crowings

Illusions abound the ephemeral world. The veil of appearances clouds and distorts, every percept, every dividing boundary an elaborate mask covering some ultimate and inaccessible reality. Every word you speak, every goal you seek, every person you cling to, vain mucking about in the mire. So, desparate for meaning, you create it yourself, from nothing, from imaginings, and bury it that it can be discovered. Words are the trenches of the soul. The stars hold as much light as a firefly. We are small events on this planet, but our lives consist of the struggle with the small, the grapple with debris, the hubris under the sway of tidal and alien forces. No matter how deep we search, even going so far as to dig our own graves, there is always something beneath us, something we are standing on, living and dying on.

We are restricted to nothing but what we carry in our minds.

This is my sophomore philosophy. It is not a claim to life so much as a disclaimer.

Not for solipsism: I can see you as well as I can see myself. Not nihilism: even if the world is meaningless to us, it still ought to exist. Not pessimism: though life may be bounded by suffering, my mind is not. Not to deny truth, just to place it beyond our own temporal proclivities. Not to condemn life: that would be a meaningless gesture. Life will justify itself.

Although I think my math professor was right when he said "Every time you take a derivative, you take a step closer to hell."