idle mind

i was wondering, the other day, about my progress as a human being and i suppose i still am that, a human being that is. my progress, if it can be called that, though i suppose i use the term quantitatively rather than in any positive or negative sense, has been full of unrequited love. i say unrequited love when what i mean to say is that my journey, as it were, has always been surprisingly unfullfilling, in the sense that so far as i can tell, there is no end to it. although the illusion persists. the illusion which encourages me to carry on pursuing who knows what to what end...but then there's the next thing and the next after that and so on.

the term "human being" itself is suggestive though and i should perhaps have picked up on it earlier: of the two words that make up the term, the present continuous (?) verb that follows the word 'human' implies in a way that there will always be a continual process of becoming or evolving, changing, and generally never ever any end till the end. so then a human being only really and truly becomes a human once he or she is dead. death becomes us. it is what we aspire to perhaps, without knowing it. so then how do i know that with so much certainty if we do it unconsciously? i don't really. i just said it. it's an assertion. but then what more will you do when you're dead? eh? nothing. and that's exactly my point. to become, is to die, and to die is to be no more -at least from a neutral, earthly sort of point of view. whether you aspire to it or not, death is the end of all endeavours. the fact, however, remains that all i did was toy with the idea that language describes us with a finality that we ourselves, severed from language might not be able to. but no, wait. human being was never the correct term in the first place. it is homo sapiens that we're interested in. the human being is a homo sapien, which means literally, 'wise man' or 'knowing man.' knowing what though? what makes me wise? it's the carrot at the end of the stick again. the illusion persists and though now what i covet is knowledge, is widom, it's still either a wild goose chase or a never ending story. because there is no line at the end of the race where i will be patted on the back by someone who is really in a position to say that i have attained wisdom. and i die and then someone says, whosoever it might be, that i was wise, that i knew, or that i was an ignorant buffoon, insensitive and useless. but where am i in this picture? am i the object to somebody else's predicate. so it seems. i am sad.

so why did i say that my progress has been much like or full of unrequited love? it implies 3 obvious things. firstly, that i know, or seem to know, or am pretending to know what unrequited love is. and secondly, that the time i have spent trying to become, has been similar in terms of heartache. but heartache in this sense would be a mixture of loss, shame, guilt, disappointment, fear, isolation, a sense of diminutive self worth, self pity, and a lot of wallowing. it's the sort of anxious fluttering in the body that doesn't begin or end in any particular area but has a general presence which makes one want to stop it, to sit down, to speak to no one and to be questioned or answered by none. but all of this has strong overtones of loneliness, as opposed to failure. thirdly it implies that i know or have some concept of what a metaphor might be and how it can be used with some measure of success.
is the unsuccessful man a lonely man? does he not have friends? does he not have a partner? does not having friends or a partner imply lack of success or characterize it? more importantly, is an unsuccessful man a homo sapien, a human being? but this again is simply a play on words. just because someone chose to refer to us as a species by the name 'wise man' doesn't mean that anyone who isn't, is no more a man or a part of the species. and taking it further, it also implies that our language expects of us, if we're not wary, to behave in a particular manner. it shapes our thoughts and presents ideals.

the ideal, in this case, is a wise man; being compelled to achieve an objective that can never be achieved is perhaps not such a great idea. or is there an end to wisdom? can you ever know it all? but before these questions ought to be answered, i need to understand whether language really does shape our thoughts. who in this world believes that he or she must satisfy the prerequisites, as it were, of a homo sapien? who believes that unless he or she satisfies the assumption entirely, of being wise and so on, they have failed?
what if in another language the word instead of homo sapien is one that suggests no more than bipedality? would the users of such a language be satisfied with life once they start walking? wouldn't they ask: alright so, i'm walking...what now?

where is this going?

no but really, why did i say that my progress was full of unrequited love? it's easy to answer that; much simpler than giving multiple reasons for having used that particular phrase. i said it because that is what was on my mind when i wrote this. what is still on my mind now. what will be on my mind tomorrow and perhaps indefinitely.
i don't like the idea that language shapes our thought. but does it? well if there is an absense of a word from a language, for instance, if the word 'depression' does not exist in many languages does it mean that they, the people who speak this language, don't experience it? well they do; they just describe it symptomatically. but then isn't that a difference in behaviour from those who do possess the word? but language comes later, i would think, and man comes before. language was not present for man to come and pull over like a sweater and parade around in. i assume that he actively constructed it piece by piece. which means he chose not to have a word for depression every now and then. this means that thought is what came between man and language. so then thinking differently made us different. language was just present in the wrong place at the wrong time and got blamed for having made us all different. we think differently. because we think differently we can never think alike. i suspect that even if the English language defeats all other languages entirely and becomes the only language of the world, it will not make any difference.

at best, there will be just one tiny moment, just an instant when the entire globe might speak the same language and then that moment will disappear. it will be like a pendulum returning from a wild swing and reaching - just for a millisecond - the point where it had been at rest. then it will move in the other direction. so will all people devise vernaculars that are different, because they think differently. even if you kill everyone except yourself, you will find that after a while you're not really the same person you were before. if you're not the same anymore then would you kill yourself too? should you? are these dumb questions? more importantly, why did you change? did your linguistic capacity or ability alter in some way? did your aloneness - after everyone else died - change your language? or did you just start thinking differently and let language morph accordingly? what a lot of useless questions.

we're homo sapiens...but we're not really. we're just walkers and talkers and doers and stoppers, and rhymers and singers, a thumb and four fingers. that doesn't really mean anything but neither does homo sapien. tell me i'm a homo sapien when i'm about bursting with the desire to defecate properly or reach in time the designated area for such activity, and i will not care. so where am i now? and how did i get here? it started with unrequited love and that's really all there was to it. that and laziness. or is language shaping my thoughts? am i being unduly burdened by the societal conception of the homo sapien? or am i just a human being; still in the process of being? but that's all airy nonsense isn't it? what really and truly is, is that i am - and i think - but not so much - and when i can - i try to think myself out of what i know needs to be done. i avoid knowledge as if it were out to defeat me. i don't trust knowledge. i don't trust anything. i trust myself. i fear this world and having to be, because i am very sure that i am right. and nothing matters more than to relax, discuss our options, relax some more, flick a wrist to stretch a line of colour on canvas, talk, laugh, fall in love repeatedly and never know that there is, out there, a real world, one that awaits to tear me to shreds and employ me and waste me and, when i could've spent time talking to those who interest me, buy my time and in return offer a strange sense of sterility or stability, offer an alternative life to what i had in mind. what i had in mind was a thought. it was a nice thought really. i could not express it properly in language. not poetry nor prose would have served me well, perhaps because i am not smart enough or perhaps because language isn't smart enough to shape my thought. my ideal life cannot be represented in language because it is more a feeling than anything else. my ideal life is a fiesta of the best feelings imaginable.

did i just describe my ideal life using language? no. i just hinted, somewhat. and that too might change. it might become something else. and the process of being continues. so what an odd shapeless little rant this was. there was no objective, i didn't really try to prove anything, or end up proving anything. i just said stuff and then i stopped.