Thursday, October 25, 2012

Cognitive Dissonance

The cold truth is that nothing has meaning. It all ends the same way, eventually. But people need to believe that there is meaning in something other than sheer survival. Meaning comes from what we're willing to believe. If the meaning is not found in sports, children, politics, television, music, religion, art, or the latest fashion trend, then the void gets filled with more eccentric endeavors such as drugs, hatred, Bollywood, or the local chapter of some society, somewhere.

To have a policy about things, a philosophy on your actions, is to give meaning to yourself as if you really mattered in this world. By existing with a personal compass, we seek to change the world and make it smell like us in order to affirm our existence.

We define ourselves through the suffering that we choose to own, whether it be our jobs, our sweat, smoking, the chase, the escape, or the fight... we all fight. It gives us meaning to fight. If we don't fight or choose not to fight, then we eventually end up fighting ourselves. We create a policy for the fight as a rationale to justify the things we do or don't do. In this way, reality evolves in our own image.

And this is where I'm currently struggling. Reality is shifting faster than I can keep up with. I was once the boy in love with love who loved nothing more than the fight. I do not feel like that boy anymore. I no longer have that religion... that old testament flair. The fierce dogmas I had subscribed to have dissipated and the fight now feels... optional. There is a fear growing inside me that my prioritization of peace has put me in a mental space of accepting mediocrity. But average is safe. Normal is dependable. Not sticking out like a sore thumb means nobody is looking at me, anymore.

My identity has not found a new silhouette since my recent bout with Cognitive Dissonance, but it is shifting into something I do not yet understand. I don't know who I am when I am not that guy trying to change the world through blades of agency. Hopefully, equilibrium will set in so that the shifting can stop and the discrete Heisenbergian packets of my persona might once again resonate into an identifiable frequency and wavelength.