... They pass, and fade into the dark recesses of forgetfulness and regret. They pass in a clamor and a flash, a climb to the peak and no more, in exhaustion, pain, regret, mistrust, and fear of the beyond. We live in the prison of productive efficiency. All the world around us, and we see nothing. We have become a twitchy twittering race, suspicious of even ourselves. Crude and uncultured, a base and demeaning aberration is our race, reason is rust and corruption, and spirit is consigned to the abyss of myth. Love is hateful, and hatred beloved of the masses. Freedom is dictated and dictators are free. Peace is archaic, a construct long demolished, in mind, in life, in every sense. We scramble to do the things we need to do, insignificant and laughably pretentious. And all the pain in the world means nothing, because we cannot feel it, and all the beauty of life means nothing, because we're too busy to see it. This cruelty is unbounded and unrelenting. And though you may not feel it, that is only because you have decided it means nothing. But it means more than anything we can ever be or do or know or feel.

What are we doing then?

March 30, 2007