There is more to this, to existing, than meets the eye. It is its own prerequisite and it hurts think about why or how. The only thing that hurts more is trying to make sense not existing.

But, given our circumstances, we can’t really afford to take it for granted. By a certain age, we know that death awaits, but what does it really mean, in practice?

Its not a box you can just think you way out of, but its always safe to assume there is no valid alternative to being.

So, if existence is all there is, does it even make sense for it to end? Existence may be unquestionable, but our own mortality whispers darkly that we are an illusion.

The uncertainty of it all makes us say that our mortality is what gives our lives meaning. The idea of appreciating what we have, and not wasting it or throwing it away seeking an escape from oblivion, seems noble—but it feels insane.

Life gives us many sips of oblivion; enough to prove the absence of being is not experienced.

Our existence is our only true possession, and it can be taken away at any moment. Or rather, we can be removed from it.

We know that life will go on without us, because we have experienced going on when someone in our world dies. Unlike dreamless sleep, death does not end in waking up.

Or at least, not in this world.

It should bother more, except, in my own experience—in being _me—_I don’t really exist in this world. What makes me “me” can be found only in my mind.

The only proof of my existence is the pain I experience perceiving it. I can’t deny the facts of my reality and I do my best to endure it, but I am trapped between the impossibility of my life and death.

My only hope, if there is hope for me at all, lies in what most people consider impossible.

It’s a paradox, but its one that convinces me that there must be more to existing than this.

I may never find what I need in this world but I still have to look for it.

I have entertained doubt, out of respect for the possibility that I am not be the clearest sighted, or the surest minded. I can admit that maybe I never had a chance.

But I have found answers to questions that, in spite of my doubt, confirm possibilities I have always had a promising feeling about. In pursuit of these answers, I have taken risks with my life and sanity that would have been impossible if I heeded my doubts.

That would have been the path of living death.

Though it always seemed like there was no place for me in life, my soul assured me that I had an unshakable place in existence.

Existence is shaped by the available information and it is the integrity of this information that creates the integrity of existence.

Existence can be altered and upgraded simply by positing new, more accurate and applicable models. Ironically, existence is not bound to reality.

Consciousness is more of a very coherent dream. We are the dreamers and the dream. Or as I like to think, the artists and the art.

There are many ways to pose this same idea; the thinker and the thought, has a special ring that should strike chords in anyone, simply because it is accurate, and may well be true.

Ideas like these sometimes feel unsettling, but it’s often distress that prompts people to carefully consider what dreams, art and thoughts are—if they could have such powerful implications.

We are like children, making the rules to our own games, and measuring ourselves by how well we adapt and function under these rules. But, what I think is that the rules are only a tool; a way to place context and consequence on our actions.

It suggests an odd idea.

Existence is not bound by rules, but experience is.

Existing is making one’s own rules for one’s own reasons.

In fact, rules don’t even seem like the right concept; designs, ideas, patterns… they all serve, as if seeking definition is the whole point of our existence.

There are so many paradoxical aspects to being.

Is this all the creation of something from nothing? Is this actually the distinction of something from everything? Is this the recognition of things that were always there, just unrecognized and overlooked?

Is this just self, and the expression of self? Is information just there, or is it created for the use and then discarded?

Where is the true initiative in existence; which things are side effects and which things are primary causes?

Are we decisive creatures or reactive creatures? Meaning, do we initiate, or are we initiated?

Or are we self initiating?

Have we perhaps gotten ourselves too tangled in our rules (our game), and been forced to stop and decide if we value our rules (our game) more than we value ourselves?

Or have we suddenly realized that the rules were so twisted that we were supposed to realize that they were just ideas and that we could outgrow them and live by our own?

Whatever the question, it all boils down to making a choice.

In that case, perhaps we should try to make it an informed choice.

Since we cannot count on reliable authorities for information on the mystery of existence, we will simply have to put it together ourselves as best we can. Thinking the most daring and integral thoughts, always striving for the most accuracy.

We can assume there will always be paradoxes to thwart us. Each paradox is an indication that there is more than just an idea to consider, but a condition, aspect or quality of existence.

Since the best definition of a thing is the thing itself, it is important to be able to recognize something when we encounter it or refer to it.

Since there is always more than one way to look at something, we have to look at each thing from a number of perspectives; generally the perspectives indicated by the matter in question.

To study ourselves, we have to look at ourselves from our perspective as well as that of science, philosophy, psychology, belief, and so on.

There is bound to be some perspective that has more bearing.

Now, each of these perspectives also has its way of imposing its rules, and any of these designs could be valid. The task is to decide which ones really go anywhere viable.

If an option leads to stagnation and entropy, it obviously is not a very good option.

Since the worst that could happen would be for our choice to be wrong—though there is no right or wrong—it really has more to do with application.

So, the worst that could happen is for us to think that we will choose the best, but choosing the worst out of habit or indecisiveness.

One of the things that has always bothered us is the fact that when we begin our lives there is no handbook explaining what we are and what we are supposed to be doing.

We grow up being told what other people have decided and being asked to accept other people’s opinions on what this all means.

Most often, we are conditioned to accept that the rules of the game are more important than the players.

However, any child will tell us that a game is meaningless if no one wants to play it.

Add to that the fact that any game that has pointless or insufferable rules will quickly loose the interest and support of the players, if not the players themselves.

Our game is rather interesting. The rules really suck and one of them is that we have to play or we will be denied the option of playing any game at all.

We begin the game by learning that everybody loses in the end, and the only alternative to losing the game is to lose it even quicker.

Even the best players ultimately lose.

And the very worst thing we can do is to try to change the game, its rules, or ourselves outside of what the rules allow.

The only nice aspect of this game is that we are allowed to have our own little games within it, so long as these games do not conflict with or contradict the main game itself.

But, that is just another opinion, and should be registered as such. Regardless of what game we are playing with our existence, our existence itself is there just the same.

That is what is important.

Some of us are not really playing games.

Some of us are aware that existence asks more of us than any game.

Until thinking is outlawed in this game, we have a right to be concerned with our existence and where we are going with it.

Thinking, if it ever is made against the rules, will become the sole asset of those who are forced to oppose the game; which would put those obsessed with playing games at a great disadvantage in keeping their game alive.

Even from within a situation as disadvantageous to our existence, our evolution, as such a game, there are things to learn that still apply to our evolution.

Perhaps because it is in our nature that we tend to see what we are forced to confront better than what we are not, one of the things we see in our world is pattern decay.

A living pattern that is growing is very self-maintaining. It can still become distorted, but for the most part, it doesn’t fall apart as easily as a non-living pattern.

In any structure built to house life, a certain amount of debris begins to collect as part of life that has to be confronted and dealt with constantly or it soon overwhelms the edifice and begins to choke the life out of it.

When the inhabitants of the establishment are determined and responsible to the edifice, they maintain the patterns, and it remains close to the original expression.

If the maintenance is slack, then chaos inevitable takes over.

In the mystery of existence, this is found even in the decay of transmitted signals; they have to be boosted and reinforced to carry further.

Mountains crumble, deserts spread, and rivers grow clogged with silt or pollution.

Stars grow dim or explode.

Words, ideas, games lose their meaning.

Memory fades.

Anything which once exists in a deliberate form eventually becomes random and hazy.

This is why the new replaces the old. Because the old stops being really alive. We see entropy; degeneration of the patterns that we worked so hard to establish.

Do we want this to happen to us? To humanity?

It doesn’t matter how hard we try to hold on to something; if we don’t use it, we lose it. Ourselves included.

It is impossible to hold on, but it is not impossible to go on.

To stay alive, we have to keep moving. We have to keep recreating ourselves; renewing each gesture and affectation.

The best way to keep life is to keep living life. The best way to keep living life is to keep growing.

Not literally in an organic mass; but as a constant refinement and exploration.

The organism only grows enough to achieve its temporary design of adulthood. In doing so it rushes past the marvelous condition of childhood.

As much as adulthood has the purpose of reproduction to renew the race, there are no provisions to renew the individual.

But individuals are the heart of existence.

To survive, the race has to keep replacing its heart.

An individual comes so close to really being alive. An individual holds all of the experience gained from a life, and an individual takes it all with him or her when the flesh decays.

Which is a shame.

Granted experience is in the past, but that passing experience is the seed of greater and more refined experiences to come.

Why does all our sophistication have to die? Especially when sophistication is what our world needs to really grow; what our race needs to grow.

Death has a place in the design, along with destruction and decay. These are all expressions of change, and existence needs change.

The problem is, death is a meaningless end.

It is illogical for existence to end in death. I shouldn’t have to convince anyone. The answers, and the questions, are all there.

It’s my life. It’s your life.

I have to live mine, and you have to live yours.

Some day we will have a world worth living in, even if we have to create it from scratch.