Vanitas vanitatum
outstanding mind
Words, words, words...
Everywhere these words.
Most of them, somewhat sticky, empty, incomplete in their simplicity. But why this simplicity? What are they but a collection of letters arranged in a particular way, following a predetermined sequence and rules?
Some great, outstanding mind, much greater than the one I possess, took that empty and pale alphabet, which they probably learned in school, if such existed in those times, and began to fashion words from these letters, which then gracefully transformed into language.
Our language, beautiful language.
Yet, these words impose barriers on the artist, for how to express in text something that is inexpressible? How to reveal the otherness and peculiarity? How to engage the reader in a way that they remember the text not for a moment but for their entire trivial and meager life?
Perhaps it's from this triviality and meagerness that the essence's calling emerges. After all, all lives are ultimately meager and trivial; one could almost say that there is nothing in this world capable of shielding a thinking individual from cruel decadence. "Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas," as the Book of Ecclesiastes puts it.
One small matter remains unmentioned and even unattainable for many, and that is foolishness. Only a fool can be fully happy, for their flow of thoughts is insufficient to grasp the true picture of the world. They live in illusion, in a dream where things aren't so bad.
But there's another piece of advice, one so strange that it requires being somewhat of a psychotic, paradoxically not too difficult in today's times.
You can be aware of the world but intentionally lose that awareness. Live in a kind of bubble where we convince ourselves that things are much better and simpler than they really are.
It's like examining every phenomenon in the sky and on earth, only to attribute them to magical powers. We know the real cause, but isn't it easier to assume it's different?
Isn't it easier to say that clouds are crying? Isn't it simpler to deny our mortality and live commitment-free? Isn't it simpler to abandon morality and simply indulge as much as our health allows? Doesn't following pure pleasures come to us rather effortlessly and instinctively?
So, can we say that by getting drunk in a club, we distance ourselves from the harsh reality and responsibility? We prefer to pretend that we don't know the consequences, or worse, we can even convince ourselves and be convinced that we truly don't know.
Perhaps people truly can't recognize what's good for them anymore, and maybe they only convince themselves that what's simple is good because no one, I repeat, NO ONE, wants to shoulder suffering.
Choosing what's easy, isn't it an escape from life as it really is?