26. From Here To Eternity
April 9th 2020, Thursday
Dear Blog,
Remember the night when I got drunk? I realized a few things.
During that night, I was watching Episodes while drinking. The night after, I did not remember watching one of the episodes, so I rewatched it. As I was rewatching it, of course, Déjà vu came through the roof. After all, I did watch this episode in the previous night, only I did not remember watching it, but some memories of the scenes got stored in my subconscious. When I recognized, ah, I have watched this scene before! It was a weird convergence of my past, my present, and my future. My current experience of recognizing the scene came from my past, and this recognition would continue into the future as long as the episode kept playing.
I was also pretty hammered. It was like a scene from the Hangover movies. I lost half of my toenail on my big toe, I sent out a tweet to the writers from the Scriptnotes podcasts (which I immediately deleted upon discovery), and my credit card was lying on the table. Apparently I was trying to promote my tweet, according to an email from Twitter that rejected my request. I also wrote a blog post that I did not remember typing. I guess that’s what happens when you drink a whole bottle of whiskey within half an hour. Both your past and your future was taken from you.
The next day as I was lying on the bed, with alcohol still in my body, I went into a state that was similar to lucid dreaming in which you can think about anything and it would feel so real. In that state, I dreamed about how every desire of mine became instantly satisfied. Big house? Done. Chilling on a beach in Spain? Already there. Sex with someone hot? Already happening in real-time with a full spectrum of pleasure. Fame and fortune? You got it. Love and respect? Unlimited supply. It went on for a while before I remembered one of the stories I heard in class about a TV show. In that show, there is this guy who dies and goes into heaven and can do whatever he wants. After a while, he gets tired of everything and complains about this to his butler. “You know what? I think heaven is kind of boring.” “What makes you think this is heaven?” The butler replies with a smile.
Upon remembering this story the incessant cravings and satisfactions stopped, and the concept of death came into the spotlight. Everything fades in the face of death. Time is our ultimate prison. We are unable to see beyond where we are, with a definitive end waiting. We are nothing against eternity, and the entire battle of the human race is an attempt to get closer to infinity yet always runs short of a complete understanding. What should I do in the face of this eternity as a limited being with an expiration date?
None of us can achieve the truth by ourselves; the temple of that is destined to become a worthy dwelling-place for the great God can only be built stone by stone, with the participation of millions of generations, from the patriarch Adam himself right up to today’s generation.
— Leo Tolstoy
You can disregard the religious undertone of the quote for a moment if that makes you uncomfortable. But this image of a temple or a tower of truth made of stones got stuck with me. As I was pondering about the concept of death in my trance/hangover state of mind right after realizing the futility of chasing after desire after desire, death makes sense to me. I am not dead because I have a purpose. The point of life is to contribute to that temple of truth, a brick, or a stone, made from the essence of your life. In the unfortunately bombed movie Jupiter Ascending, human lives are harnessed into a bottle of liquid for higher beings to maintain their immoralities. A much bleaker analogy to be sure. If I want my life to mean something, I have to contribute to that tower towards infinity, use my knowledge and intellect to give a piece of a legacy for the future generations, to build a tiny stone, as Tolstoy put it. If l am going to disappear into nothingness anyway, might as well leave something behind.
Contribute to the eternal truth to the best of your abilities. That is your purpose. I shall be brave and persistent in this pursuit.
