In Progress Essay 2 - The Birth of A Dancing Star

Last Update: Recent. A bunch of thoughts from my personal notebook that I am compiling into something coherent. Not even a draft.

  What does it mean to be caught up in the flow of things? Where everything falls and rises into place. Where everything feels right. To be truly possessed by a rhythm beyond the orchestration of your own consciousness? To surrender and lay down the arms of ego to dance in harmonious flux. Do you understand the state that I am describing? I’m not entirely sure that I fully comprehend myself. I think in modern life, two states of mind mimic this, but in many ways are also empty replications of the real thing. Be it through means of expedient escape or worshipping false idols, the modern individual finds a semblance of resonance, of validation, of connection with something beyond the suffocatingly finite constraints of their mind and body. Either way, we forfeit cultivating a genuinely sustaining relationship with that transcendent force. That force doesn’t need to be a God or deity. I am an atheist, I don’t believe in a divine creator and mover of the cosmos. Yet, only through religious language am I able to articulate my understanding of reality. Even the staunchest Nhilist and the coldest of scientists who see in measured grids and precise calculations when ventured far enough into their convictions will reach a horizon of absurdity where their bibles of systematic certainties and uncertainties shatter into obscurity. I think if they look deep into that abyss they’ll likely find an incomprehensible chaos lurking in the shadow of their inflated sense of order, or in the case of a Nihilist, incomprehensible order underneath their beloved chaos. At the foundations, the atomical formulation of all existence is randomness and flux itself. In quantum physics, the universe is an infinite web of negative charges where matter emerges from mutations and catastrophic disturbances within that matrix. Everything exists along a continuum of energy. Boundaries, distinctions, and separation are arbitrary impositions drawn up through the limitations of our organic perceptions. Perhaps then, on some level beyond conscious awareness, we all understand this sense of transcendent connection; to everyone, to everything, beyond time and space. I like to address this state as Flow. It makes sense to me. Not in a rational, systematic, or scientific way. I have great respect for the scientific tradition but I am skeptical of it’s hubristic self-belief as the most revelatory pathway to knowledge. Beyond informing the quantitative aspects of life, ideas should inspire. To know is one thing, to know why is another. I believe in this state because the contemplation and internalization of this idea have a vitalizing energy. It is an organic frequency that is beyond encapsulation and cognitive containment. Perhaps my faith in the Flow of things comes precisely from doubt. No one is fanatical about the rising and setting of the sun, it is a truth of daily mundanity. The struggle in searching for justification makes us want to believe more firmly. I doubt the existence of unexplainable phenomena of fantastic beauty, exhilaration, suspense, and delightful synchronicity but I still have an inkling of naive hope that it exists. The sweet awe of the phantasmal Flow. I think people have some kind of existential drive toward tapping into this state. Generally speaking, western traditions are defined by an individualistic fantasy of progress where people peg their sense of what is right by aiming upward to the potentiality of what could be. It is action-driven. In Western narratives, there is a narrative arc, a rising action, a climax, and an ending. Eastern traditions like Hinduism believe in the great wheel of fate, in the circularity of history. Everything is in ebb and flux. There is a flatness and continuity in Eastern narratives with no clear sense of beginning or end. What is right is a question not of doing but of being. You simply are. However, it is not so simple to peel back the veils of maya to reach authentic enlightenment. What I want tto highlight here is the common human need to identify what feels right. The criterion by which we identify that is specific to the time, the culture, the environment, the individual. Nevertheless, we all look for a north star to aim at, a rhythm to dance to. This own line of inquiry found me one summer ago during a walk through a countryside grassland. My mind was still, a reflection of my surroundings. Any inner turbulence wasn’t gone but was dispersing and dissolving. In the face of nature, modern life's hubris and sentimental ego is made an insignificant matter that deserves no mind at all. While my mind was silent, a thought found me. The conclusion wasn’t my own. I wasn’t extrapolating, deducting, inducing or anything like that. It was as though I was given and received the thought. It welled up inside me and flashed into my conscious awareness. It was a foreign impulse that wrapped around fragmented experiences, giving a structured narrative. As I paced about an open field, I muttered to myself about my passion for taking candid portraits of animals and working-class people. When I finished my mutterings, the word Flow resonated through my body. I didn’t think the word but I felt it. It dawned on me at that moment that my love for taking pictures of that nature is to capture moments of synchronicity, harmony, unity, togetherness, juxtaposition, and of pure genuine reciprocal interaction. Flow. When everything is moving in alignment. What is fascinating to me in that practice is recording the motions of existence within the frozen frame. To capture to dynamic interactions of subject and object, foreground, and background, details and blurs. Something about that give rise to a sense of time and space collapsing into one point but still allows our mind to bleed off the sharp edges of the photo into the continuity of existence beyond. The language I am using is intentionally imprecise, imagistic, artistic, and dreamlike. Maybe that makes the transmission of meaning more muddled but it is only through the voice of poets, artists, and musicians are the deepest truths revealed to me.

I’ve observed two ways that people attempt to tap into this state where everything just feels right.

There is a reason why strong alcohol is referred to as spirits. It’s a kind of possession and spiritual seizing. A momentary escape from sober complexities. A blackout from reality. Humans are psychologically compartmentalized and inherently contradictory. We are fueled by impulses of inspiration, admiration, prosperity, and, moral-goodness but at the same time by fear, disgust, envy, anger, and malice. We can love and hate simultaneously. We can feel invigorated with passion but numb. If posed with the question of what I think or feel, my genuine answer is well which part of me are you asking? I follow the Jungian perspective that we are a collection of personalities loosely coordinated by an externally informed value system. The devil is in the details and even our most granular of values can clash. Which god do I worship? Money? Love? Achievement? And even when that question is settled, what sacrifices do I make as a devotee? For Money which salary level is satisfactory? Which job? In Dante’s Inferno, Satan is situated at the bottom of hell encased in ice. The devil is in the details. Paralysis of choice or in the biblical sense, free will. The details are capable of even immobilizing the embodiment of evil itself. Then what kind of solace do humans have against existential angst? The expedient answer is to just escape it. When tossed around in this internal hurricane, we seek just one damn moment of simplicity. Alcohol does that. It possesses you with a unifying feeling of nothingness. It transports you to a sweet limbo between fear and desire absent time and space where there is just thoughtless action. No more need to confirm, question, or validate but to just exist in alignment with the Flow. Even if it is a fantasy but what’s wrong with having dreams?

Flow state is a choice. An ideal

Why are pagan gods and goddesses the overseers of multiple things? Why is Hermes the god of messengers, medicine, and basketweaving? And Athena the goddess of art, warfare, and wisdom? Is there a divine relationship between all those things that manifest as a personified holy figure in the collective imagination? Take Hermes for instance. Messengers take a certain parcel or piece of information and deliver it along a specific route in a specified mode of transportation and delivery method to a particular destination. Medicine is another such process from point A to point B with an umbrella of logistical details that require a specialized understanding and a detailed-oriented temperament to orchestrate, all coupled with a big vision picture of the overall operation. The same can be said for basketweaving. The spirit that governs these things is that of logistical meticulousness, of process, of transmission, that is Hermes—the deification of a mode of being. I think earlier Earth cult pagan religions had this type of abstraction. This allowed each mode to battle for moral dominance through story and art. Later monotheistic religions consolidated all ideal modes of being into one. The evolution of religious deity hierarchies represented an increasingly sophisticated understanding of morality

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Nietzche is wrong. There will always be limitations as long as we are human. And in the attempt to surpass limitation, there is creativity, and there is no end to that. We can still give birth to a dancing star.

Otto was a plump man in his mid-70s, his every nod of affirmation or bob of amusement made his richly endowed chin jiggle with fervour. He was a staunch individualist with a capitalistic view of well-being and value. He was a pioneer in the early adoption of computer programming and became very successful in his profession. He’s been all over the world; up and down the corporate ladder. Lin, his girlfriend, had a meek exterior but was a deeply contemplative woman in her 60s. Much of her life was shaped by her responsibilities to her family, as traditional Chinese immigrants are. The two of them, along with my mother and myself were lounging in Lin’s apartment patio after a satisfying homemade dinner. Accompanied by the setting sun, I shared with them some realizations I’ve recently made at the time about the direction of my life.

I had a mentor in high school who I met by chance when we sat next to each other at a Pomona College picnic. We worked together for over two years. I saw him as a father figure. He taught me that the most important skill one can learn is the ability to navigate uncertainty. Over the course of those two years, we did exactly that, navigated the uncertainty of our entreprenurial and innovative ventures in this everchanging world. When it came time to trek the cumulating stretch of uncertain high school decisions – university, my mentor who I held in such high regard, had a long talk with me warning me that I will have my talents wasted in the beauracrasy of academia, that I should aim towards to high-paying corporate career. Up till that point, I was committed to pursuing my passion in the exploration of human psychology with the end objective of a professorship at some appropriate point in my journey as an academic. That conversation wavered my naive convictions. In a moment of weakness, a long moment of weakness, I applied to the dreaded soul prisons of college business schools.

This is no jab at him. I was and always will be immensely grateful to him for graciously investing his time to cultivate the potential he saw in a foolishly energetic kid from the still suburbs of Langley, BC. He was consistently nothing short of honest with me but I wasn’t honest with myself.

I had to peel the wool off my eyes and ask myself why the fuck am I in business and computer science. I thought BUCS was the safe bet. It was the most rational and economical. What I realized over the course of this year is that CS is not my niche. It is not the ship that I’ll take to the moon. It may not be the straight forwards path that leads to a set destination of “management consultant at MBB” or SWE at MANG but it is my path to forge and my war to fight. Otto laughed after I told them all this. He said that he loved listening to me as I reminded him of his younger self. He told me that he was once a starry-eyed dreamer who hated the corporate rat race but found himself falling into it after graduation, and loving it in fact, he was okay with being a hard ass and ruthless capitalistic cog. In fact he found it fun. The point that he was a trying to make is that everyone is tasked with creating their own definition of happiness, and it is okay to explore and change directions because there is no such thing and a right or wrong decision. There is only action and inaction. At the end of the day it will all be fine no matter what, as long as you’re still alive, everything is a gift. It’s a matter of perspective. Lin shared the same sentiment. Her life’s decisions orbited her familial responsibilities, there were only very small windows of time where her life was her own. She was miserable when she was young despite being married to a well off professor, having a child, and living a life of privilege and security. She was envious of the freedom that her bachelorette peers had, while they envied her. She told me that when it comes to pursuing anything at a substantial sacrifice, ask yourself, if this change is not made will I be able to come to peace with giving it up? That really stuck with me. The other thing that stuck with me is something that I, myself, said. It’s better to be lost and found than to be found but lost. Meaning that at this point in life I shouldn’t arbitrarily chain myself to any boulder. I don’t want to settle into a place in this world and be lost, I’d rather not have a place in the world and be exploring. I’m not lost. Yes I’m not sure where I am going but I’m not lost. Lost is when you have a desired destination but don’t know how to get there. I don’t have a destination in mind because I have a journey I want to go down that is lead by the compass that is my morals and values. I am exploring.

During my final lecture on existentialism, someone vulnerably expressed to the entire class his deep seeded belief that he is unloved in this world. He asked the professor how he could accept this truth without falling into despair.

The professor, ever cooly composed, responded with one line, “you must believe in God.” I was very unsatisfied with this answer. I understand that he has a philosophical conception of God, it isn’t as simple as a floating deity in the clouds but I refuse to throw up my hands and surrender to the incomprehensible overwhelmingness of this universe. That I can be lulled into peace like a baby nursing on the teet of dogmatic worship.

With these fruastrations boiling within, I asked the professor, how can one believe that the universe loves them without turning to God. Without hesitation, he responds, you have to.

Still unsatisfied, I follow up, what if I can’t?. I don’t see myself ever inhabiting a paracosm that allows for God to become a reality for me. How then do I kindle a relationship with the power that established me?

That is a question of a lifetime, he concludes. With that, class is over. I leave. As I was walking away from that classroom, tears begin streaming down my cheeks. I was overwhelmed by this welling feeling of despair and yearning for a concrete answer that can confirm the preponderance of meaning. In a daze, I check my calendar to ground myself in some arbitrary schedule.

Next on my agenda is the office hour appointment I made with a political science professor whose lectures I’ve been sitting in on. She has this vibrancy, passion, and erudition that makes my soul waver with brimming curiosity. As we make our formal introductions, she calmly makes herself a cup of tea with a set of Victoria-style china as a buzzing wasp circles her. Queen of the WASPs – fitting as a white lady who speaks with religious fervor. I follow up on a previous conversation on language as a unifying tool of description and discourse in this fragmented world. My concern is that language is limited and we are existentially complex beings that can’t fully be articulated and understood. She responded that the fact that we can dream of a better world, wish for it, and plan for it is important. We can try to understand, to reason, to articulate. That must be treasured. Something hopeful in her response was tugging at me. There was something in the way she was speaking that spoke to more than my intellect. My intuition was telling me that there was something in her that I needed to know. I wanted to know what she thought about the little existential crisis I had 10 minutes before we started chatting so I tell her all that has happened.

She responds, existential anxiety about the meaninglessness of the world is not an inherent reality. It is a state of mind. A curated perception. Our reality is like a forest floor. We are interconnected and grounded with responsibility and meaning through our interactions with others. The feeling of depression is a largely modern phenomena created by disconnection and alienation. We will never see things from the forest canopy, from higher up, so it doesn’t matter. Life is full of meaning. A lot of it isn’t understood but that is what makes it exciting. Be curious about what you fear.

I chime in, "it’s like that saying you have to slay a dragon to get to the gold it guards".

She mischeviously smirks, "don’t slay it. Becomes friends with it. Become friends with fear and despair".

A ripple of heat cascades from my heart outwards. It is a ferocious wave releasing a lifetime of tension. It is a strange feeling to be overwhelmed with hope, but I was. I begin crying in her office. Happy tears. The kind of tears that I would imagine our ancestors shed when they first successfully built a fire. The kind of tears that are shed for mystery, fantasy, adventure, and dreams. The tears of a madman obsessing over the sparks of potential that could erupt from mundane friction.

“How can I be like you? How can like lecture like you? How can I do what I love, and nothing short of that?”, these words crackle and burst out through muffled tears.

She laughs. “I see myself in you. I once began crying during a class presentation during my speech because the excitement of learning was so overwhelming. When I am in front of the podium, on my two shoulders lie fear and despair. They are right there alongside me. That is what drives me. What moves me. Even if the world is ending I will charge onward. Death? Isn’t it exciting? What can we learn from it? Isn’t it interesting what we can learn as everything is ending?” Silence. We share a simultaneously timed giggle, like kids. There was a mutual understanding that didn’t need to be said. Aren’t we both splendidly insane? She continues, “YOLO, am I right?” More laughter. “Despair doesn’t negate meaning, it affirms it. Like a roadmap. You just need to have the courage to see which direction it is pointing you towards. And then go there. Also get out of your business degree, you will lose your soul.”

“I agree with you. Everything in my heart sings at the tune of what you have said but my concern is that I have goals that require financial security. I want a family. I want a certain lifestyle. I want to be able to provide for my loved ones.”

She shrugs, “I loved being a broke graduate student. I lived a good life. I have a normal family. Everything will work out. Keep walking.”

“I will, though it is frustrating that the more I learn the less I know”.

“Yes but see the shaking of the earth as cracks of light opening up revealing the brilliant untapped potential underneath. Bathe in the fear and despair, not as paralyzing, but as enlightening and invigorating and informing. It means that the world is opening up to you. The world is getting bigger. Your adventure is becoming grander.”

I am but a stupid monkey with a big ego wandering this expansively small rock, head tilted skywards towards the infinitely large universe enveloping me. The sky, the most advanced time-travel portal known to humankind, a veil of time-distortions into the distant past. The most distant star visible to the naked human eye, the Andromeda Galaxy is over 3 billion light years away. Meaning that the image of the Andromeda Galaxy we see in the night sky is over 3 billion years old. A photon particle of light received by our retinas this galaxy began its journey 3 billion years ago to be perceived by us.

I can only move forwards towards the evershifting horizon. I may never reach that distant star up above

To be ahuman dreaming of being a butterfly. Or to be a butterfly dreaming of being a human. To be caught up in the flow. To forget about the mechanizations, the fragmentation, and the processes.