Now I am become light, giver of hope

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf-ra904rrw

So I was watching Donnie Darko recently, and I feel like talking about this quote. For those of you who haven't seen this movie, I'd highly recommend it. The above quote is one of my favorite quotes of all time (though I wish I could have found the director's cut version, I like the way he says it better there).

So moving on, I'm not going to be talking about what the quote means, that's not what this blog is about. Instead, what I'm going to do is talk about what the quote makes me feel/think about.

So now that we have the premise of this post set, let's get started.

What does the quote make me feel? It makes me ask myself who I am. What am I?

What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets (hehe, kudos if you got that reference).

But seriously, what are people? Does flesh and blood separate us from unity? Think about it. If we had no physical form, would we be interconnected?

Whoa hang on, I think I'm falling head-first into some Buddhist philosophies right now. Hmm... why the hell not?

So for those of you who don't know much about Buddhism, they hold this philosophy of emptiness, that nothing really exists. There's the conventional truth, and the absolute truth. We refer to each other as people as a convention, but ultimately, we are nothing. All is one, one is all, and then there is no one. It's a tad confusing, but we can apply it to this situation:

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?"

Man only exists conventionally... so why are wearing these costumes? Are we afraid to become one and the same? Are we afraid of exposing our true selves? Are we really man at all?

Is individuality really that important to us? What if individuality is like a survival mechanism? Or maybe, without it, we'd adopt a hive mentality... Then what does that say about other cultures who have low tolerances for individualism? Are they the equivalent to a million shades of grey on an ordinary canvas?

Well obviously those cultures don't act like a hive, and they still survive with restrained individuality. But I don't think we can draw any conclusions from that viewpoint. What if those people secretly long for uniqueness? Or what if we as people can hold onto even the tiniest shreds of individuality to ensure our existence?

Let's think about this. What do you think would happen in the hypothetical situation that nobody had anything unique about them? Everyone would be exactly the same, with no leaders to control them. All is one, one is all. Is that Nirvana?

I think I'm starting to get a little too broad with this topic, and I'd like to bring it back into scope. So why do I hide behind my mask? To look at it from a different angle, I tried to imagine myself in the scene I posted (because it's fun to put yourself in complicated situations). What did I feel when he asked me the question? I felt like he turned the world on my head. He was right, and I had been thinking about everything the wrong way up until this point. I wear a mask, but it's futile.

Actually, it reminded me of this short period of my childhood where I would speak in different voices all the time. I did it so frequently that I actually forgot what my original voice sounded like. Isn't that strange? Maybe I'm not afraid of who I am, but perhaps I have only forgotten? Could I have really forgotten something like that? In a previous post I said that I'm going to let my future define me rather than my past. In that case, how could I forget who I am if I won't be aware of it until the future is now?

This is getting complicated.

Well hang on a sec, let's use some literary techniques to figure this out. I said "maybe I forgot who I am" forgot is past tense, am is present tense. But if I talk about the future, I'd have to say "maybe I will forget who I am". That seems entirely plausible. I've forgotten who I was in the past, who is to say it won't happen again?

Let's touch base on the fear issue from this perspective. Instead of, "maybe I'm afraid of who I am", what if I said, "maybe I will be afraid of who I am". This future tense could be used in two ways:

1) At some point in the future, I will become afraid of who I was in the past.

2) I am afraid of who I will become in the future.

The first viewpoint is a little less interesting I think. In the future I could realize that I had been looking at life completely wrong in the past, in a way that I could find to be morally unacceptable. It's not so difficult to understand. It's the second viewpoint that I find intriguing.

What the second view would mean is that presently I am afraid of who I will become, which would imply that I am cognizant of the future. How is that even possible? Maybe it's a sixth sense, if you will. Maybe everyone has it. Wouldn't it be fascinating if everyone was aware of their future to some degree? What if we subconsciously know our futures, but our human costumes prevent us from seeing it?

Would that be a good or a bad thing? If we could all see the future, how would we act? Would knowing what events would occur ahead of time would make us more logical about life? If this were so, would we lose our individuality? Would we slowly start to act as one in the same?

I love how these thought patterns turn out sometimes; there's just so many things to think about, so many possibilities.

I'm going to leave it at that for now. I might touch upon this again at some future date, but for now I'm going to give it a rest.

So, now that you've read through my wild tangent, how's about I ask you a Q?

Given the choice to see the future, would you? If you could see the future, would you still retain your emotions if you knew everything that would happen ahead of time?

I'm not so sure I know about this myself. My best guess would be to make a reference to Jon from the Watchmen, but I'll leave that up to you guys.

Stay frosty.