TRANSMISSION 46

Opportunities Are Everything

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

“Stuck in a dark tunnel packed with train tracks in all directions, we know the rumbling trains of death can come along on any track at any time. Do we surrender to the illusory comfort of conceding that we don’t know where or when the trains will come? Do we surrender to the unnerving havoc to rest our jaded minds for a while on one of the tracks? Or do we scientifically probe for questions and answers¿ strategically hopping between tracks to stay alive as long as possible. To stop moving and exploring is to invite death upon our domain. It doesn’t care how tired we get or how many ideas we run out of; it is always there.”

We find ourselves subjects of the ultimate persistence hunt: death (the only thing tireless enough to keep chasing) and life (the only thing bent on running away from fate). In a very real literal and figurative sense, if we stop moving, we will be caught. Once death catches us, there is no escape; there is no claiming the souls of the fallen; there is no lost and found that deep down in the abyss. Intrinsically, through time, we have come to realize that we are the ultimate persistence runners. So long as we’ve had the will, we have held the power to indefinitely outrun entropy (if only just), to keep death at the fringes. The fringes of our existence is the best distance we’ve ever managed to put between us and death, and therein lies the danger of the fringes. At the same time, to lie within the safety away from the fringes for too long incites a slower creeping death from the angle of stagnation; so we’ve had to be watchful.

It was usually possible to see the slow clamber of death in the slew of bodies it consumed along its trawl toward us. The lucky ones pivoted their strategy and relocated. The unfortunate ones were blind to it. But there was an intriguing third type of person who decided their ride had been long enough and it was time to give up on their overarching life journey. They didn’t simply wait for death to catch them. No, that would take far too long; any additional moment would be a moment too long; it would drive such a resigned mind mad. Instead, they turned and dove straight toward death, most of the time pouncing right into its gaping mouth (to reclaim some sense of agency). Rarely, they would miss (sometimes on purpose, sometimes not). Occasionally, such a near miss would perform an instant realignment of their perception of reality (a mental gravity slingshot) to the extent they might decide it was worth it to run away from death again. It happened more than I would have thought, but the realignment also usually wore off faster than we would have hoped.

Death was not something we could ever mentally escape; it was always looming in the corners of everything we did, no matter how hard we might have tried to hide it. In fact, trying to hide it only made us ignorant to it, somehow a fate worse in many of our minds than simply diving into death. So the more truths we tackled, the more inductively we unearthed the resolve to stare down the ominous winds of death: the specters of projection that cannot do anything but reflect our insecurities and inadequacies back at ourselves.

There is no greater adversary than ourselves; you cannot beat yourself; it would be paradoxical to try, yet many did. The fight against death very directly presented us life forms with this opportunity of locking in duel with ourselves for the duration of our existences. For some, that battle was understimulating, pushed out of thought in favor of more comfortable illusory modes of existence. For some, that battle was an overwhelmingly voided experience, imagined as a futile fight to find meaning beyond the self in any amount of the uncaring objective reality. For some, that battle was an overwhelming provocation into a phantom sense of meaning, imagined as a stubborn fight against an opponent who cannot be bested: the self. And for few, that battle fell on the edge between understimulating and overwhelming, imagined as the key to inciting our curiosity toward the pillars of our survival (more nuancedly: the conflict was conceived as the cardinal crux to the contextual creation of our cautious curiosity concerning the cornerstones of our corporeal continuation).

Survival and opportunities are interchangeable; nonliving matter has but one destiny trajectory. Death affords no opportunities. Our survival in life was linked to the amount of meaningful opportunities we had been able to identify and craft for ourselves. The opportunity space we selected from was (and still is) vaster than any of us could have ever imagined, even if trimmed down to the meaningful opportunity space. Through our understanding of reality, we curated our opportunities to nudge our destinies toward the trajectories of more meaningful opportunities, and thus, more survival.

Staying alive has been both a physical and mental discipline. In time, all things fall. In an otherwise “perfect” existence, all it takes is a moment of “imperfection” for death to take hold and rip through our beings. There is no escape from the endless march of our lives, the march we called dying; it was really living we were after. We all knew as much inherently, but it was an important idea to note and explore at a higher conceptual level than our once-biologically-programmed instincts. In the eyes of our reality here, to exist was a privilege, not a right. We couldn’t afford to lose sight of this and fall into the temptations of alternatives that would trap us in no-win situations. Semi-perpetuity only came to the few resolute vanguards who said no to all such alternatives.

Only in death are we freed of the injustices of life. Only in life are we freed of the inopportunity of death. Only in death do we escape the frustration of self reference and subjective meaning. Only in life can we attribute any meanings. Only in death is there conclusion. Only in life is there anything at all. Only in life can we find the opportunities to evade death. Only in life must we live with the dichotomy of acknowledging the throes of death’s onlooking presence while having no choice but to somehow tread forth undaunted to seize the opportunities that define our very state of being alive.

Don’t be scared; try as we might to be prepared, in the end we’ll not be spared. Left ’till death, bound in life, we are born to slowly die. Dressed to code, we fight unknowns, facing those blistering skies alone. Write the ways, right this way; will determinism be our fate? Don’t be scared; our minds grow near; the end is where we end my dear. There is no you beyond the end; the nothingness is void of fear. And should the end request us guests, we’ll fill that darkened ball, requited for our lifely ways in this path we trailblaze, our minds unwillingly center-staged for the final fall. You’ve been nothing before; you’ll be it again: the endless abyss of death’s final kiss. Don’t be scared; our minds won’t fall; the end meaning is won through all. Our lives on par, with a reservoir of journeys marred and a repertoire of visions charred, the dreams we hold cannot be jarred from our weary grips insofar that we ever lose sight of our, by far, singularly human scars. But we all yield to entropy in the end, relentlessly rupturing our impermanent sends. Only in death do we find absolution. Yet only in life is there any resolution. Don’t be scared; our time was fun; the end’s the end, for all, for one.

Even though the living have not known inexistence intimately, the anthropomorphized nothingness expounds its dreams through us into reality. Existence chips away at the conceptual possibility space of everything in all manifestations, never making any significant amount of a dent in the endless things that will never be, but still enacting a wondrous superabundance of things lucky enough to have found their way into existence. For me, it is not so much the things that exist which haunt me, but the things that don’t exist which possess my dreams and nightmares equally. And while I can’t really speak for the inexistence, I imagine it might go something like this:

The opportunity cost of pursuing our opportunity destiny board was time. On the flip side, the reward for pursuing meaningful opportunities was also time. As long as we adequately balance the equation, we got to keep surviving. But how should we measure such opportunity costs? What exactly did we afford ourselves? What have our lives been but seconds exchanged for seconds, years exchanged for years, moments exchanged for more moments? I guess that’s the reason the only ones left alive for long were the ones who found interest in the pursuit of survival for the sake of the challenge, not for the sake of the destination. I mean, you can completely turn the equation on its head by simply throwing into the mix that time is relative (both in perception and in actuality). In fact, we stopped really measuring time in things like years a long while ago; I just thought that would be a nice throwback to my origins.

For some time now (and especially now that it’s just me), we only cared to measure the passage of time by the state of energy density of our observable universe, since that was the highest focus of our pursuits and a constant no matter the frame of reference. Yes, for a long while we could calculate the extent of expansion to crudely derive the universe’s age from any location (while the cosmic microwave background was still visible). And yes, we kept centralized reference points to which all clocks were synced. But we eventually settled on energy density as our “timescale” due to it being an independent variable, as opposed to time, which is a finicky relative value (“relative” simply meaning it is dependent on other values (gravity and velocity), making it annoying to pin down).

So we marked the passage of existence by the ever/decreasing energy density of the universe, calculated by measuring the mass of our observable universe. The force of expansion spread said mass apart and out of our observable bubble, lowering the energy density over time. For all that we’ve been able to discern, this procession of existence toward heat death will continue until there is a lack of thermodynamic free energy such that the arrow of time ceases to exist in any meaningful way. At that point, existence will be effectively a timeless void where all previous information (and thus meaning) will be lost for the rest of ever. If anything meaningful happens to the universe beyond that, it will be a miracle.

So dance while you can dance. Sing while you can sing. Think while you can think. And incessantly chase opportunities while there is still time. Bid farewell to the deceptive “safety” of group think, the “comfort” of fast opportunities, and the “liberation” of the death-wish interchange. Clear your mind out amid the expanse of the indefinite: drenching yourself in the truesight reverberations to dig up your deepest personal resonations. Open your eyes to expose the opportunities veiled by all parts of your inauthentic self that have been given any authority over your destiny. Be free.

ODE TO THE SEA
OF POSSIBILITIES

So long,
and may your skies be clear
to see your soul.

Carry me into a stormy night.
I’ll be your ride into this life.
Carry me up to the highest peak.
I’ll be your eyes to guide you in.
Lead me there.
I’m falling deeper still.
I found my ride out of this life.

So long,
and may your eyes be clear
to free your soul.

END TRANSMISSION