The Pageant of Life
I had originally planned to drop by at my library-apartment to read and write, but some unexpected errand cropped up and after I was done with it, it's already 4pm. So I thought it's best for me to do my usual blogging from a cafe, which is how I ended up at Komugi Cafe today.
The past week has been great because I managed to catch up with a couple of old friends. A lifetime is finite, and as you grow older, you realise that everything you do, you'll only get to do it a finite amount of times. There's a touching passage in The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles that reflects on this fact:
“How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”
The book was adapted into a movie in 1990, directed by Benardo Bertolucci, starring John Malkovitch and Debra Winger as the doomed couple in search of existential meaning in post-colonial Algeria. Paul Bowles himself made a cameo appearance in the final scene of the movie, as one of the patrons in the cafe, quietly observing the fate of his protagonist, while narrating the above lines in voice-over.
How many blog articles will I post in my lifetime? It is certainly not limitless. This thought makes me appreciate every moment and opportunity that I get to do so. Moments like this: sitting with a warm pot of Earl Grey, in a cafe, watching people passing by, while I type these lines in deep reflection, is tinged with magic.
I can only feel gratitude being able to record what I'm thinking and feeling now--this very state and configuration of my mind, in space and time--perhaps for posterity? From a cosmic perspective it is an insignificant moment; but then again even the wars that changed the course of history on earth sink into nothingness against the vast backdrop of the universe.
We are all insignificant beings and yet we, for being conscious of our existence, is the sensorium of the cosmos, experiencing its very own existence. We are finite when we think of ourselves as separate from the universe and seek to dominate others to stake our claim in the world; but when we are at one with it, even briefly during those rare moments of epiphany, our wisdom, our might is so all-encompassing that, any human endeavour seems laughably petty.
Perhaps one day, we'll be surpassed by our very own creations--the artificial minds and robots that are already, and will soon be an inevitable part of our everyday existence. If we see this as part of a natural progression of life's evolution, we might be more accepting of our fate.
Our lives are not lived only through our mortal bodies; they continue in whatever substrate we choose to deposit our thoughts and dreams, long after this mortal coil is extinguished. Ultimately, the pageant of life is much grander than what our finite mind can conceive.