Personal Narrative: My Personal Morality

"If you dont have anything nice to say, then dont say anything at all." One of the few

morals I personally disagree with. There are alot of good morals to go by, then again, there are

also alot of bad ones. I am very picky when it comes to these things, because this is what makes

up me; my personality, and how I should act around everyone and everything. Everyone has

atleast one moral that they're devoted to and stand by because thats what they believe in, though

everyone follows on delusion that haunts humanity.

Im going to start this off with a recent experience I had not too long ago. I went to

Stonehenge, I'm not sure what I expected to find when I went there. Its been so long that since

mankind tampered with it, that this place
has been virtually abandoned. These days people are

allowed to climb on the rocks but only for one day (during the summoner and winter solstice) at a

time. These arent just because of monumental reasons its also because of physcologicall

reasons, more than a day or two at a place like this will apparently make you think strange things.

And, I was only here for two days but, I started to think about rocks, funny right?
Well, what I've

taken from it is, is that rocks appear to be permanent. I mean I know that they arent. Mountains

are constantly eroding and in places the crust is melting back into the mantle. Rock obviously isn't

permanent, but on the scale of a human life, it is and people have recognized that face ­ rocks are

permanent ­ for thousands of years and, I think that's what makes so, very important to us, as the

quote goes, "a diamond is forever". We as humans build monuments out of rock because they will

outlast us and virtually every other material we can think of. What about our modern structures

you say? The metal and glass are just rock refines by our inginuity. Rocks are both practical and

symbolic. We seek to indetify ourselves with rocks. We carve our heroes, forefathers, emporers,

king in stone because, we want them to last forever, and there is a way in which we want that kind

of permanence for ourselves. I think it is at the core of the human heart to scratch our name into

stone, or put your initials in wet cement, really just, man­made rock; or fasten a padlock to a

bridge. In this way, we try to push our imperanence from our minds. The monuments, statues
and

bridges, they give us a sense of continuity, stability. That this is the way it is, and the way it has

always been. Like the way humans first conceived of stars, static, unchanching, eternal. This way

of viewing the world, the universe rather, helps us maintain our greatest delusion: the thought that

we are in any way, eternal. We want to believe that some part of us, our consciousness or our

body with last forever. But what do you make of it then when you see stone is not even so

permanent? Walking around Stonehenge I think it is understandable I started contemplating not

only the permanence of rocks but as well as their decay, and by extension our decay, death, what

the world would look like without people. Do not be too distraught, I love life and grace in

everything but, with light also comes darkness. You know the closest I can come to imagining true

nothingness is to picture the unvierse running really fast in reverse. All the galaxies, solar

systems, nebulas squeezing closer together, stars expanding back into gas clouds and everything

getting hotter and denser, compactifying until the whole universe could fit into a room. And then

sinking further into a tiny point, and then. . . nothing. Not the nothingness of empty space but, real

nothingness which has no mass and no time. To me, that is probably what death looks like, a

nothingness so complete you would not even miss it. For that, you'd have to be there. But just as

soon as I can form this thought, this imaginary picture, it evaporates like a void in nature. The

world rushes in to fill it. And this makes sense, because in my mind there is always something

living and every hole needs to be fills with something rather than true nothingness. Its liberating

and the reason why my life goal is to make as many people happy as can be through my ability. It

is also the reason why I, myself do not fear death, why you ask? Because in my mind there is

atleast one person out there who is happy because of me, and that is not ideal, but will have to

do, to fufill my dream. Though when we do acknowledge our impermanence, its often through

insipid catch­phrases like, "YOLO" or it's in art projects like Damien Hirst's, "The Physical

Impossibility of Death Through the Mind of someone Living" which is just, a huge shark in a tank

of formaldehyde. A sense of our mortality should strike fear into us, like the sense I have when I

am hundreds of feet above ground level and when I can barely see the people walking beneath

me. The same fate stalks us daily but not in this visceral way, just in a trivial ignorable way. Hence

the delusion, you are permanent like stone, always were, always will be. So we are left hardwired

for denial, to have a selected inability to imagine true nothingness, an ephemeral sack of particles

that thinks itself eternal. This delusion is comforting and it makes living easier. It might drive you

crazy to confronted with ultimate meaninglessness of everything all the time, what we call,

nihilism.
But the same delusion I would argue is also debilitating. It lulls you into a false sense of

security, inaction, like a due date a long time in the future. There is always tomorrow so we

procrastinate living the life we truly desire and we live, in more fear. The sense that your soul is

eternal makes you cowardly because failure forever; for really, ever. Shame, embarassment,

disappointment, they would never, ever leave you. A distant horizon encourages you to play it

safe, to fight on and live to see another day; for after all, there is always, another day. And this is

why I find nihilism to be so liberating and emboldening! If you can really picture the true

nothingness that awaits you, then what is there to be afraid of? Nothing! Erros and humiliations

will be forgotten but great achievements may not. We may have no meaning in the comsic,

universal context of the universe, but we make our own daily with eachother; and this is the

thought that leads to action: your days are numbered, you do not know what that number is but it

is very finite, so get busy with what it is you want to do. Time is running
out.