How Sweet it Would Be

Louis relaxing, 2019

Do you ever find yourself swimming through a pool of memories so intense that you are reliving the emotions intensely, yet so dynamically differently because of the insights and experiences you've had since the event originally took place?

Being a human is probably the worst. The amount of reasoning we have ruins our every experience through the complications of emotions. We don't act upon instinct. We have the potential to analyze every aspect of every last detail of our experiences, to the point that we can discover that atoms behave differently than large physical objects and become perplexed by how it is so different that it makes our entire understanding of the physical properties of life fall apart (quantum mechanics vs general relativity).

And one of the worst aspects of being alive is that we aren't gifted the ability of understanding until we are exposed to whatever it is. We create mathematics to understand the world around us in a universal way of explanation, but then we have to teach it to people who otherwise would have absolutely no concept of mathematics at all in order for them to better understand the world around them. Then it becomes a matter of how far down that rabbit hole you want to go with it, because that rabbit hole is infinite.

And then human emotion kicks in. We have all experienced the great deal of anxiety of not knowing something we needed to know and having to test our resolve in how quickly we could pick up the understanding we needed for the situation. Ever been on a roller coaster and experienced the adrenaline kick? That is your body in fight or flight mode trying to make sense of something out of your control. That is a fun example. A significantly less fun example is when you're starting a new job and stressing the fuck out about everything you could do wrong, whether or not you'll be fired within your first ninety days, or whether the new company you chose to work for is going to treat you well. The sleepless nights of regretting your decision to join hypothetical company are even worse.

I often times wonder what it would be like if I were to have been born a dog, or a bird, or a leopard, or a shark, or any number of other animals - really, any other animal. Obviously that would be impossible, as best we know their thought processes aren't nearly as sophisticated as humans, so the existential dilemma of pondering such a question wouldn't even be a feasible concept in, say, an ant for example. But there is also an element of simplicity to the perceived lack of existentialism within all the other species on Earth.

Of course, we can't actually know whether or not the cat that sifts through the alleyways at night in search of its next meal has the same level of complex thoughts as humans, but it does seem as though it would be a safe bet. And within that conceptualization, I think it would be a far better life to not be encumbered by such weight as to be able to examine your own existence. How nice it must be to wake up and just exist. To wake up and have your main concern be food, and then to just enjoy tummy rubs from your owner when you get them, demanding their attention if you so please it.

But alas, the curse of existentialism - the weight of anxiety - was something I was born with. To face the world in all of the weight I can see, and understanding that due to the way humanity's greed has led us down a path of extremely devaluing the human experience in favor of stepping upon those possible for a better life for the self, as opposed to the whole - well, all that is left is the depression that stems from it.

Perhaps humanity will one day learn to live more like the other animals of the world, or perhaps we will learn to value the experiences we have outside of working ourselves to death, or acquiring as much nonsensical things as possible. At least there is already subsets of people who are utilizing the resources they have to just experience more.

-Dustin S. Stover