Have you ever wanted to just scream into the twilight, letting your entire soul soar through the glittering sky? Pressed for sociological opinions, you find, every once in a while, that you just don’t give a dime about why anything is happening, and wish that, just for once, people could just revel in their own experience? I keep asking myself questions like “Why is it that existentialism – putting the nature of existence first and foremost – denies the most fundamental, the ontological, experience of all?” and “Why can’t we realize that it is in the experience of our existence that we come to real truth?“ but secretly I want to take off my philosopher’s mask just sink into reality. Stop using professional language and just “skrew it!”
Those moments when it seems everything is sooo real, and every leaf on every tree jumps into your personal existence, seem so fleeting when we’ve hit the ground, just as a meteorite cometing towards the earth stops dead, left to wonder where it’s past life has gone, and if it really ever existed like it remembers.
There is a mode to our existence that changes, and is not to be mistaken with our mood. Though moods can be strong, I believe our mode effects even our physical perception of the world around us. Whatever magical organ in our brain that tells us that we perceive time has a way of putting us outside of ourselves while in this special mode, and we see ourselves in that perfect, happy situation, when the weather is perfect (for me that’s cool and fiercely windy) and your favorite music is playing in your head, and maybe the ones you love to be around are all there too, and we witness it as if we are someone else. (Its not that this is in our imagination, it is really happening, but our experience feels observatory) Almost as if I am not willing to accept that I could really be experiencing this, I never seem to remember the things I said, expect that they were just what I wanted to say. People laughed at what I said, my girlfriend smiled at me, and I guess I felt like I was walking on air. That’s a common way to describe elation, but that’s really how I felt, as if the ground had less friction that normal, and all the colors were brighter and easier on my eyes at the same time. I found beauty in everything.
The closest thing to this experience that has a name is nostalgia, I suppose. I commonly call it that, but there is a major difference.
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nos·tal·gi·a
A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past.
A wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition
[Greek nostos, a return home]
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Think about that, what nostalgia feels like. Sink into it for moment.
Now imagine that feeling in the now.
This mode of being I speak of isn’t a longing for what’s past, but maybe it’s a longing for what is happening right now, perhaps caused by a knowledge that this event will one day only be remembered, not experienced, as nostalgia. This is experiential.
And so I fight for these magical moments, all the time. A mix of artistic media constantly floods my life as a result. I vainly pursue theoretical endeavors even though I realize that only by improving my experience do these minutes that I long for appear in my life. It can’t be planned, it can’t be made, it can only be discovered.
So go. Go discover this. I can’t tell you how, just wish you luck, and hope you find it. I wish I could tell you what it is, but unless you’ve managed to pull it out of that mess of keyboard mashing above, you might not even know what it is you’re going after.
That’s life, have fun!
