Although it is necessary to confront the randomness of the outside world most of the time in order to participate in socialized life, there are moments where we eliminate almost all chance of disappointment and wrap ourselves in the protection of our own mind.

Sinking into your subconscious is the subject of one of my other writings; what I emphasize here is specifically facilitating a lack of connection with the outside world.  It requires active thinking to recognize thoughts that are tied to the outside world, since those thoughts are all classified as “normal:” I wonder if my mom is mad at me. I hope I got an ‘A’ on that test. It would be great if I met someone at tonight’s party.  But separating out thoughts that are bound to circumstances you can’t control can be crucial.

When things are going well for a day, a week, or a moment, it doesn’t seem necessary to retreat from the outside world.  But when things are going poorly, all you want to do is get away from the source of the negativity.  It is important to know how to do that.  There are already things that are built into your life that are constant and very much under your control.  Use those things to comfort yourself.  Savor them.

When I was taking midterms in college, I used to relish the few moments after I got under my bed covers but before I went to sleep.  I often found myself smiling involuntarily the moment my weight sank into the mattress.  Shuffling off the stress of the day and slipping into my own personal world felt incredible.  Even now, I sometimes think to myself how much I enjoy those last conscious moments, and how it’s too bad they’re so close to sleep as to render themselves blurry in my memory.

Other ways I block out the world temporarily are through writing, video games, and music.  The last is probably the most common way people temporarily secede from the world.  And in a way, all art is a form of escape – an escape that is so fundamental to human living that every culture from every time period has participated in it.

It is important to vivify your mental alone-time, to recognize and seize upon it.  The respite you’ll receive from blocking out the world once in a while could sweeten your life experience.

My desire to not be found comes from a barely conscious longing to experience the sense of safety I had as a child – to regain the feeling of certain surroundings filling me with comfort and security, as a five year-old who climbs into his parents’ bed after a bad dream.  Somewhere in time we lost the inviolable security we had as children, and I often miss it, and resent that I must now take full care of myself.

The inevitability of becoming a noticeable entity that is constantly at the whim of its environment is difficult to accept.  Invisibility tempts me with its promise to provide a complete respite from the worries and fears of the outside world.  While I do value my self-dependence, sometimes it would just feel good to wrap myself in the security of anonymity, and let everyone and everything go.

Time is, fundamentally, a change of events.  We recognize time to have passed only when something changes -  a person takes a step, a gust of wind blows, our leg itches.  Even the least impactful event, such as the tremor of a hand, is considered a passing of time.  And, by definition, if no event occurs – if no water flows in a river, if no blood circulates in the body – then time has not passed.  But something always seems to happen, and thus time always passes.

Our society teaches us to group these micro-events into clusters, or macro-events, such as meetings, football games, and vacations.  Clock time is the most obvious example of aggregating micro-events into macro-events.  It is easier to say “I went to the mall for three hours” then “I walked 8,000 steps, my heart beat 10,800 times, my retina collected 48,616 visual stimuli,” and so forth.

Yet, although it is clear how convenient these macro-events are for communication, they have caused an adverse effect in our lives as well.  People are apt to make themselves busy, outwardly or inwardly, in order to distract themselves from the true issues they are concerned about.  Although they may not realize it, being busy is just the act of causing many events to occur, and thus causing one’s time to pass quicker.

Once we realize that time is merely a succession of micro and macro-events, we can use it to our advantage.  Rather than making many events occur in order to speed up our perception of time, we can make fewer events occur – slowing down time – and giving us a better ability to reflect on and appreciate our lives.

Maintaining an active relationship with your fantasy realm requires affirmative upkeep.  It means retreating to that mental hideaway often and engaging it willfully and boldly.  If you can accept the fact that you – an individual above the age of six – possess a private realm where anything can happen, then your escapes will be far more fruitful.  And if you do it often, always searching for new subject matter to play with, you will enter your own world more easily.

It is also important to keep your cognitive channels open and clear of pollution. There will always be many outside events in your life, and your ability to filter these outside events has great consequences. If you allow doubts, stress and other negativity into your life, they can stop up your lines of communication with your internal world.

A fantasy world, when facilitated properly, is a tool with which to enjoy our lives. It makes up a large part of the sense of freedom we feel.  When we can fully utilize our gift of mental creation, we can revel in the ideas we love most, and ultimately, use those ideas to color our external world as well.

Beyond the hill was a slope that tapered off into the vast chasm of eternity.  Yet I was not afraid, because I knew that no one could ever fall into it against their will.

Inside the log cabin was a crackling fire and a cozy hearth, covered in a soft, round, red carpet.  And on that carpet, there I was, a child of four years old.  I had no expression on my face for I was in complete security, without fears, wrapped in the assurance that I was cared for and could never be hurt.

A force, not unlike the love of my parents, but stronger, coming from an ultimate life source, permeated my presence, granting me perfect serenity.

I felt all the blurry beauty of nostalgia, but it was real.

I have found that the purest way to connect with another person is not to attempt to become one with their mind, but rather to enter into a unifying experience with them.  The classic example of this is love.  Love begins when another person inspires admiration in you, making you desire their identity as a part of your own.  Through love flows a wish to share your individuality with someone else, to convey to them the feelings that exist within you, which, when freed from the private cell of your mind, create a common pool of consciousness.  There are times when, whether during a brief reunion or a longstanding partnership, we are chemically attracted to each other in a way that seems to melt away our individuality.  These moments only occur when two people allow themselves to be completely vulnerable with each other, leaving behind the sense of control society has instilled, and replacing it with trust.  If we can manage to depart from the self-possession we have learned over the years and experience a real bond outside of ourselves, we can briefly re-experience the immortality we felt as children.

Is it immutable that I should be sitting here right now, typing on this computer, with this bottle of water placed exactly as it is on this table in front of me?  I can move the water bottle, or the table, into countless random positions, so it doesn’t feel like the whereabouts of these objects are carved into the mold of my destiny.  However, if that bottle blocked a bullet, or got knocked over and spilled, forcing me to go buy another one at the supermarket where I subsequently met my future wife, it would suddenly acquire the magical seal of fate.

Indeed, if magical-seeming events always shaped the important circumstances in my life, I would certainly believe in fate.  However, when I think of some of the seminal characteristics of who I am -  my career, my relationships, and my knowledge – none of them were built from anything that smacks of a divine plan.  Instead, it seems as though my life has been fashioned from my own purposeful actions.  And yet, I still know that fate has played a very important role.

Fate, to me, is the part of life that you can’t control.  Fate is nature: it is your physical makeup, it is your parents, it is the place you were raised.  It is your unique chemical composition.  Fate is also the random things that occur around you that you have no say in, like weather, and other people’s actions.

The events of our lives are dictated by a mix between fate and free will.  Our core personality, health, and situation in life are things that have been fated to us.  The decisions we make are our own free will.  Relationships between people are a complex mixture of the two.  They are one part your free will, one part the other person’s free will, and one part the interaction between those free wills.  Exactly how the latter part breaks down – the way people’s attributes and actions intermingle, and all the chemical twists and turns that determine the ultimate state of the relationship – are a matter of fate.

Once we acknowledge the existence of free will, it becomes apparent that our situations in life are largely built by us, with fate giving us only a starting point and some surprises along the way.  Those who wait for fate to deliver their entire lives will achieve far less than they desire.  If we allow fate to act alone, our todays would transition uneventfully into our tomorrows.  We’d grow up in the house we were born in, then move to the next logical place based on outside influences; we’d keep the friends we met in elementary school and acquire few new ones along the way; and we’d go into careers that befit our earliest interests without much thought of what else we’d like to explore.  Very few extraordinary things would occur.

And it is precisely those extraordinary things – those acts of free will that disrupt the normal, passive flow of life – that make our time on earth exciting.  These things can be small or big.  They can be forcing yourself to go out to a social event that you don’t feel like going to, or challenging a deep, longstanding fear.

When I picture all the places I could have grown up in, all the people I could have met, and all the career paths I could have been driven towards, I see the interplay of fate and free will at work.  There were many different lives within the fate I was dealt: an American born into the suburbs who loves childhood and words and entrepreneurship.  I could have been a psychologist, a painter, an actor, maybe even a religious teacher; but instead I became who I am.  I like to think that I chose a worthwhile existence.

It is important that people recognize the limitations of their fate – but more important that they recognize the vastness of the possibilities they control with their free will.  While we cannot do absolutely anything, we can do so many things that we can consistently surprise ourselves, and make our lives as unique and meaningful as we wish.

- to accumulate as much happiness or pleasure as possible;
- to serve God (or follow God’s plan)
- to prepare for an afterlife
- to attain a high level of spirituality or knowledge
- to make a positive difference in the world
- there is no meaning to life

However, none of these theories fully resonate with me.  Making myself happy sounds great, but I don’t see how it adds meaning to life; serving God would require God’s will to have been clearly communicated to me, and it hasn’t; I have never seen evidence of an afterlife, as much as I hope for one; becoming more spiritual could lead me to greater clarity but it probably wouldn’t justify the existence of humankind; and who’s to say what making a positive difference means, since the concept of right and wrong is so subjective.  That leaves me with meaninglessness, which I easily dismiss because life is too beautiful and well-orchestrated to be meaningless.

The only answer that feels right to me is that the meaning of life is to perpetuate a flow of energy in the world.  The reason for the existence of this energy is either too complex or too pure for me to understand.  But energy – which I define as anything that has the potential to cause movement, no matter how small – is present in everything we see, do, and think.  An electron is a simple bit of energy; a human being is a rich cosmos of energy.

The reason I think that keeping this energy moving is the meaning of life is simply because every being seems to be inclined to accomplish this purpose.  There are no organisms that thrive on zero energy, and in general, every living thing attempts to perpetuate more energy rather than less.  Whatever force created living things obviously wanted them to keep the world thriving.  Therefore, this state of thriving appears to be at least part of the purpose this force had in creating life.

Any discussion on the meaning of life must also address the question of how to conduct oneself while on this earth.  I believe that one should do what feels natural and organic to living.  Most activities fit that description.  Activities that are destructive to life generally do not.  And yet, despite the importance we attribute to our own actions, we all accomplish the purpose of life collectively rather than individually.  That is, no single being is essential to all of life, yet the totality of life is essential to every being; this is because all organisms are dependent on each other through energy that is passed around in various ways.  One can look at the food chain as one example of this interdependence.  Human society is another.

And so, how can a human make his life as meaningful as possible?  There are a wealth of ways.  One of my greatest desires is to create my own family someday.  I believe this will add meaning to my life and to our collective existence because it perpetuates energy.  By bringing to life a new person who has his own capability of perpetuating life, I am carrying on an infinite cycle of life – one which all of us are a part of.  However, those who don’t have children can contribute as much as those who do by helping, teaching, or enriching other beings in order to strengthen their existence and fortify their procreation.  Even outside the realm of humans there are many ways to add meaning to life: for instance, planting a garden has its own ripple effect of energy.

A final piece of any discussion of the meaning of life is the subject of what happens when we die.  Where does our consciousness go?  Do our lives continue in some way?  I am certain that they do, and the extent depends on the amount of energy you have put into motion while you were alive.  This process applies to all living beings, not just humans. A tree that has sheltered and fed many animals and fertilized the earth has passed its energy into other forms and carried on the flow of life.  A human who has nurtured a family, influenced others with his words, and offered himself in public service has radiated his energy in many directions and will perpetuate life as long as life exists.

The ways in which that energy permutates, and its ultimate destination, are fantastic mathematical constellations that belong more to the imagination than to the printed page.  But I think that if all people strive to create the kind of energy that crackles, we will be doing our part to live meaningful lives.

Enessence: The ability to perceive the amount of energy radiating from an object, be it heat, sound, sonar, electromagnetic, or any other type.  You can enesce things through your clavicle bones, which encircle the bottom of your neck.  One experiences enessence when close to an object that is radiating a lot of energy, or when the object is not close but particularly radiant, just as one experiences sound when one is close to a noisy object or the object is particularly loud.  Because of the many energies emanating from the objects around us, enessence is often experienced like the bouquet of a glass of wine – as a smooth and complex combination of various energies.  The feeling of enescing something can be described in tactile terms ranging from warm & light like a spring breeze to heavy & cool, like a lead apron.  Intense enessence can cause goose bumps, shivers, or teary eyes.

Loftivity: The ability to interact with the happiness of the things around us.  An almost liquid sensation, loftive objects hit our sensory channels like the smell of the salty ocean, flowing into tiny “loft buds” in the soft spots behind our jaw, leaving us stimulated for a few seconds.  People or objects that exude loftivity do so in various strains (again like smells), which cause a minor tingle similar to electricity, or in other cases a feeling of dullness.

Camator: The ability to perceive the binary, or twin, of something on another dimension of time.  This sense is closest to sight in that it washes us in sensory data about everything around us.  Although our five traditional senses all aid in our survival, camator helps us in our immortal, or spiritual, survival, in that it shows us what things once were.  When we camate something, we understand how it appeared before the absolute beginning of time, in a mirror image of our current concept of time.  For instance, the camatorial perception of a flower in 2009 would display the essence of the flower 2009 years before time began, when only essences existed.  Since camator is not physically similar to sight, the experience of camating the flower would not yield an image, but rather a feeling of understanding the flower better that might be described as spiritual fullness.

~

Who knows – maybe some of these senses would come into being if we searched for them.