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Sideways Eights

A 20 Year Old's Thoughts

By Jacob SchleienPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
2
By Jacob Schleien

When I first sat down at my little black school desk with my unnecessary dual monitors and overpowered computer, it was Friday morning. I had just gotten my hair cut from the messy mop of brown it was and felt great. I open my windows and invite the sun into my bedroom. I turn on Johnny Cash in the background like my normal writing routine. I hate country, but something about Johnny Cash hits a chord with me. Maybe in a past life I favored the patriarchy a lot more. I never really examine my life too much. I’ve become preoccupied with the Towers falling, one of our country’s worst recessions, a pandemic, and terrorists attacking my country’s capitol.

That was until I would realize the difficulty of the tasks in front me and the meditative journey in my brain that I was to embark on. To write about something personal and meaningful that has both occurred in my life and compares to the events of those around me? It reminds me of the bubble that I live in. In my almost twenty-one years of life, I’ve done nothing but live the life of a privileged white male. I have not had to struggle for much physically, and I have never had to worry where my next meal will come from. I guess not having to worry about all that gives me time to forge my own struggles, mentally. This ironic tragedy of privilege makes me feel like a villain and these thoughts sadden me. Thus, I sit at my little black desk and notebook. I unsheathe my pen to cut through the forestry of my depressed thoughts.

I doodle on the pages of my notebook with my pen, often not knowing what I am drawing and just produce lines and curves until I’m content that it looks like something. It is what I imagine two people in love do on a sunny day sprinkled with clouds as they sit on their checkered blanket with their woven basket filled with breads and wine. Psychiatrists also use a similar tactic to this with the Rorschach tests to evaluate a patient’s mental health and perception.

I continue to attempt running through all my life events and doodle until I find an answer to my questions and maybe even problems. The only thoughts I can think to myself are how loud the gardener across the street is cutting grass, how beautiful the weather is, and that I should not go on a picnic date with a psychiatrist. I try desperately to not get distracted by the gardener and dive into my journal, but I cannot stop watching him and dreaming of being out there. I think I envy him.

He seems so happy with life as he smells the fresh cut grass while his earbuds play his favorite tunes, and his head bobs up and down. He works intently with a blissful ignorance to my set of eyes watching him through my bedroom window. I know that I will never be able to be a gardener like him though. As my eyes follow his enormous green hat that protects him from the rays of sun, I can’t help but sigh. I can’t help but think that I am so similar to this gardener. Our DNA is practically the same, just like every other human on the planet. Yet, I feel this version of my consciousness, sitting at my tiny black desk with a journal in front of me, is not ever going to be a gardener. I am watching him make these turns with his exhausted lawnmower. He makes these peculiar figure eights with his lawnmower, like he has no formulated plan for cutting grass the fastest. I do not think he cares how fast he finishes. I feel my pen hit my notebook. I feel the landscape of my mind change from a unified, gear-turning, industrialized, steampunk-like engine designed by a master architect in to a free-flowing river, sparkling in the sun, foaming from the rush of water that barrels down the body of water. My pen makes a curve like the curve he makes with his lawnmower. Soon my curve becomes a small, sideways eight in my journal. Soon, I feel we have more than DNA in common. My youthful epiphany begins.

The pen just keeps circling and circling the paper in the same figure eight. “This can literally go on forever.” I think to myself as I deplete the pen of ink and feel my hand begin cramp.

I have never sat down and just speculated exactly what entails the idea of infinity prior to this. It is something otherworldly and follows no societal norms but is also all around us in every single atomic particle. It’s beauty and vastness cannot be observed let alone comprehended by us. Infinity is not a number like most think. If merely one thing in our reality or another reality is truly infinite; then quite literally everything must be infinite. Infinite would encompass God, you, me, and my dog. It gets to be whatever or whomever it wants.

I look at the figure eights in my journal. They have become thick and bloody with blue ink. I cannot tell where the symbol starts and ends, perhaps this is why we use this sideways eight figure to represent infinity. My mind has calmed down from the rush of thoughts now. Infinity makes me realize the vastness of everything and insignificance of it all. Insignificant in a good way.

I find that the remedy to my stress is believing the universe is infinite. The thought that there are infinite versions out there of myself in some reality that never wrote this paper or even had to think about writing it. They dropped out of school and started a business and just made a million dollars. I am comforted knowing that there are infinite versions of me in our infinite universe that were not handed all this privilege at birth. Instead, they are homeless and hungry but last night they decided enough is enough and will become more like the one of the versions of me that becomes the President by age forty. I think of the version of myself that is living out this gardener’s life.

I have drawn probably ten infinity symbols on my paper now, each one thicker than the last and taking up more real estate on each page. I cannot help but love the way it feels. I turn my music up as I indulge in this sudden euphoria. To just be able to put the pen down on paper and never have to lift it up. It seems that the gardener’s presence has lost its precedence over the thoughts of me living out his life in another part of our infinite universe. Rather than feeling smaller, I am empowered. There are limitless versions of myself after all. Limitless successes and limitless failures that I am completely unaware yet capable of. With my new acknowledgement of infinity, I have found that my thoughts are far louder and more powerful than any noise a machine could produce.

In my volatile delirium, I wonder if I am crazy for thinking all of this; then I remember that the vast majority of society’s well-cogged machine accepts an omnipotent God but fails to acknowledge that in order to have all power and knowledge, you would have to have absolutely no power and knowledge simultaneously. Just like my sideways eight, Omnipotence does not have an ending point or starting point, to be omnipotent one would have to be the entire eight, not just on a point of it.

I find myself back to my paper and more in my body and mind. My chair has become warm where I sit, but I could think about this until my seat catches fire. I could spend eternity sitting in fire thinking about this. Maybe I will. I am staring at all these doodles of sideways eights wondering how I got to this controversial conversation in my brain. I begin to ask myself so many questions of why and how I got here. Am I scared to say this out loud for I might sound crazy or even evil to members of society who confidently believe they know more and are approaching the concept of God pragmatically? Would they simply let the unjust be unjust? The filthy be filthy still?

My sideways eights act as an escape from the hegemony. It feels incredibly independent to think a thought against what I have been taught. Humanity was a child looking for a single needle in a haystack at a pumpkin patch. Everyone was competing to find it first. There was a time when we looked tirelessly for the single needle like it was water to quench our thirst. Finally, a child claimed to find the needle. No one questioned it. They believed the child. Little does humanity know that child brought his own needle to the pumpkin patch because there is an infinite number of needles.

When I first got up from my desk, I did not realize I possessed the materials to change my outlook on life and enter a meditative state. I have spent more than half my twenty-plus years pledging allegiance to a flag every single morning, falling into lines at recess, and never questioning the bias of my textbooks and teachers. I am reminded of this bubble of ideologies. It is innate for us to follow and not stray from the beaten path, but why beat the ones who do?

My legs and brain need to stretch after catching this train of thought. I step outside to my backyard. I am instantly greeted by my two tiny dogs and the sun a million miles away. I look up at the blue sky, the gardener and his lawnmower’s buzz in the distance. As I inhale and exhale the universe around me, the thought still lingers if there is ever an end to the sky. Is it infinite; am I?

humanity
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About the Creator

Jacob Schleien

College Student

My mom likes to write to this sometimes too, anything written by her will be signed "Tara Schleien"

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