A Meditation on...Sociopathy?

      Am I a sociopath? I don't think so. I have freinds and I like to make them laugh. Disclaimer: don't worry about me, because I'm doing great. I'm just thinking that I'm not the only one who thinks like this, and I also really found it pleasantly diverting and relieving to track the process. 

      There is next to no dramatization in this exercise. I tried to observe thoughts objectively. Seeing as they are my own, I probably failed. Not sure how I feel about exposing this, but therein lies my reasoning: If feeling is ridiculous, and objectivity, data, and analysis are godly, then an informal study like this one must be shared for the sake of upholding my own possibly unhealthy ideals. I was thinking about a support group for sociopathic-or-at-least-vulcanotypal humans who are obsessed with mortality (spoiler: I identify as one) and then I realized-

"Hi everyone. My name is ______. I'm currently judging you more harshly than you want to know. I know that you don't want to know, because I too am appalled when I have reason to believe that I have been weighed and found wanting. I am perfect and my emotions are entirely under my control. I've merely come here to experience the euphoria of disgust at the weakness of my fellow humans. You should be ashamed of even having shown a need for emotional guidance. You are. I know that because I am too. Except I'm not, because shame is weakness and I am not weak. Truthfully, I've come here because in light of ________ (insert monumental life event), my awareness of my ever-faster-approaching mortality has been heightened beyond its usual, -albeit superior- state. Of late, my brain has been constructing a pre-sleep panorama of my life, wherein [aforementioned life event], though on the surface a happy occasion, looms as a neon omen indicating the unstoppable passage of time and incidentally, the inevitability of death and oblivion. Disregard the simile I just used. It is an indication of aesthetic appreciation, which is pathetic. Back to the point. As I speak, I am not chiefly aware of my speaking, but of my approaching mortality. My speech is a means to a morbid end. The fear I feel is a waste of time, as is this support group. My awareness of my mortality, not my fear, is what drives my actions. That is what I tell myself. I hate this moment, and hate is not a shameful emotion, because it is definitive and observant, and when controlled properly, it is an indication of superior intellect. But I am participating in this moment nonetheless, because I know that the opportunity to participate in this moment will never arrive again for me. If I were to walk the door right now, I would die having not observed what happens in the next few moments, and that is not acceptable. I am not aware of the reason. Despite my goal of complete objectivity, I find that I am emotionally attached to collecting as much world data as possible. When I allow myself to love another human, it is so I can add the experience "loving" to my list of knowledge. Further, when I find that I am doing such things merely for the sake of doing them, I am frightened. Suddenly my life has control of me, not vice versa. By the way, I hate talking about myself. I do not hate thinking about myself, but now that you all know that, I might. My self-absorbtion is meant to be a private indulgence. I aim to convince you all that I am funny, humble, caring, witty, talented, and intelligent, but simultaniously require no assistance or support from anyone, because I am perfect and very emotionally stable. The person and people I love most is the one that frightens me the most, because my emotions are not a secret from them. At this moment, I would like to inform you all that if you provide me with sympathy, I will be very very angry. I will be dissapointed that I have become angry, but I will be angry nonetheless, because sympathy indicates that I need support, which I am too stable to require, and I am also not ashamed of my nature. I am proud of it, though I know logically that it is perhaps unhealthy. Also, why are we, of all people, here right now? If your logic is similar to mine, you are retching in your seats at the disgusting level of sentiment leeching into our dialogue. I suggest we disperse for the sake of our respective sanities. At this time I would like to remind you all that we are all careening headlong toward death. To those of you who laughed nervously just now: I have judged you as inferior. But since you are like me, you knew instantly that you had been judged as inferior. You are now paranoid and confused. You will now fix it, and look back on this moment forevermore as a stain on your dignity. Goodbye. Let's go make people laugh, because we are very funny and that is good, for some reason. It's strange. Stop being sympathetic. It's making me uncomfortable. Goodbye again. I'm trying to get out of here. One day I will be dead. I am now simply speaking my thoughts, which is arrogant and therefore must be eliminated. Goodbye. I'm trying to leave. I want to not be here. Now everyone has left and I am content."

That was the meditation.

My mom says I need Buddhism. Sounds good to me. Sounds very good.

I'm not sad.

I'm not scared.

I'm a little scared.

That's good.

That means I'm not dead yet.

Here is some death that I found the other day while running:

Go forth and be wonderful.

I Puked Alphabet Soup For You and It Tastes Like Air and Hydrogen

    Once, I wrote this-

       "Anyone who thinks I'm a good person should know that I spend a great deal of time identifying annoying or otherwise unpleasant people and working obsessively, to the point of neurosis, to be his or her exact opposite. I have genuinely stopped saying certain words or having certain attitudes because someone I think is cringeworthy exhibits those behaviors (entirely because I'm terrified of being humiliated myself). Much of my mind is occupied with the task of making sure I'm not *that* person who does *that* thing. I am not excellent. I am just very pretentious and I have a perfection complex. The past sentence was actually me trying to appear gleamingly self-aware and enviably non-human, to myself and the no-one who will read these words."

      But a have a feeling I'm not part of some teeny minority with an irrational zeal for transcending my inevitable humanity. I've a feeling that lots of people are mortified by being observed while eating or sneezing or farting or being in pain or speaking unintelligently. We know we'll never be gods, but everyone's trying, right? Do most people want to be non-corporeal, indefinitely wise, and incapable of stupidity and selfishness? Is this where the idea of god comes from? Probably. How miserable a people we must be to be so concerned with ourselves. I think misery is a direct result of heightened self-awareness. "Hell" is a place we've crafted to convince ourselves that we can "clean" ourselves by punishing our humanity. But sometimes, other things come along to distract us from our lot.

  For example, here is what I typed this morning after sleeping and having colorful dreams:

      "Cosmos (the show) is great, and all these books are great, and Star Trek is great, and QUUest was great, and Summer Seminary was great, and the Summer Academy was great, and music is great, and my yurt is REALLY great, and people are great, and camping is great, and my mandolin is great, and my cello is great, and my dog is great, and the past three months have been great, and life is pretty freaking great."

But then, I returned to myself...

"And I go back to school on Tuesday.

And senior year begins.

And more life happens.

And at some point I die."

I find that major milestones mostly serve to remind me that time only moves forward.

My life is likely less than a quarter over, but loving being alive so much makes its temporal tangibility that much more heartbreaking.

 

There's really no conclusion to today's ramblings, partially because in organizing them and finding a moral, I would lose a beautiful nested parallel- life itself appears to me to be a collection of lightly, sporadically, delicately connected peaks, plateaus, and lows. Further, it's a rythmic turning inward and outward, reflecting on output and input to construct and refine a more complete understanding of itself. It's a nested infinity, an idea which has become increasingly holy and incredible to me of late. In comparing those words I wrote over the past few months, I'm wondering whether perhaps feeling unsatisfied with  or ashamed of our humanity stems from a small, nagging awareness of this intangible discernment-breath...

 

I lost it.

Enlightened thoughts are frustratingly fleeting, as we all know.

I seriously have no idea what I'm saying anymore.

To be continued?

Here is a simple truth from an awesome guy:

Go forth and be wonderful.

Aaaagh, and "Elegy for a Star"

     I lost the entirety of today's blog post. I don't have the energy to write it again. I'm sorry. But according to today's intended blog post that no one will ever read, the blog post doesn't matter and as long as you care for someone and make them feel better. It also doesn't matter that you're going to die and the universe will forget you.


    The post sounds like it would've been sappy and unfounded when I summarize it this way, but have faith that I scientifically backed it up and it came from a place of me really not believing it at all, which in a lot of cases means that I have very good evidence indicating its truthfulness. That's a post for another day. Either that or you should all read the parts of "World War Z" that talk about the "tenth man" concept.



So instead, here's an elegy I once wrote for I star that I speculated was probably dying (albeit millions of years ago).

Elegy for a Star

Here I am

Encased in cloth and goose feathers

Braced embryonic against the cold

I slip into my packrat pillow stacks

Tonight.

Tonight, I’m gonna try that “sleep” thing

Oh, to view the daily grind through rested eyes.

Sigh…

And suddenly, a white light

A rift in the vast, patterned cavern of the night.

Shouting

Sucking my droopy eyelids wide open.

It’s not the usual…

The fear of growing old,

the anxiety,

the heavy, racing heart that waits until the

Exact.

Most.

Inappropriate.

Moment.

To say “hey, hey kid”

Hey.

Think of me now.

Think of me now.

And lie awake for hours.

No.

Not tonight.

Tonight is a funeral for a star.

What?

“You’re so tired, Ophelia

This isn’t even real.”

You know what, brain?

Tonight…

Screw you.

So here’s a star.

A very, very bright one.

To your credit, brain, you’re sort of winning again tonight.

You’re here.

And you brought your weapons.

Thanks a lot.

This isn’t just a bright star.

Yes yes.

So you keep telling me.

It’s bright

Because it’s dying.

So it’s 1 a.m. and I’m watching a star die.

Everything else disappears,

And it's just me and the star in the darkness

Its eons of dying breath outshining the rest of this universe

Shrinking

Drifting closer to nonexistence every time I look away

I don't know what a star wants when it's dying

Ah…

What do I do?

No hand to hold.

No eyes to close.

But here I am weeping.

I'll be dead long before it vanishes from my sky

It's only an echo of a long-gone light

A bygone tragedy

But….

My heart aches when I try to rationalize.

I'm sure it would start to feel peaceful after a while.

It’s 1 a.m. and I’m going insane

My pillow nest a makeshift padded room.

This is when death usually becomes a strange and comfortable fever dream

Usually.

But tonight….

Tonight I have to look away.

The vastness of it is so

So

Hard to know.

And It makes me afraid.

I'm tired.

I'll try to sleep.

And I’ll pray that I can be at peace

With the stardust

The soul of my dearly departed

Watching over me

Breathing into the atoms that compose me

Even as I grieve the stars I came from.

Watching my own essence

Explode.

Burn.

Slowly…

This fragment of time

Traveled billions of light years

So I could see it ending

And there's a feeling I get

That I can't grab hold of 

I'm floating in this cosmos

This starry sphere of creation

Founded on improbability

Emptiness

And fullness

Gripping each other for dear life.

And my mind is flying away to my star

Rushing to its side

To press its desperate ear to an endless final heartbeat

Dear dying star

Teach this stardust creature to understand.

So there you have it.






Today's question would have been "what does caring for people really do to us? Weaken us or Strengthen us? Something else?"






Write your answers in the comments.






I leave you with an image of the Aurora Borealis














Go forth and be wonderful.