Scratches in a notebook.

Life could be good. It could be wonderful - literally, full of wonder. Endless expanses of new territories that recede into infinity but thrill all along the way, a heaven of the mind and body without the bugaboo of boredom. A kind of endless regression into the small and out to the large, into the mind and out to other worlds.

Or it could be a hell with no escape. Time could be an illusion and science may discover everything important and it turns out that all there is, all of reality, is just some kind of unsatisfyingly boring, lame mathematical contraption with its tiresome beauties and singularities, but no further frontiers to explore and conquer. It's left to the accountants to tidy up all the middling details.

Who or what determines reality? I can make myself feel really good sometimes, make things go just my way, have a great morning or evening and realize it may not be impossible to sustain this attitude forever, with discipline and a new attitude toward everything. All the self-help books, the cores of all religions, the competent shrinks, they all say the same thing: Happiness is in the Now, and you only have to let go and process one tiny moment at a time, and you will swell with grace and satisfaction and be relived from the burden of a higher mind that creates the illusion of dissatisfaction and suffering.

But some people remain shackled their entire lives in misery. It's a comfort to them, actually; a routine they've adopted to evade the chaotic hells that throb all around them, waiting to smash their pretend confidence to pieces, reduce them to a sniveling infant curled into a ball. They fear rolling down a hill that never ends. And as they hide the shadows grow longer and more empty, and the thing which waits for them outside the closet door gets ever more ghastly.

But I repeat: Who determines which people find the golden path, delight in the easy sunshine that is there for the taking, and which opt for the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head or the Golden Gate Bridge? Which fall somewhere in between, perhaps not even aware of the existence of either extreme? What being made us, and if everything evolved from simple beginnings and there truly is no God, no Answer, then what sense does any of it make and why does it exist and express itself?

Maybe it is like an infant child, born fussy and curious, chaotic and beautiful. Then it develops complexity, fooling the laws of thermodynamics with a trump card: natural selection. As it ages, it becomes further and further refined, like a crystal or a fern. It never reaches an end to its complexity, and never diminishes in its ingenuity to envision and make real new horizons. Or, just maybe, it hits a wall, and remains alone, a baby lost in the woods, crying, insane. Maybe life ends here and then there is nothing.

I have a general idea of what leads to my physiological "upness" or "downness" on a day to day basis. I take my meds, get a little exercise, think positively about myself and the day unfolding, and I can be pretty sure I will not meet Satan that day, or if he tries to drip his honey in my ear, I will laugh and expediently dismiss him as the phantom he is, replacing his seductive laziness with positive affirmations and recommitment to strength of character.

Or if I don't take my meds, or I take too much of something I shouldn't, or drink too much, and I lunge for a moment with God, to try to experience a ribbon slice of his ecstatic and eternal continuity, to taste just for an instant what that must be like, I always fail. I fail because I was fooled into thinking our tiny minds could grasp the magnitude and character of that magisterium when it has surely evolved for other reasons. I fail because I expect an outside agent to deliver to me that which I have not earned through hard work - through reciprocation.

Is reality something that's there all the time, and our minds just dance around it, perceiving it in different bands of its spectrum and calling our experiences moods, disorders, or revelations, or do we create reality with our neural nets and face a creation that is barbaric or angelic, depending on our temperaments? Are we "brains in vats" in some way, writing out our own story as we go along, truly possessing Free Will but not bodily reality (whatever that may mean)?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions but I find the asymmetry of creatures of all ilk to prefer order, predictability, and security over random change and overly-gambling moods compelling. This is somewhat like all life on earth being "left-handed," as it were, on the molecular level (it is). In the end, it just is that way so far as we can tell with all our reason, and this seems good enough to me. After all, if perfection in the form of absolute symmetry and regression at all scales were the true character of the universe, then nothing would ever move. No chemical reactions take place. No blogs updated. To a perfectionist it is hard to "go left instead of right" without having a reason, or balancing it out in some other way, but I would rather fight on and carve out this existence than give in to an impulse which makes my heart cold to even contemplate.

I cannot justify this logically. But I can feel something within me wanting to survive. It's just my genes, to be sure, but in the end we always face that question of questions: Why something rather than nothing? Nature chose (or didn't have the option not to choose) to manifest itself; who am I to disobey its mandates: multiply, complexify, adapt, and repeat. Until.... who knows.

Maybe we are building a God instead of him having made us. Maybe we've gotten it wrong all these years. But I will try to create some beauty in the world as long as I can keep my biology working properly. If that fails me and life becomes too much of a burden, I'll calmly descend the elevator, hand over my keys at the desk, and check out. But for now, things seem ok. Happy Christmas to those who celebrate. Peace be to everyone.

-Justin