“In droves they drift,
In thousands they trudge,
Across the Rubicon of existence,
The abysmal depth of nothingness”.
˜Foye 2012.
Staring unabatedly through the peephole of nothingness is never appealing, never enticing. Vagueness was creeping up on me in extremities and bland nothingness suddenly seemed normal. I felt helpless. Life had a way of disappointing someone; I thought, churning out one of those really long and heavy sighs that last longer than a minute.
I had been the favoured one but here I was in a mid life crisis. Here I am staring into nothingness, into obscurity, into a vista of a supposed puritanical mess called world. It wasn’t working out; at least not the way I had anticipated.
At the beginning, it had been an exciting expedition into a new life in the ageless city of awe and aurora. My first time here, I was mesmerized beyond words could augur; I was excited beyond exhaustion, poignant beyond reticence. For here I was in the city where people were born, dreams dreamed and reality realised.
It’s been more than a light year since my audacious arrival in the capricious city. However, the verity of what lay before me was astounding in small places, beleaguering in bigger places. The world I thought I knew was a melange of contradiction, cataclysm and bland nothingness. It couldn’t be any worse.
On this morning, I had woken up with a heavy heart laden with the troubles of a septic city and fastidious living. Not just my own troubles but more of the troubles, tribulations and privations of people I see around me to which I could hardly do anything.
All I can see are hordes of disillusioned souls trudging the city. On their faces lay frustration laced with weariness. Their stride saddled with an unrelenting hunger for meaning and solace is unmistakable. All seems dark and gloomy in the present madness of the world.
In the midst of it all, one questions if there is really a meaning to life? Yes, one should find personal meaning to life as if often encouraged. But this soon becomes a shifty illusion one loses track of in the face of hassles and privation. And that’s the utter reality.
One questions further: Is there really an order to which events are supposed to happen in this world? Is there is an order to life itself? Will “consistent inconsistency” as Aristotle puts it suffice as a form of order in our world?
Or would the infinite goodness of God as St. Thomas Aquinas puts it in his Proof’s of God’s Existence suffice as a pedestal for His (God) allowance of existence of evil and then from it produce good. Would this be sufficient to posit a meaning or an order to life?
Frankly, I do not understand the world. I don’t think anybody really does. Maybe it doesn’t exist for us to understand. Maybe that’s the puzzle: Exist but do not understand. Don’t even try to understand. Just live in the Nought of Nowhere, the bane of human existence.
Foye.
Ps. I commiserate deeply with a very close friend, Foluso, who just lost his mum recently. May Her gentle soul rest in peace. And may Foluso be comforted by the fact that she lived a good life.