500 WORDS, DAY 114: Ideas

There is a sickness that invades our minds, our lives and our families. The sickness of negative influence, a virus that spreads negativity, disrespect, hatred and fear throughout the planet we inhabit. This virus is the cause of widespread, unnecessary suffering and death. But as the saying goes, one man’s trash is the next man’s treasure. Just as ignorance is such a great pain to those who are blessed to recognize it for what it is, it is also an escape to those who choose to be ignorant of ignorance itself. It is the greatest source of bliss for those who choose to ignore the hard facts of life, or inevitable truths about changes that need to be made in their personal life situations. Ignorance is the drug that keeps the masses sedated, lost in a permanent dream state, unwilling to discern the real from the illusory. Since we don’t want to know what is real or fake, we let others decide for us. We allow governments to tell us what is legal and illegal, we allow corporations to decide what we put into our minds on a daily basis when we watch TV. We decide we know something simply because we have adopted the idea of the masses, without using any critical thinking or consideration. At work, I often sit in the break room, waiting to go back to work after my break is over. I look at the other people in there, either sitting alone looking at their phones, sitting with others looking at their phones, sitting alone staring out the window, or sitting with others only occasionally uttering a quiet mumble, maybe about what time it is. Conversations nowadays take place via text, and possible conversations, often with people who could be new friends, are avoided with a simple glance at our phone screen. Are we trying to avoid others, or are we secretly making an attempt to avoid ourselves, to avoid opening up in the slightest way possible? If so, what is our motive for this? Could it be that we are trying to suppress some kind of insecurity which resides deep within ourselves? Let us face the truth. The truth will set you free, as it will any who seek it; but you must seek it, there is no other way to know it. Once again, ignorance is the drug that keeps us sedated, enslaved to a miserable wage, living within a system that keeps us trapped in an unsatisfactory lifestyle, filled with stress, rushed lunches at fast food restaurants and often disrespectful and unappreciative employers, and maybe coworkers and customers as well. Most of us tolerate this kind of lifestyle simply out of necessity, and there is no use in denying it. The vast majority of people on the planet are doing something they hate. Some, planning for an amazing retirement, work at a company for thirty or forty years. I mean, that’s fine if you enjoy it, but if you don’t then there’s nothing worse you could ever do in life. Contrary to popular belief, time is not money, although both are very similar. Both are ultimately illusions, symbols which represent abstract truths. What we call time is simply memory and anticipation. The past can only exist if we remember it in the present, at which point it is no more than a memory. In the same manner, the future can only be anticipated if one is in the present. The present is the truth that gives life to both “past” and “future”. The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle is a very well-known book which explains this fundamental truth beautifully and profoundly. Time seems to be a symbol for duality. Time brings about day and night, which come along with light and darkness. Time also symbolizes, as explained earlier, the duality which is past and future, the two states of deviation from the perfect present, or the Now as Tolle would call it.