If life is about balance, then why does it seem like we’re sacrificing everything else for knowledge, power, money? Like we’re trying to funnel our lives into the one, universal, definition of success?

If life is about balance, then how is it that emotions can take control so easily? When faced with temptations such as sex, food, entertainment, drugs, alcohol — when faced with certain desires, one thing can take precedence over everything else.

If life is about balance, then why do I always complain about the same things?

Life is about balance only for those who want nothing from it. Only for those who desire nothing more than peace and ignorant bliss. Balance is a tool. Balance is a weapon. Balance can make our lives more stable, but it is not an end-all be-all. It is not the chief force. Balance does not drive the train. Desire does.

Do I know the perfect way to live? Of course not. I’m inconsistent, wild, foolish, forgetful. Disorganized, irresponsible, uncertain. Maybe there should be a guide book on how to live. Living for Dummies? Perhaps. But perhaps that book would consist of living “a certain way”. A way that may not fulfill everyone’s wishes. Only the wishes of the mass, the undulating sea of people on this great blue earth. The tired people. The faceless.

I don’t know how to live: I don’t know how to get what I want. But I know what I want. I really, really know what I want.

WHAT I WANT:

• To be as free as possible from the constraints of others. I am not a product of society. I am not a product of people. I am not an American, a human, a male, a gay. I’m not a college student, a music lover. I am not my name. I am not my family. I am me. Nothing else. I will not succumb to stereotypes. I will not do things simply because they are desired of me. I do not live for others. I live for myself.
• To be at peace with my organicity. To understand my own existence. To realize what it means to be made of flesh and bone. The functions of our brains and our bodies. What it means to be me. Consciousness.
• To be more than human.  To become stronger, smarter. To remove the limitations caused by these organic disruptions, by sex and hunger, cold and sleep. To see more, to know more. To replace emotions with logic, to be bound only by the desires for ultimate happiness, prosperity, safety.
• To create a world built on order. To refashion this earth, or another world, completely. From the bottom up. To test the engineering capabilities of our minds; to make a world that is functionally perfect.
• To lead the human race from uncertainty into an age of Logic and Truth. To show people how to see beauty in complexity, in elegance, instead of the banal, the instinctual. To fix our lives, the new, the old. To help us all be aware of our place in this blackness. I have so much faith in the human race. We are a beautiful species: fierce, intellectual, cognizant. We will make it. We’ll go on.
• To live forever. To see the universe from farthest corner to farthest corner. To see the end of it all, in all its tremendous fire and weight.