Thanks to Mr John Tinniswood in Liverpool in today’s news. I can imagine myself just a bit more than halfway through. He’s 112, I’m 66. I know! I’m old enough to alter maths to suit my needs. However, it still reminds us of this limited resource of time and mortality. Even more of an affront to us, in an age where we begrudgingly accept planned obsolescence as the “American way’ as Steve Jobs put it when ‘stitching people up’ (British & Irish Term). We usually have another product we can buy or save up for; iPhone 19 or Mac OS Sierra Madre. The three score and ten may be four score and ten for some of us in the great demographic, but finitude is still the name of the…
Our subjective experience of time, the moment, all our times, all our August 26ths, ever, all our moments of bliss sewn together, categorised together, remembered together, what is it? Of course, not the first time this has been asked but, if we clearly make so much of consciousness itself, what are we conscious of? The fleeting moment has preoccupied the Greeks, Romans, Chinese and the scholars of the great religions. I know… Willian James, Proust, everyone. This ‘stuff’ out there, our experience of it. Someone dies upstairs, and someone says they’ll put the kettle on. What was her/his dying words? ‘Oh, something about she never did find that hairbrush. Oh look! There it is! If only we had found it before she cleared off. She’d have been more relaxed.
So, whether believers of a greater dimension or not, we have this limited ‘window’ to do things, lead a meaningful life, Marcus Aurelius, Lao Tzu or Virginia Woolf, all the ‘What I suggest you do is this…’
Eat healthily, jump about a lot, don’t get too het up about anything, don’t be despondent about the Palace score, be kind to people and don’t lose track of where you are with The Sky At Night and Amol’s new funny accent. Stick to Fish and Chips on Fridays, if you like. Simple. A lovely life plan, but unfortunately, not for old Dave Bartlett of Runcorn, who died on a golf course, and he wasn’t even a golfer. The footpath went through it and the golf ball smashed right into his forehead at the same time as being struck by lightning. What are the chances? Well, pretty good according to the axiom ‘stuff happens’.
The ultimate orthodoxy and tyranny is that we only have recourse to love. Of course we want to have that recourse. There’s no political solution to this emptiness, without love. Love dissolves time and hands us timelessness and infinity. Is that the ultimate self-deception that we are all prey to. In which case, consciousness is the donkey, that waits patiently for us to mount and when we get to the door of love we must dismount, hand over the donkey. The universe says, “Here be LOVE’ and we say ‘Thanks’ It’s been good getting here, but it is even better being here. Could someone feed my donkey please. He like thistles and nettles.
xD