What Is It About Life That I Do Understand?

None of it actually

Take a look around. Notices something? Notice that, everything is coming to an end? Yeah that happens. Then what is the point? Well, you keep on walking, and learning, and walking, and learning. Then what happens? A boy asked his father. Then we understand everything, yet knows nothing about it.

Life is full of paradoxes. Yet the modern society seems to reject most of the realities by feeding the people by mundane entertainment and lifeless chase of materiality everywhere they could go after. Sure it’s fun to some extent, but is it exactly what we looking for?

Finding for meaning is always an endless quest for us, human being. As the only sentient being graced with consciousness by the universe, is only imaginable for us to define the meaning for something. No other living being in this universe, has yet known with the same capabilities like us. Then so, it gives us an opportunity to look higher to the sky, or look from the higher places about our surroundings, our realm. It is such a comedy for us to be given the chance to see the universe, yet all the deduction leads us to nowhere. This vast reality, and yet we has concluded that it is unthinkable for us. The only conscious being, said that. There has to be something bigger.

Well for the people who has done a leap in faith will most likely to argue, that the sentient being we’re looking for is God Himself. Only He has the capabilities to gain knowledge from all over the places, even in the unlikeliest places. Now back to us. We has defined ourselves with limits. It’s a good thing, because for us, it’s still out of our reach to imagine a limitless situation. An endless possibilities frightened us, the bravest creature to ever walk this universe. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but it’s true. So far, there has been no discoveries regarding the same level of civilisation as us. This gives us an outlook to ponder and constantly craving for the goodness of knowledge.

If imagining limitless scenario is scary, then being blindly guided by the mother-nature seems scarier. It challenges us back to our primal state, the crave to survive. To gain knowledge for our profit. And so, the search for knowledge begin. Starting the civilisation with something simple, such as sticks and rocks, advancing to many technologies and thoughts, to us in 21^st century. The collective mind has expanded ever since. And so, we go back to our first question, is there any limit in knowledge? How much is too much for us? Because a limitless scenario scares us, yet we are craving a seemingly endless stream of knowledge.

In this era of information, the amount of knowledge that were streamed everyday globally is insane. It’s almost incomprehensible for us, even for the people in the 1800’s wouldn’t expect this much of an advancement. And so I say, that there is a need for a limit for our knowledge intake. It’s not that I’m trying to gate-keep it, but the limit is there to keep the mind sane. Imagine doom scrolling every night just to go to sleep at 3am and then waking up at 8. Its madness. And the same could be said for all the important people who are chased by their own ambition to discover things. Recently, I’ve found a phrase that said, fuck around and find out. Well that’s true to some extent. The relationship between those two item are positively correlated, meaning if you tried to finding out some stuffs with good intentions, it will follow with a good results, vice versa.

Now what does this has to do with our consciousness. The culture of consuming has been our main priority in terms of survival. The basis of survival in this realm is consumption for a living. Plants consume sunlight and water, animals consume plants, water, and other animals, and we consume everything consumable. To some extent, we are becoming what we consume, therefore too much of a knowledge will shaped us. It could be for the better, but it could be for the worse. What if too much knowledge leads us to losing our own identity? What if too much knowledge cause us to question everything that is really unnecessary? What if too much knowledge changed our personality to be unkind and immoral? So many what ifs.

Moderation has lately been spoked about in many chances. In terms of stoicism, stoics scholar are always emphasizing on self-control. It was the main foundation for stoicism, as they revolves around the idea of controlling all the things within our actual control. Therefore the consumption of knowledge should not consumed yourself in the end. There’s a need for restraint in order to keep things in places, and preventing the essentials from washing away part of ourselves. The act towards receiving the knowledge should be in a main lenses also, as it deeply reflects our personality and action towards those knowledge. We should treat the knowledge in modesty. To actually keep in mind, that the more you know something, the less you actually knows the whole thing. Modesty is the keyword here. Experience of knowledge should be a humbling thing, as the knowledge has graced you with an opportunity to better comprehend some things.

Throughout our civilisation, no one has figured the meaning of life via science. The meaning of life has always been accessed through subjective assessment and personal wisdom. Even the elder could only speak for themselves. Their word could only be transcended into ideas, that might work or not working at all for others. There’s always a chances. After all, this life is a huge game of dice with chances all over it. This is one of the reason to keep modesty in the pocket. After all, even if you are the brightest person in the room, everybody is still figuring out. It is arguably a better way to always learning and keep an open eye towards new set of knowledge. Keep on learning, but keep it in moderation.