Every creature on this Earth dies alone.

Donnie: Well, life isn't that simple. I mean, who cares if Ling Ling returns the wallet and keeps the money? It has nothing to do with either fear or love.

Kitty Farmer: Fear and love are the deepest of human emotions.

Donnie: Okay. But you're not listening to me. There are other things that need to be taken into account here, like the whole spectrum of human emotion. You can't just lump everything into these two categories and then just deny everything else.

More personal-preferences-cum-objective-statement-about-life going on in this post. I promise it will have some sort of point that can be more generalizable though - promise. But who the fuck am I kidding? It's all just some bullshit, right?

One of my favorite movies is Donnie Darko. I guess at face value, a viewer might say that it is about time travel: by anticipating a horrible end for various people, Donnie sacrifices his own life to save those of ones he loves. For those who haven't seen it, throughout the movie, it is alluded to that Donnie has "issues" and that his perceptions of the world are warped (and wrong). Maybe he does, but like the point he's making above, does that really matter as much as we think? We'd like to think that issues that exist in this world would be more easily resolved if everyone thought the way that we did - “If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier... as long as I'm the dictator. Hehehe.” - GWB - I mean, really, that's true, but totally a boring, old, cop-out answer. Instead of learning to compromise with people, I'll just let them cower in fear of my power! Ha. Ridiculous.

Donnie represents an anti-hero - irascible, misanthropic and altogether misunderstood. Furthermore, the saliency of his insights into human society make others shy away from him. No one wants to be around someone that reminds them of their own worst fears. Death, instability, anger, fear, loneliness. Why would we want to be around that when we can compartmentalize and categorize our experiences to make them more livable as a whole? Well, I'll tell you why, and Donnie did too, to actually experience life, which isn't always about happiness and security ("Sometimes you’re supposed to be sad. It’s OK, it’s the flip side. And it’s actually good." - Louis CK). We make mistakes, we fuck up royally, but we can still get back out  there to retry, to experience again.

I face this sort of dilemma on a daily basis though, as it's not always a life-and-death, save-your-girlfriend-from-a-horrible-end sort of day. From Facebook arguments to workplace woes, there is a stuckness to the way that people approach life; a closing off of their experiences. I was recently told, during an all -important Facebook debate, that the argument I was trying to make, by analogous thinking on my part, was irrelevant because it was bringing in examples that were tangental or analogous, but not directly on topic. So? Is there a standard format for argumentation that always must be followed? If so, our politicians are fucked because they're doing it wrong all.the.time. It seemed to me to be more of a situation in which one party was trying to control for an outcome. This is a common skin for some - controlling everything that happens, from who they talk to, to how they talk to them, to where they're seen and who they're seen with, blah blah, so...Plastics. But don't forget....control is an illusion. The mirage is strong and some people will go quite far to deny they're vying for control. They'll readily admit to having no free will or their fate is in God's hands or science is the answer, et al. But challenge whatever their roulette wheel has randomly (*cough*bullshit*cough*) stopped on and BAM: now you're their enemy because you chose to question. And maybe my disdain at control is just another form of control - oh gods, the horror! So why continue to discuss and press? To challenge people. To determine whether there is more to learn and to potentially change (One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup from his wallet with the words, "A child has beaten me in plainness of living."- Diogenes the Cynic [WWDD -  What Would Diogenes Do?]) So this is where I would say that identifying that control (which is really just another way of saying "desiring" a certain outcome, so I am ripping off the Buddha big time here) is a problem and attempting to go more with the flow is not the same type of stuckness.

Today, I was talking to some students about the Weather Underground, and how some of the people involved went on to become active members of society after their years of destruction. We debated whether that was "unusual" and some of the students were adamant about the possibility of second chances. One student insisted that we are too harsh on each other, that people can change not only physically, but mentally and spiritually. It was an interesting discussion that helped some of them consider the role of judgment in American society's nature. This is especially prevalent when it comes to failures, mistakes and missteps (mighty and otherwise). Maybe there isn't enough leeway given for people who commit wrongs in their pasts. That would also hold true for Donnie, who, being maligned as a weirdo, was outcasted even though he was on the threshold of making amazing connections about our own existence to anyone who was listening. Unfortunately, since most of his interactions were erased by time travel to save others, it turns out that no one but himself would be privy to his newfound understanding of the world. But maybe that's why he's laughing, because he's letting go of control finally and it's so easy. He let go of the fact that he can't actually teach anyone anything and that he's now dying, alone. He's reached enlightenment in a way that was so easy in the end. A complete acceptance of death.


And of course, a relatable song! New Machine, part 1, Pink Floyd:

I have always been here
I have always looked out from behind the eyes
It feels like more than a lifetime
Feels like more than a lifetime
Sometimes I get tired of the waiting
Sometimes I get tired of being in here
Is this the way it has always been?
Could it ever have been different?
Do you ever get tired of the waiting?
Do you ever get tired of being in there?
Don't worry, nobody lives forever,
Nobody lives forever