Saturday 15 December 2007

Life

Why do we do it? Why do we put ourselves through pain, day after day?
We’re born, we grow up, and go through the daily stress of education, until we get a job and work our fingers and souls to the bone, to get money. But then we die. We cannot take our money with us, and in death we are all ignorant, so why the stress of earning and the torture of education? There is no answer, yet, as a race, we are searching for this answer on a daily baisis. We all have our own opinions about the purpose of life. Some say it is passion, some that it is about enjoyment of life, and some say love. To these people I ask, why do we send our children and loved ones to school and work? Let them stay and enjoy passionate love. Some say we should work hard, and make some difference to the world. To them I say is not the creation of life, unjust and unfair as it may be, difference enough? We play god on a nightly basis, creating life, ignorant of the consequences to that new being. Unaware that we are bringing something innocent, beautiful and perfect into a flawed, unfair and fundamentally evil world.

But it is not the human race that is flawed, unfair and evil. Parts of it, certainly, but not all. No. It is life itself. Life is, as they say, a bitch. It watches us as we go about our daily lives, and gets its kicks every time we trip up. Every time things go against us there has to be someone enjoying it. It doesn’t matter how you look at life. If you look at life with a negative view, it will catch you out, and break you. If you change, it will try to turn you, and delight in your inability to help yourself. There has to be someone enjoying it. There must be, because if there is no sadistic higher being, no masochistic spirit of life, then we are simply struggling against our own incompetence. There are no obstacles being thrown at us, no hurdle set in our way. Our own failings are what make life so hellishly difficult to endure. Perhaps it would be easier if humans had no control over our own lives, if we were slaves to a higher race, who did not share our flaws.

But then, if there is no malevolent deity, who is it that kicks us when we’re down? It is easy to trip up, and always hard to get back up. Usually because there is something holding us down. Surely it is not incompetence alone that prevents us from improving our chances in the rat race? Surely there is some reason why humans as a race find it hard to make any progress at all, until those breakthrough moments when it seems no one is looking. I have no answers, and as far as I can tell, neither does anyone else. Every religion has its deities, of whom they seek the answers, but perhaps they simply believe because they wish to absolve themselves of their own failings. It is always easy to believe that things are not our fault, and that our flaws were put there on purpose, as part of a higher plan, especially so when someone creates a higher being to pin the blame onto. But no one really has the answers.
We are in fact so clueless that a large portion of the world believes the meaning of life is a number, and that we are just searching for the question. We will always be clueless, and that, above all else, is our main problem.