An Extraordinary Life

"Every Breath You Take" is the name of a song, but it could be a poem, a recitation, or the beginning of a letter.

Say we have to do an exercise about it. Who decides what to write? Is it us, the brain cells, or the neurotransmitters in the brain?

Is consciousness free will? Where does creativity come from? Some people say it's a gift from God, but nobody knows, not even science. Why? Because there is no proof of beyond-reality consciousness. There is no evidence of it one way or another.

The most fantastic things that have happened or are happening on this planet cannot be explained; there are not enough scientific papers or studies for it. It’s the ultimate WIP (work in progress).

We lack the tools to verify the greatest mysteries, which, in and of itself, are marvelous.

We don't know anything. The more you think you know, the more you realize it is an exercise in arrogance. We're simple people; we're not that complicated. We make things complicated because of our unnecessary dramas and the chaos in our minds.

Almost every thinker would agree that what we have tried so far has only worked for a handful of people.

We should be evolving by now; we had all the tools we needed to be almost super magic beings, but they ruined everything because of profits and greed.

Here, we have these questions, which are essentially existential ones. Who are we, what are we doing here, and where do we come from?

What makes us what we are, what determines what we do, and who decides our actions or behaviors?

Why do we do what we do? Why do we lack direction? Why is there so much confusion? If we had all the secrets in the past; who took them away, and why did that happen.?

We have been complaining for the longest time about the situation that we find ourselves in the world we're living in. We have been pointing our fingers at someone else or something else, blaming anybody and everybody but ourselves, never ourselves. Have we done everything right, or have we missed the bus?

Or are we as guilty as the next person? We can be going on forever (we have) telling or asking other people to do OUR job.

We are not exempt from blame. We, as parents, need help understanding our children. How can we not be if we have been told nothing but lies, or worse, excuses all our lives?

We have no idea how to guide them properly, so we let a deplorable school system do it for us. It’s easy. We are off our responsibilities.

So the kids will do what they’ve always done. It’s not about not enough tech toys, not enough time online, or anything else they might be throwing tantrums about.

It’s the lack of creativity, the fundamental neglect we subject them to, and the lack of parental care.

Video games. That’s how they escape us. Dangerous liaisons with the wrong crowd. To keep us away from them. It’s a loud, “Leave me ALONE!”. Anyone who’s a parent has heard it. Believe it or not, it might be satisfying for them to say it, yell it, even, but it’s a cry for help instead. Why aren’t we listening?

We’re blaming others for our own problems, and that's all we seem to have in this world today. Problems that you’d think after at least 30,000 + years of recorded evolution we would have figured out.

And we keep on reproducing, babies are having babies, causing another set of problems that we are not prepared at all to confront, much less, solve.

Keep on going like just another day under the sun coming like everything is all right is pure denial. We can get out of this situation if we try a little harder. But we need help. Help from our so-called leaders and the institutions that were created for that purpose only. Help society advance. Help parents cope with a new reality brought by a new world they never had themselves. Letting go of pettiness, denial, “not my problem” syndrome. It’s your problem if you breathe the air everyone else does. It’s yours as well if you live on this planet.

Because at this point, we know it's not all right. We know it is backward, inside out, upside down and sideways, but it is not normal. We must stop acting like it is because there’s still “Monday Night Football” or midweek “Dancing with the Stars”.

Whatever happened to wisdom? whatever happened to common sense? Where did it go? Take a look at other societies, aboriginals for example, and you’ll notice they have a profound respect for nature and a deep understanding of life itself.

Not us. We have been manipulated not to. We’ve been brainwashed into believing that more, bigger and faster is better.

Buy, buy, and then buy some more. These holidays are the perfect example of such excess. It’s corporation time. It’s sales, discounts, coupons, and bonuses. That’s their game, and we’ve been doing it for so long, we’ve forgotten what it is not to fall for it.

After all, it's the norm.

Because of those norms that we follow, we find ourselves in a world like this.

Our offspring will continue doing exactly the same thing we're doing, since that is what we are teaching them, and that’s what they see their friends doing. Round and round in a circle comes the game they want us to play. The “have and have nots” are like in feudal times or a caste system. No difference. We just don’t use titles, like Count, Baron, Marques.

On top of it all, we still have to pay taxes to keep this imaginary, fantastic economy going. And to pay for all the wars we create for that very purpose.

We feel impotent because we can't do anything about it and because we cannot change the way things are. So, the excuse always at the ready is: “It’s always been this way.” That is the perfect example of a misnomer. Firstly, folks who live in the impoverished far East, can’t comprehend how 40% of food goes to waste in the capitals of the West.

Same concept goes for the Global South, as well as in Africa.

We had all the wisdom that we needed back in the 6th Century BC, 6th. Ancient texts with so much knowledge within their pages, should be studied in every classroom when the level is right. That was, in many scholars’ opinion, the true age of enlightenment. History will tell you we had supreme existential questions revealed even before that time.

Over 3,000 years ago, what have we learned? We wake up tomorrow and we'll do exactly the same thing we did today. We follow the rhythm imposed, we follow the grain.

Even art has been desecrated. We appreciate and honor a fiat value declared by someone in the stock market. NFT is the new art currency. It may as well be a hologram. Billion dollars transactions made on a digital image without a real creator. That has become our new creativity.

AI is the new arist-a-la-mode.

We don’t even stop to consider the foolishness of staying in debt for the best years of our lives just to pay back a college loan. We followed what everyone else has done since who knows when. We just hope and pray that our lives ameliorate because of it. But then, in case it does, we start comparing lifestyles and spending beyond our means with a car we can’t afford or a house that is incredibly expensive. Even so, we still have that old debt on our shoulders.

And yet, we still follow the crowd; we still go with the flow without even considering the folly of applying that to our way of life.

Isn’t it time we reflect on our condition and try to find a better way? This one hasn’t worked for the longest and will not magically start working now.

Why is the most profitable entertainment about? Violent movies or violent video games? Blockbusters that people can’t wait to see and make lines around the block to purchase a ticket. We happily take our children to watch them.

We can do better than that. Every day is one less day in this extraordinary life we have been given.

But if we follow what advertising says to follow, we fall for their trap and call that a life. It is not; it has never been. It has always been a lie.

It’s up to every single one of us to evolve accordingly.

In this upcoming New Year...

Can we give it a try?