A couple of weeks ago, it was time for me to take a break. It still is, but once again there are things to talk about.
Pressing pause on the tape of life is something I can recommend to everyone. If you fast-forward for too long, your surroundings will start to blur out.
You’ll forget things. You’ll miss things.
It took a long while for me to learn this, and I’m still in training. The lesson has been told before, but it is as important as ever; life is in the details. We stress too much. We run through life, looking for that … perfect place. It’s aching somewhere in the mind—surely it must happen one day. The place is in the future, and in the dream, we wake up in perfect surroundings, have meaningful discussions over cups of coffee. In the dream, we enjoy the fruits of a long life of earning and learning.
But there’s something wrong with the picture. You’ll feel it on good days, or very bad days. It’s there like deja vu. On a good day, things’ll fall in place, piece by piece in the puzzle that is a perfect day – the day you imagined. But it’s not entirely like you imagined. Somethings missing—it doesn’t feel right, not like it’s supposed to. The day lacks meaning.
Ever since the beginning of this, I’ve been searching for meaning to life; the premise being: there is none. Life is randomness. It is a huge twine of mathematical formulas that gives and takes, seemingly without patterns.
The dream of meaning is an illusion.
The lesson I’ve learned is: stop worrying and love the bomb. Find that, which is truly important. Be a collector. Collect good memories and scrap the rest. Do like Dale Cooper of Twin Peaks and every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, just let it happen.
Press pause on your tape. Take a break. Look at people rush past you. You’ll notice they look quite ridiculous.
Think of it this way… since the Universe has no inherent meaning, this is just an opportunity for you to assert your own vision for it. That sound more fun than “meaningless”, doesn’t it?<!– X-spaminator-passed: IP check
><!X-spaminator-passed: email check><!X-spaminator-passed: author check><!X-spaminator-passed: author url><!X-spaminator-passed: comment body—>Well, you certainly seem much more Zen now than you did for your “I want” post, little less angry I think. Good.
Don’t go letting things overwhelm you, and get some sun.
If you need any more helpful clich?s you know where to find me.
Michael,
Very nice quote. Is it from the movie I think it’s from? Or?
Chris,
I want to be angry
Oh but seriously, I’ve been meaning to write a manifest for a while, and I stand by it.
Gabriel,
I just noticed your comment had gotten stuck in my spam filter! Sorry about that! I’ve cut a little back on my spam plugins now, it shouldn’t happen again!
Indeed. It’s actually quite close to what I’ve believed for a while: since there is no meaning, we’ll just have to make one for ourselves.
You know, the manifest idea is a good one. Especially in your case.
I can see it becoming a revered historical document some day. “The Joen Manifesto”. If only because that sound so much cooler than “Chris’ guide to getting things your way”.
It just hit me I should’ve said “manifesto”, not “manifest”.
I still have your great quote hanging on my office wall, by the way:
Beatiful.
Joen, whenever I hear that sentence I think of this…
So true. Well said Joen.
It would be easier to impose meaning on a meaningless world if I could only figure out what meaning meant
“press pause.”
great montra. i like “just have fun” also.
great site. saves me from dying of boredom at school,
mike
Mike,
Thanks for your comments. I’m sorry it took a while for them to appear! Apparently the latest WordPress nightly is going banzai on comment spam, sometimes even regular comments.
Very profound Joen – your essay made me pause, for a few minutes at least.
By the way, have you stopped pinging blo.gs? I ask because I’ve missed your last three posts.
Thanks Jonathan,
Ah, damn. Yes you’re right! As part of a rewrite of some things, I had to move my “blog url”, which is the one being pinged, to http://www.noscope.com instead of http://www.noscope.com/journal—so blo.gs generates a new hash.
I used to have it fixed by hardcoding the ping url in the pinger, but this must’ve gotten lost in a nightly update.
Question is: Should I have people update their blogrolls, or hardcode again? Are there alternatives to these two?
PS Thanks for telling me, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed.
Personally I don’t mind updating my blogroll. I’m sure most people will feel the same. But how can you let them know – since they won’t get notified of your post instructing them to update?
Thus I’d go with the hard-coding (at least for one more post).
Let us know what you decide, so that we know to update or not. Thanks Joen.
I hope you’re right, it’s probably what I’m going to do unless I think of some better solution. A pity WordPress doesn’t have a separate ping address.
If I choose to change ping address, I’ll do that, good advice thanks!
Yes, there is at least one: Ping-o-Matic! is a gateway to multiple RSS aggregators and you can ping with any URL you want.
You just have to remember to use it!
Ah yes, ping-o-matic! Though I don’t really dare use that one—I think I’m just going to post about the new URL in a little while. Great tip though.
Could I ask why Joen?
Man I keep forgetting to answer these questions. Sorry about that.
I dare not use pingomatic because if I don’t fill it out just right, It’ll mean a new hash that spams blo.gs.
I’d rather make one hard switch, and then never again.
Your message is an important one that many would do well to hear.
I’m glad you’re taking a step back and enjoying life. It’s easier to do when you’ve “made it” hahah.
I hope we can talk again soon, friend of friends.
Well, thanks, but I’ll disagree about having “made it”. More so, a gist of this is that “it’s not about making it”, rather about having fun doing what you do, and of course taking the necessary breaks. However, I appreciate the comment.