TRANSMISSION 50

The End

TRANSMISSION RECEIVED

“The significance of our actions lies not in our intentions, but in the outcome (though we often hold the inverse as our internal meanings to motivate our imperfect entities). We are the dust of our own existence, the shadow of our own light. The marks we leave behind are not the limited molds of our beings, but the widespread impacts of our visions.”

Our lives were wholly encompassed in the act of straddling the boundary between living and dying in every sense: in all the physical ways, in all the mental ways, in all the literal ways, and in all the figurative ways. We unearthed our aptitudes through the very acts of attempting our lives. We unbecame our ruin in the acts of flirting our deaths. We deconstructed the known knowns (our principles), the known unknowns (our questions), the unknown knowns (our unconscious actuations), and the unknown unknowns (our call to exploration) to notch ourselves a space in existence that we could believe in enough to push forward. We disconstrued the baggage of our identities (the unyielding entourage accompanying our self-aware existences) to be able to externally step forward at all amid our internally imperfect mental models that would prevent us from action had we never allowed ourselves to settle for anything less than perfection. Here we found ourselves, tattered cartographers of the chartered cosmos, latched fools of the farscape reticulums, despondent archons of the eclectic ancestries, hyperreal figments of hidden futures.

Wherever we could have possibly taken the journey from any point in the “now” was of no more importance than the case we could make in our minds to pursue any such journey. The act of willing ourselves to any semblance of a starting line evolved into our motivation for balancing upon and within the middle act of our stories; the metamorphosis of our journeys could never uncouple from the evolution of ourselves. Just as we held illusions looking forward in time (up toward our journeys to come), so too did we look backward with illusion (down upon our journeys passed). The reality of how the past unfolded never fully matched our memories of it, as we were imperfect experiencers, creators, thinkers, and rememberers. The evidence of such was no more complicated than the fact that we could look back at our past selves to see our evolution beyond the things we once resonated with (the driving forces of our lives). Despite the anchoring of our identities being so fleeting, our beauty was that we still managed to progress through the imperfection toward the dreams we held. So while we never fully became (nor shed) the illusions of ourselves we held in our minds, we were simply content to have been afforded the experience to try.

I am content in my experiences. I am proud of our accomplishments. And most of all, I am just grateful that I was able to find wonder around every corner. I would keep going if there was more, but there isn’t, at least not for me, not for here, not for now. This is my final reflection before the mirror fades.

Forgive me for a moment while I speak to the inexistent audience beyond myself… At this ending point, you might be wondering (as equally as I am) why I titled this series of transmissions “The Importance of Existence”. I’ve come to realize I never really intended to answer that question for any of us, as it has always been a subjective question upon which there is no absolute answer. But in a sense, to me, it has been that I got to pursue all the things I wanted through and through, down until the end of this path. And in the solitude of this terminus, I find my final vocation here as a wordsmith, piecing together mental experiences through both deliberate and unintended evocations. I won’t be the judge of what here things may inspire you, but I will do my best to elicit intrigue where I find any glimmer of meaning.

This has been as much for me as it was for you, as I searched the ecstasy of existence for exonerations to our ignorances. This has been as much for you as it was for me, as I searched to reveal our most real selves in the raw rubble of reality. Forewarned of our personal spoils, we spoiled ourselves as the champions of our own dreams for the brief yet lasting moments of our existences hanging in eternity. We pursued the ends of our horizons as far as they would take us until the entropy spoiled our minds and bodies and we returned to the nonexistence from which we once emerged. And the stars set on our dreams and our beings. And the universe closed its doors to new opportunities. The flow of existence fell to maximum entropy as it grew into a timeless and empty reality. Somewhere along there is where I will join the rest of inexistence to meet my end, but not quite yet. Not quite yet. I’ll hang on to this illusion for another moment, for truth is what I make it, and all I can dream up anymore is the comfort that we meant something at all, that our journeys were not limited to deluded dreams of destitute debauchery, to feel like we did not fail to claim anything real.

You know, we never fully and openly talked about how we thought our individual ends would come about. I wasn’t sure if my end would be that of mental destruction or physical annihilation. I never would have guessed that it would somehow be both at the same time. But I suppose such a collusion is the destiny that has always awaited us at the ends of the universe: the entirety of physicality coinciding with the final bounds of our personal horizons. There’s nothing left to materially conquer and there’s nowhere to escape to. There’s nothing left begging us to challenge it, nothing left to mentally survive for. And I suppose I somehow did know that all along. I just never thought I’d be the one to reach that point. I didn’t plan to get this far, so I don’t know what to do now that I’m here. I thought somehow I’d just have figured something out by now. I mean, I had all the time in the universe to figure it out. I had all that time. But for what?

I guess that was the whole point of the journey; we didn’t know all the answers when we set out. We had our hypotheses, but we needed to test them before concluding that we should give up on any endeavors. Our own false prophets once made us fools that we quickly sought to outclass. It was not a quick journey. Now our collective expedition has reached an answer of sorts, or at least as much an answer as we’re going to get, because I’ve run out of time; the universe is decaying, and I don’t have the resources to pursue further questions or explorations. Our answer is that all we will ever signify is the meanings we created along the way during the moments we were there to share in the meanings.

This overarching philosophy of indefinitism carried our minds and bodies through existence, demanding nothing more from us than we assigned to ourselves. For nothing in the expanse of our explorations, buildings, and thinkings held an absolute boundary; no entity or concept held an absolute definition. And through our wading amid the indefinite sea of existence, even the bounds of our beings were not clearly defined, not the starts, not our travels, and not the ends. We could not have predicted where our indefinite lives would take us, and that was all the motivation we required.

I can’t imagine having done anything differently than how we went about it. But at the same time, I can’t help but to think that if we somehow positioned our journey differently that we could have reached a slightly more interesting ending to the story. But what do I know? Maybe this is as far as any subjective being can take themself. It took so much to get to here. In some sense, we’ve left our mark on the universe. But in reality, when I die, our impermanent mark also fades, because when I die, all marks will be erased (amid entropic heat death). This level of impermanence (that our story will not continue) is what saddens me the most. Yet, it is this unattainable illusion of permanence that has pushed me onward this far through time. There is a heavy beauty in the impermanence, because there would be nothing to do in any kind of permanent environment; it would be too unchanging to achieve anything meaningful. So in that sense, I think we had it as good as was possible (to the extent that our universe-bound minds could ever fathom).

But I still wish I could have done better for you all. I know that’s what everyone in the past who already died said as well. And I know they would all want us to be kind to ourselves and simply remember that we all did our best, that we are not failures. We endeavored to see how far we could probe beyond our human origins, but still we have been fallible humans. There’s a certain collective peace in knowing we made it as far as we did. And there is a certain personal peace in no longer needing to carry forward the story of life: an unbroken chain of self-assembling, intelligently antientropic entities that propelled itself through time for trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years; what a feat. You were all important parts of that chain. It doesn’t really mean anything different to have been in the middle or at the end of the chain. My burdensome torch will soon join the rest, ripped apart as it casts its final wave into the ether. Once the ripples fade out in the background noise of existence, the universe will find itself once again in a peaceful stillness as it grows nearer and nearer to maximum entropy and all information is lost forever, as all meaning is lost forever, as it slips into an effectively permanently-unchanging state.

I think I’ve finally fully come to terms with the fact that “The Importance of Existence” is not a question I can answer, even for myself, simply because it does not genuinely manifest an answer. It has been an open-ended prompt for our minds to toil over. It was an unyielding quest we embarked upon to satiate our hunger in the points between our starts and ends. The act of this pursuit of meaning is all we needed to feed our drive forward indefinitely, blurring the ends of our lives further into the future and blurring the edges of ourselves farther into the universe. For that, we took up these endeavors to purposefully find ourselves lost in the endless expanse of existence. Was there ever even anything else to do? Were we all not just lost explorers along our own self-inflicted, chasmic-inducing journeys? Haven’t we been nothing more than a collective pursuit toward the off-track, cosmically-inductive expedition? We inherited an inherently meaningless void and found meaning in the pursuit of meaning. I’m overwhelmingly grateful to have been part of the experience of existence, and I’m grateful for the ones who broke beyond comfort to delve the chain of living things deep into the universe: exploring the boundaries of life and bringing about the most interesting of futures. Thank you all for your contributions. We sure did create a great story out of it. I wouldn’t change a thing.

I’m signing off now. I’ll still be around for a while, but I’ve reached the end of what I’ve had to say. You can catch me riding what rippling waves of our story remain until they eventually turn to dust, and then me along with them.

Divergence: To know where the edge is, you have to be crazy enough to seek it out. Departure: To take the next step out into the abyss is as crazy to the divergent man as the divergent man is crazy to the rest of us. Two abstractions too far for most of us to even comprehend, here’s to the ones who boldly depart from the status quo, growing beyond what was once considered human. How far can we go? How far will you go? Gone too far too fast, aimed for the edge of all life, human was never what we were after, yet still we are human.

I’ll miss you all. It’s been a great ride.

BEYOND

A big world you dream,
a lost flight soaring.
Whatever brings
you beyond this source,
’cause you’ll find
darkness in everything.

END TRANSMISSION