I want to talk to you about a concept that’s been sitting in my brain for some time now. It’s about the process of understanding, and it’s also about evolution, and it’s also about growth.

Before you decide to understand something (or maybe you never really “decide”; maybe it just comes, full-force, without invitation), things are probably pretty well-off. They say ignorance is bliss, and where true ignorance is concerned, this is certainly the case. But what happens when you encounter the first glimpse of doubt? Maybe you try to ignore it, but you can’t, and then it becomes stronger. And then you realize you don’t understand life as you thought you did, and when that happens, you begin a journey.

The thing with journeys is they have beginnings and ends. Sometimes the end of a journey is the beginning of another one, but you don’t begin a journey with that in mind. You look to the end. You look to regaining the status quo. The same happiness, the same fulfillment. The process of understanding is full of frustration and uncertainty, but you always look to the end, because the end is always (in some way) the same as the beginning.

Imagine you’re climbing a hill. You may not realize it while you’re climbing it, but you’ll realize it sometime before you get to the other side, surely. You’ll realize it because it’s not the same as walking on level ground. It’s not easy. It’s not calm. But you have to know there’s another side to it. That you’ll get back to level ground eventually.

What am I saying? I’m saying: There is symmetry in things, in time. I’m saying: We search for the things we’ve had before. I’m saying: The end and beginning share something that the middle does not.

When you understand something fully, totally, you don’t struggle with it, it doesn’t bring you pain. What, then, should we do about this thing called Life into which we’ve been pushed, unwillingly? We have doubts, all of us. We’re all on a journey, many journeys in fact, all at once. What do we do? WE LOOK TO THE END.

They say that everyone, in a sense, wants to go back to his or her childhood. The end is like the beginning. It’s interesting, thinking about the old dying in hospitals while the young are born in them. But, while the end and the beginning are similar, the end is not the same as the beginning. We all hope, by the end of our lives, we understand Life enough to be at peace with it. In a way we didn’t as a child. Understanding replaces ignorance. And peace becomes peace.

I want to expand the scope of this metaphor a little bit. I want to expand it to include not just a single individual, not just me, but us. All of us. You can’t remember, but before industry, before organized religion, before farming, we were a certain way with the world. We existed without most of the things we rely on today, we continue, we survived, so we must have been, somewhat, at least a little bit, at peace with the way things were. Maybe we don’t even have to go back that far — perhaps it’s sufficient to say we were at peace before the Industrial Revolution. All I know is that, from the early 20th century at the latest, things began to change. We began a journey. We climbed a hill.

The question is: How will the end be like the beginning? I think, personally, that a full understanding of all that is will bring us the same peace as a complete ignorance of it. The awe of wonder becomes the beauty of understanding. New things and old things are beautiful in different ways. Things we don’t understand, things we do.

I don’t know. Just rambling, as usual.

I am an observer. A conscious observer, a relevant, engaged observer, but just an observer nonetheless. I observe life; I observe my emotions; I observe the world in which I live and breath and communicate. I’m a staunch atheist, but if I had to give an answer to the question, “What were you put on this Earth to do?” I would say, “To observe. To understand. To see.”

I used to have two names for myself. I’d imagine them as titles, like what might be listed on my emotional resume.

Black Nix: Emotion Collector. Black Nix: Master Escapist.

I am an Emotion Collector. I blogged once about emotional masochism — the tendency to put myself through pain and suffering. Purposefully. And I never understood exactly why I would do such a thing. But I understand it now. See, I have a desire to search down deep, to find the blackest dark, the heaviest weight. I want to understand it all, I do. I don’t know why. But I do. There are two emotions that I feel the most:

1-  Heaviness. Waking up in the morning and having the full pressure of life weighing down on you. Heart falling through your chest like a rock pulled down by gravity. The sense of dread at having to live, constrained by an ephemeral organic shell. The foreignness of the world.

2- The spark of joy and hope when I witness beauty. Dreaming transhumanist dreams. Listening to Mothertongue. Discovering a connection between ideas, which itself is an idea, and the sense of creation and accomplishment. And the beauty of finding patterns, of seeing the world exactly as it is but from a perspective that’s colorful, brilliant, warm.

I’m also a Master Escapist. I have a tendency to separate myself from the world. I think there are many reasons for this. For one, I don’t fit most places, among most people: a gay computer scientist whose brain is constantly hooked on contemporary classical music, philosophy and video games is probably neither going to be the life of the party nor a warm and compassionate friend. But there’s more than just this, I think. It’s harder to see the bigger picture when you’re in the middle of it. It’s harder to observe life from the inside. I’m not alone because I can’t interact with people, I’m alone because I don’t want to.

So it seems that my life so far has been really a patchwork composition of the emotions I’ve collected. Heaviness is the texture, the background, the dark, the brooding. But every now and then, a spark of beauty and hope lights it up with color and fantastic brilliance before dying again, into the blackness. The unbearable weight.

I’ve never understood how people live without seeing, or without trying to see, or without wanting to see. But it seems now that I’ve spent my whole life doing nothing but seeing. Is this merely a 76-year-long film I’ve gotten front-row seats to?  No, I create too. I write, I play cello, I draw, I talk to people. I combine and manipulate ideas. I create beautiful things. But is that enough? Is that all there is to living?

Sometimes I feel like I’m just funneling the world putting it all into myself. I have the world inside of me. But then what am I good for, to others? What place do I have among people? Who befriends the telescope?

Sometimes I feel like I’m never getting anywhere in life. Like I keep trying the same old things, the same old ways, and in the end I’m left with nothing to show for it but debt and a headache. Maybe I try too hard to do things quickly. Life has always been a game of procrastinate, catch up, procrastinate, catch up. I’m usually able to “catch up”, but where does that lead me? To an average life, with an average future. An average income, an average family.

I’m not average. I know this. But then why does it always seem like I’m never able to get what I want?

I need to work harder.
I need to be more patient.

Does it seem weird that I think my laziness stems from a lack of patience? No, listen, really. I can’t work on something wholeheartedly if I can’t envision the end. If I can’t sit down and say “This can really happen, if I work at it, if I wait.” Patience is something I’ve never been good at. But with patience, we can make progress. Real progress. Goal-driven, not emotion-driven.

What do I want in life? Short(er) term, anyway?

• I want a well-paying job, intellectual stimuli and creative freedom.
• I want safety in relationships. Good friends, honest friends.
• I want to be constantly challenged in life, by life. I want to make good decisions.
• I want to learn more. I want to learn everything. But learning, especially on one’s own, takes so much effort and so much patience.

I honestly don’t know what life will grant me. Who’s to say? But I’m confident that I can have the life I want, in time. With effort. With patience.