a fruitful futility
taking another step on the spiral staircase
It’s 19:49 on Friday, the 31st of January, 2025.
I’m sitting at my desk at the end of a long workweek because I have set a goal to publish at least one post per month this year. The time and my goal are arbitrary, and yet, come 22:00, I will push publish.
Because the fact that it is arbitrary does not make it unworthy.
Much of our lives are governed by fictions. There are useful fictions that serve us and fictions that hinder us. I'm not here to be the arbiter of which is which. On a more fundamental level, we live in relationship with everything else, and that is the great arbiter (and teacher) of what serves us.
I had a powerful experience of this late in December. I was in a conversation with someone who moves in similar circles, and we got onto the topic of another person who had caused me a lot of pain. I heard that they were having a hard time, and I verbally reveled in the schadenfreude of that moment: “Serves them right.” (Yes, I have a vicious shadow side; yes, I know it hurts me too.)
A few hours later, I was inconsolable. I had a weird quasi-spiritual experience of sorts, where I had a flashback to playing with my niece on the trampoline the previous week. The joy on her face was radiant, and I felt the depth of love for her in the core of my being. I realized that the moment was gone, never to repeat itself. The immense gravity of impermanence caused me to crumple.
Intellectually, I know that everything is impermanent. Yet on that day, it became physical. It triggered a cascade of visceral emotions, knowing that everyone I know and love will pass away; that is, if I don't go first. I knew that there would be tremendous pain in my life. However, I also felt capable of holding that pain.
There was also a sorrow, mourning the insecure part of me whose old wounds had been scratched raw. I fully grasped that the person who had caused me pain had not operated maliciously. For the first time, I felt a real compassion for them (and myself) in the situation, instead of seeing myself as the victim. Underneath the schadenfreude, I saw the inherent falsity that another's suffering would somehow relieve my own, or justify my feelings.
I wrote a few lines of poetry in the wake of it:
what is this life but a fruitful futility?
a kaleidoscopic collision of drops in the ocean.
if this is all there really is
then what point is there in celebrating the pain of another,
just because they caused you pain?
may they find peace on their journey.
I give thanks for the love experienced,
for being able to touch their soul in its current disguise.
and even if what comes after this fragile-snuffed flame is beyond imagination,
(a return to union perhaps?)
today I shall mourn the loss
But what has this got to do with my arbitrary goal of posting at least once a month?
Well, it’s an experiment in pursuing that which is arbitrary in spite of the apparent meaninglessness; a tether to keep me accountable. Even though I may be an arbitrary component of this arbitrary existence, there is beauty and wonder to be found.
The last three months have seen me dancing along the spectrum between the Lego movie’s “everything is awesome” and the writer of Ecclesiastes’ default, “I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.”
On the morose end of the spectrum, it feels like I’m facing the same challenges as last year; staring at the same damn bricks in the wall.
But you see, that is also a fiction.
I’ve been doing a lot of work on deconstructing limiting beliefs recently. Beliefs are ultimately fictions that we’ve abstracted from experience, and that run our lives as unconscious programs if we let them. It’s all too easy to remain in the timeworn and well-trodden grooves.
But when you bring the light of awareness to these unconscious areas, you can change your beliefs. It finally feels like it’s starting to pay off. I’ll be in the middle of saying something, and I start questioning, "wait... is that true?" Very Byron Katie-like.
So I'm trying to write new fictions and find more joy doing it.
Those bricks? They’re not the same bricks. Time has moved, and nothing is as it was. Life is like a spiral staircase; we're always seeing things from a different perspective.
And if we have some part in making it up as we go along, why not make it beautiful, rather than dour? For me, writing is part of the way I tend the garden of my soul, and hopefully I can bear more fruit with this time I have been given.
I know that I could spend another hour at least editing this, and it would be a better post. But c’est la vie.