I’ve changed. I used to really value partnered companionship. I opened up my heart and got hurt in the wake of change. For years my last relationship was a healthy interdependency, respecting each other’s space yet sharing a life. Whatever shape it took, I liked the concept of partnership, living together. Building a life together… but now I’m changed.
I had a date last night, a great night. We went to a show with amazing performers, visuals, sound design, light design. We took a psychonaut journey with great emotional and physical connection. My brain dove deep internally. I was wired all night. She fell asleep and stole all the blankets, all night. I tried to fall asleep but my brain activity was dialed up to 11. I went into my office instead and tossed and turned on the guest bed, captive to my thoughts. I took a mental step back, gazing upon my existence from an outside perspective. Images flashed through my mind for minutes, hours.
“The Fantastic Mr. Fox” stepped into my mind. Foxes and badgers and other animals acting out some story written by a human, and yet really how different are those stories from our own existence? When viewing this from a god perspective, a cosmic perspective, we are just bit players acting out a localized story, having small ripple effects out into the world but largely self-contained.
Suddenly I’m imagining some sci-fi movie where we watch a protagonist moving through a city. We are seeing their story yet all the extras also have their own stories. Maybe they live one or two blocks over, maybe they’re out of sight down the street, doing their thing, making their art, doing their work, honing their crafts. Their story doesn’t even register in the movie outside of their own life.
Then it’s a childhood memory, watching “Tales from the Riverbank” starring Hammy Hamster, GP, Roderick the water rat… rodents, organic beings, acting out a story, having tea, going into the diving bell to explore the river, living their lives, their moments, with no cosmic purpose. We watch them, doing their little things. Had it even been real it wouldn’t have affected us, their localized experiences. That tiny pocket of matter and synapses was just doing its own thing.
Next my thoughts jump to my dogs: one is chill and one is up in your face always seeking attention, and I’m noticing how the anxious one gets more attention, even if it’s just in me keeping her at bay. And in a parallel train of thought I remember the troubled kid in grade school, acting out, getting the attention. The good kids played their part, staying the course, but not standing out so much that they got much attention at all. We have greater language skills and opposable thumbs but in that thought, that moment, we are not that dissimilar from my dogs.
My mind cuts to an imaginary cartoon alien world. There’s a squidgy creature standing about two and a half feet tall. Legs about 6 inches long with big awkward feet. Tiny arms with tiny hands. Weird antenna things coming off its head, except they’re more like flesh-covered cranial bone stalagmites. It’s not wearing any clothes, sort of just a blob with a couple pointy head-horn-something-somethings. It has either one eyeball or two, maybe a small mouth and some kind of protruding expunging orifice on the right side of its “oh, let’s call it a face”. And it’s making art. Or it’s a trade-being, a trades-blob if you will. It’s immersed in its own life, and maybe it’s one street over from the storyline of main protagonist in that world, and nothing about it matters outside of its own world, or its immediate surroundings. Maybe there’s not even a protagonist in that story, it’s simply there. It lives it’s life, a brain stem with neural responders, sensations triggered by physical stimuli. Feelings of sadness or ecstasy coursing through its nervous system not unlike our own… but that’s it. It’s just a chemical and physical response system, seeking pleasure stimuli and going through the motions. There is no God, there are only brain triggers responding to chemical and physical reactions; a nervous system wrapped up in a blobby meat suit with no greater purpose.
And how are we different from all of that? Some human brains have conceived of some higher power, some God. There’s no actual evidence for that, and many others reject that notion completely. We are also the same, chemical and physical reactions triggering sensations in a nervous system. A floating brain driving a brain-bucket and body. What does it matter what triggers these stimuli? What difference does it matter what meat-suit we, or others, wear, or what pushes the good buttons?
So yeah, I was married and we shared a home, a house, a life. We had separate offices, separate bedrooms. We had shared moments that were good. It was a pretty good life. She asked for polyamory shortly after we got married and I wasn’t looking for that. I forced myself into that world, that thought-bubble, to at least explore it because I hadn’t tried it before. Her discovered-wants kept getting farther from what I wanted but I kept working it. In the end I even warmed up to all of those notions but it was too late, we had drifted from each other too much. It kind of sucks, but I got there. Now, for better or worse, I have a new perspective. I wish the pace had been a bit different for us and I sincerely think we could have made it.
At this point I don’t think I want 24/7 partnership anymore. I don’t really care where the chemical or physical sensations come from to stimulate someone’s life, emotions, reactions. Although sometimes I do feel FOMO, I don’t have jealousy about “people I care about” having positive experiences with or from others. And now as I engage the world, I’m looking at what I want or need. I need more space than I previously needed, I’m choosing intentional autonomy. I both want and need humans in my life but in smaller amounts than “always”. I want a solid social circle. I want an adventure partner or two or three that I see once or twice a week, friends, artistic co-creators. I do miss having a “my person” but I don’t even know how that would play out for me right now. I thought I had one, the arrangement that we had was pretty good and I think served both of us well. We changed, we grew. One topic changed that for us and we even both grew in that, but at different rates.
“Everything, everywhere, all at once”, I watched it again yesterday. Life choices, paths created, some diverging… one small choice might have resulted in a “Happily Ever After” story. It’s hard imagining what might have been with a little more patience, but the now is the now and I move always forward. What might have been doesn’t matter. We don’t have parallel-universe-communicators and the life we have is what we’ve got. Reflect, react, choose, and move forward.
As I stare into the colorful and geometric void I keep returning to the age-old question, one examined over and again with fallen ego: what meaning does life have? These days I don’t think there is one. I don’t think there is a God. I think we have somehow developed bodies and minds that react and respond well to other bodies and minds mechanically. We feel something we call spirituality but is it of our own construct? How do we know if there is something more? Does it matter if we have a long life or only if we have a good life? The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long. Find the good buttons and push them as you can.
Although Douglas Adams apparently just picked the number 42 in his books because he thought it sounded right, some people have read into it another way. Coincidentally, in computers the ASCII character 42 is an asterisk. When searching computer file names an asterisk is a wild card, it can match anything. What is the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? Some people say 42 means whatever you want it to mean. Whether he intended that or not I kind of like it. Make your life what you want it be.
No God? No greater purpose? That could be disheartening, or it could be freedom. I don’t fear death, I fear hesitancy. I fear opportunities missed or lost. I’ve changed. Jack is dead, long live Jack.