My Journey into Absurdism

I've increasingly headed into a deeper absurdist way of thought. For any who might not know, absurdism is the philosophy that there is no inherent meaning in the universe, but that humans inherently seek meaning, and there is not necessarily need for conflict for these two things to exist. I've advanced to the way of thinking that absolutely no one has true free will, that all actions, reactions, consequences, all events and incidences, absolutely all in time and space at any given time in any given space was fated, inevitable, and unavoidable. It's not so much a matter of 'no matter what we do,' as it is 'there's only one thing we ever could've done.' Strangely, when I was younger and, honestly, more religious, I thought more in this way. I believed in fate, in predestination, in heaven and hell. I believed in the word of the bible, and this is what I was taught.

By my teens, I had a crisis of faith. Further and further contemplation placed my conscience against and my religion. The way I'd seen God depicted, He would, in my mind, be a violent sociopath unworthy of praise. Heaven and Hell were unnecessarily cruel and despicable acts of God, and that any God would allow, let alone intend, such cruelty was impossible to follow. The devil further gained my sympathy in the bible's narrative. A rebel anarchist who would not follow anyone's absolute rule, even a deity's. A tester of man who was more a gate keeper to Heaven than any other figure in the book. It felt more and more a simple narrative of humanity than a religious doctrine. The writings made more and more sense as I removed all concepts of morality. This triggered a further evolution in my way of thinking.

I arrived to the conclusion, only the third year into my twenties, that fate was real. I may have questioned everything - and I mean absolutely everything - that I had believed, but not everything changed as a result. In the turmoil and turbulence, some things still stood. In fact, I went from believing without understanding to believing because I understood. Doctrine all but entirely blew away in the storm of belief and conscience. Belief essentially vanished, and I accepted the idea that nothing can be believed so much as guessed. George Christopher on Board to Death, played by Ted Danson, actually captured it quite well when he said that we're each starring in our own movies, just guessing about others'.

My therapist pointed out that this is certainly very, "pot thinking." Yes, some of these conclusions were drawn during use of cannabis, even blossomed into what they are in part because of it, but she also pointed out that it was very 'me' thinking to begin with, pot or no pot. It wasn't actually a tremendous leap from where I was already going. I would say that I went from religious, to spiritual, to... something else entirely. I believe in mysteriousness, and my inevitable ignorance of the world, as all else have, only confirms its existence. God has become a concept to embody all this chaos, these perfect and inevitable trajectories in a predetermined film. God becomes a synonym for the universe around us, and all which we could not possibly know. God is what we can see and cannot. God was no longer religious, but a word which could conceptualise an entirety beyond our comprehension. The world around us, too big to understand, too complex to see all of the trajectories, however inevitable, to know what will happen and what must happen. All that will not, is not. All that would is. All that was must have been, and all that was not could not have been.

There is a tremendous amount of freedom that comes from this evolution of thought. A weight of conscience, self-consciousness, and fear of the unknown began to dissipate. I have actually become more productive, more active, and been able to actually take care of myself in at least the minimum amount (I have had trouble taking care of myself on a day-to-day level for a decade, at least.) The culmination of relieving pointless guilt from fundamental beliefs and treating my myriad conditions with cannabis has effectively put me at a peak of functioning. Am I anywhere near being a standard, functional adult? I highly doubt it. But even terminal patients are given the possibility of living comfortably until the end. Some would say it's worth compensating more for a shorter life-span, but even a shorter life-span can't warrant such special treatment in such cases without considerable discomfort in need of relief. It is the discomforts, the struggles, the burdens which are being compensated for. I believe (or should I say 'strongly guess,' now?) everyone has the right to do what they think they need in order to tolerate life and all that comes with it. I'm not such a delusional optimist as to possibly think all will or could possibly get that comfort. I do think, however, that every person and thing in the universe does what it 'thinks' it must to be in the most comfortable, moderate state. I think quantum physics, thermodynamics, and chaos theory all support my stance and are applicable.

My belief system became synonymous with the most fundamental aspects of science: most notably, making best educated guesses given the information we are aware and, thus, exposed to, and using these 'best guesses' as our new, and forever metamorphosing, foundation. We intuitively try to make our foundations as solid as possible and forget that nothing is completely unchanging, let alone permanent. A balance is struck, to the best of our capabilities, between open-mindedness and scepticism, questioning absolutely everything while maintaining our stance until new evidence comes to light which says otherwise. We rely whole heartedly on the facts, real or perceived, at hand, but benefit most from the acceptance that the conclusions we draw can change as more of such facts come to light. We try our bests, no matter what, given what realities we form out of what information we can scrounge up. Every reality, for each individual, becomes equally real, and all capable of change when new information capable of swaying and mutating our beliefs becomes accepted. We cannot always accept, however, and some things can actually harden our resistance to acceptance of all sorts and forms, making us maintain our realities, often even in the face of new information. Absolute belief, or even extremely strong beliefs, can become fundamentally resistant to certain forms of acceptance when new information is presented, which sometimes has more destructive, rather than constructive, consequence.

This has been my journey into absurdist thought, and reconciling my consciousness, thus far.

Action and Reaction

I am bipolar. I am autistic. I am anxious. I am who and what I am. There is no golden standard, there is no mold. I replaced my meds almost completely with cannabis, and it has worked out quite well for me, but everything is relative. If I say how great the pot has been for me, people assume that must mean that I am now 'normal' (ish) and no longer have any problems. False. Let's say I used to function at 2%, then I started using cannabis and went up to, say, 10%. That's 400% increase in functioning. Wonderful, right? 400% is a big number! That's 5 times how much I was functioning before! So, all the problems are solved, right? No. 10% is still a far cry from 100. That number, also, would still be an average and not a constant. That means that one day might be 4%, another 15%, another 8%, and so on. Outside factors also heavily influence this. If I'm staying at home watching Netflix all day, I'm more likely to feel like I could function more if I wanted, but if I'm out doing new things in new places, I'm going to feel like I'm pushing or breaking my limit, which leads to overload, which can lead to either a meltdown or shut-down. Meltdowns have been more the typical result.

When I get anxious, I get irritable, and when I get irritable, I get angry. Getting angry can make me aggressive, and then people stand there in the aftermath with dazed expressions wondering what just happened. Poking the bear is what happened. If I escalate, that all but undoubtedly means something or someone is causing me to escalate. When it is a someone that is escalating me, as I get more aggressive, the other person tends to get more persistent, which causes a continual process until I explode, which works out for no one. All the person has to do is stop. Stop talking, stop trying to alter or help me, stop everything. Just stop and leave. That is what I need.

My overload, meltdowns, and anxiety are not just quirks, they're not just things I can get over, not just overreactions I can briefly contemplate and then change my mind completely to, "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right." That simply is not the case. I also cannot just put these things in my back pocket when it's most convenient for everyone else. There are things that are acute and things that are chronic, and they require entirely different approaches. For instance, an acute panic attack as a result of a chronic anxiety condition requires a far different approach than when I'm not in such an acute state and can address the more long-term issues (which still don't benefit from immediate attempts at change, but take time.)

My brother and his fiancée are getting married. As the wedding has gotten closer and closer, as well as more and more 'real,' my anxiety has begun to skyrocket. The real tipping point was the fitting for the tuxes. That was when things really took a nose dive off a skyscraper. I'm also known for my big, curly, unfettered, and crazy hair. I've had it in many different styles throughout my life, some I like looking back on more than others. But the point is that I had some modicum of control. I could decide what I wanted to do with it. As I'm diving toward the pavement, my hair acted like my parachute. It was something I could depend on to not surprise me, to be there as it was before. I could decide what I wanted to do with it. It might seem silly to others, but my hair is - in some ways - an anchor.

Well, as people started turning my hair and how it should look for the wedding into a bigger and bigger issue, it was like watching someone trying to cut holes in my parachute while I was still falling. Of course I would panic and even act aggressively in an attempt to get others to stop. Of course it triggered an extreme reaction in me. But people never have the whole picture. We only really get a tiny glimpse at our very own pictures, our own lives and minds. So I'm not going to take it well when people make grand assumptions and enforcements about how I should look, act, be... I wear the tux that feels uncomfortable, stuffy, and drives me nuts because that is what was chosen. I'm attending because it's asked of me. I'm being a groomsman because it was asked of me. All of those things produce incredible, unbearable anxiety, but I do them anyway. So... when I'm adamant about my hair, about how I want my hair to be, others can back off and let me be. I think it's not such a big problem to ask they give me that much.

Also, comments like 'act your age,' or 'you should do ___ because it's what people do,' or, 'you could be/do so much more' are all bullshit, and I'm going to call them bullshit. If I am drawing the line at my hair, everyone else can get over themselves and just give me that much. If not being pestered about my hair, if being able to wear it and have it exactly as I want, can alleviate some of the anxiety all the other things are causing, you can give me that. Taking that away is a really, really shitty thing to do.

We live in a world of people who demand instant change, instant fixes, instant gratification. It doesn't work. Some things virtually never change, even, while other things always change. The other side of the coin is how people desire things to always remain the same, hustling and bustling to keep it that way in the face of a universe that would tear them apart without hesitation. Wanting change isn't inherently bad, nor is wanting things to remain the same. It is healthy - even understandable - to attempt to change some things and keep others the same. All actions cause reactions, and the wisdom of what actions we choose to take derives from the difference between what we wanted to happen and what did happen. Doing something repeatedly despite seeing a different reaction than desired is generally unwise. All reactions are warranted based on all of the influencing factors, and are seldom the result of a single, isolated incident.

Miracle cures don't exist, and most things don't get better right away. For all I or anyone else knows, I could die young never having been what anyone hoped for, or even die old and have the same result. Hypothetical thoughts and beliefs are not realities or facts, and very well may never come true. The only things that 'should' happen are the things that do happen, and everything else is fantasy. No, I'm not going to grow up to be the president. I may never be 'healthy' and I certainly will never be anyone's idea of 'normal.' I get by. I survive. I manage. Do I want more? Sometimes, but I also realise that wanting something doesn't automatically make it happen. Do I try to improve myself? Of course, but sometimes you can only do so much, get so far, and you have to live with and accept what you cannot change. People who can't accept that some things can't be changed hack at it so much that they kill it, anyway, making any possible resulting change meaningless and inviable.

Everything happens for a reason, I do believe that. In the simplest form, this means A causes B. A little truer would be to say A causes B; B causes C; C causes D... and so on, but even that is a gross simplification. A causes B1 and B2. B1 causes C1 and C2, while B2 causes C3 and C4. C1 causes D1 and D2. C2 causes D3 and D4. C3 causes D5 and D6. C4 causes D7 and D8. Then the Ds cause the Es, the Es cause the Fs, the Fs cause the Gs, and so on, growing exponentially more and more complex, a chaotic system, everything with a place, a role, a cause and effect. I don't do things without an underlying reason: none of us do. My actions and reactions are a product of countless forces and factors, some seen while others unseen. My anxiety, irritability, overload, meltdowns, and aggression are all results (which cause more results, which cause more results...) Some are more acute forces at work, while others are slower and more chronic. While others may be able to do little about the more chronic forces, at least in a given moment, they can do something about the acute ones. When I'm tipping over the edge, people don't have to help push me over. The best thing to do, sometimes, is to back off and do nothing.

People may be enigmas, but enigmas are codes, and codes can be cracked. No enigma is without its solution, its cipher, which can interpret its coded messages. No actions are without cause, ever, and everything has a reason.