Thursday, October 18, 2012

How would you like to be remembered


Over the hill is fine. At the top of the hill, look back on years of confusion, ups and downs. Pause for a breather.


What happened is more interesting that what I could have imagined. Youth is over. No reward, no gold star or certificate. Jeez, I'm boring myself with this rap. This is a predictable way of saying old platitudes. Confusion may or may not be reduced.

Some of the mist obscuring the mind might dissipate. It doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, if you sit down and have a look.

No point trying to impress anybody. After you die, you'll be nothing more than a fading memory in the minds of a few friends or family members who have their own worries and are struggling to survive. Nobody is going to spend too much time remembering you or your hopes and fears. Eventually, all trace of your existence vanishes. Just look at the piles of skeletons in the crypts. Go visit a grave yard.

This is not a morbid discussion. It's a way of liberating oneself from the constraint of childish, ego-centric fantasies or concerns. It's relaxing to let go of the rubbish. It's easier to cheer up when you set down the load of ego-driven obsessions, which only result in worry, anxiety, anger, jealousy, insatiable lust, competitiveness and so on. It's more fun to make peace with the world, than to stomp the foot, shake the fist and grind the teeth in order to get attention, to be seen and heard. If you look closely enough, you'll see there is no single, fixed entity or substance which is the self. The self is an illusion of consciousness. Self exists as a mechanism to organize or unify one's thoughts and experience. The mechanism is not an object or substance, it's a process or dynamic.




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