Authorities announced that because of a very high temperature in summer, the water dried up and electricity generation had decreased so they needed to cut off the electricity within a range of time which is applied to the whole country.
It was midnight but I couldn’t fall asleep. My eyes were wide open and all I could see was darkness. But, when I turned my head to the left, I could see the pale light of the moon from the window near me. I looked up. I didn’t see the moon but I saw many stars and I realized that nature is very beautiful.
Some stars are in a pattern. Some stars are alone. Some stars are shining very brightly. Some stars are only shining dimly. I wondered why. Maybe because of the distance? Because of the heat they produce? But, they are sparkling in their own ways and they all are twinkling.
The stars were twinkling as I stared at them. After some time, my normal and unanswerable thoughts floated into my mind. Why am I here? What am I living for? Why am I living? Why do I exist? Why do humans exist? Why do living things exist? Why does the Earth exist? Why do planets exist? Why does the solar system exist? Why do galaxies exist? Why does the universe exist?
I wondered why my thoughts are always like this. I know that curiosity is in my nature but I somehow don’t like myself for needing reasons for everything. Maybe because I read too much philosophical stuff lately? Then, how do I perceive reality? Many thoughts were running on my mind.
Maybe because I am a computer science student, when it came to thoughts like how I perceive reality, the first thing that came into my mind is the input-process-output cycle. We can see the input-process-output cycle everywhere. Let’s look at humans. Humans are always absorbing information when they are awake. Moving pictures, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes are inputs. Then, they process into believes, perceptions, ideas, imagination, knowledge, etc, and shapes the way humans see the world. As outputs, humans produce sounds and actions. That’s why the environment we live in is very important because it represents the standard and quality of the information we are absorbing. And, when it comes to absorbing information, we should select carefully because those things are what we are putting inside us and will shape what we become. Since we are now living in a world where an enormous amount of information is available, we should have a mind filter or self-control or something that will prevent us from taking destructive information.
With my twenty years of experiences in this mundane world, I think life is just a series of problems and choices. We can choose to avoid or face problems. When we choose to avoid problems, there will be no failure but there is also no experience gained and no lesson learned. When we choose to face problems, it may be like hell at first but, if we can pass through that hell, we gain experiences, knowledge, skills, confidence, happiness, and many lessons. We grow and our values increase. This transformation of a person can’t be seen with bare eyes, but when it comes to the time to deal with important matters, experiences do speak a lot. And, every choice we make is very crucial for us. Even a choice we think unimportant and don’t put thoughts into it can have a great impact on our life. And behind each choice, there comes an opportunity cost to pay. To gain something, we should have a heart for letting go of others. It is not fate or destiny, but it is our choices (whether voluntary or forced). And, what we are allowed to do is to believe that we won’t regret the choices we made.
When it comes to dealing with matters, it is not about age. It is about the experiences and lessons learned. Nobody buys your age. They buy your experiences and skills. What we always desire from a situation is to maximize our benefits and minimize our costs. To achieve what we want, we have to execute decisions to implement plans. How will you execute your decision when the situation is unclear and uncertain? We need the right decision which is very effective that can turn the whole situation to our advantage. How will you do that? How will you know that your decision will either be effective or not? Experiences of people are very handy in this case. And those experiences of people differ based on their choices. Well, you can’t let a 60-year old fisherman decide the survival of a business corporation after all. Because the consequences won’t be affordable.
People are driven by desires. Without desires, it will be hollow and empty inside. I sometimes faced this situation during my teenage years. I felt empty inside without any desire and wondered what I am living for and why do I have to live, etc. The existence of a being should have some purposes. A human is a species who is mostly irrational and sometimes rational with many faces (positive sides, negative sides, dark sides, etc). Virtues, sins, and complex emotions are mixed together and become desires that motivate humans. There is good in the bad and bad in the good. A moment of desire influences a person’s choice and can change his/her fate. And I think humans are the only species who have desires. Animals express their emotions but what are they living for and what motivates them to continue living? Some are wild. Some live with humans. Some make the sky their playground and some live in water. But, what are their purposes? They exist just to fill the need require to balance the food chain? But I think they have more freedom because they are not controlled by desires.
Different people see different worlds. We live on the same planet yet we see different worlds because the information we absorbed since the day we were born is different. Something may look silly to me but it may be very important to others. That’s why I keep reminding myself to make judgments from multiple points of view.
Everyone enjoys their happy moments but unexpectedly this world is unfair, merciless, and cruel. That’s why we should also try to enjoy pain.
Everything has an end. Tangible things, intangible things: everything has a limit of time. Every existence is just temporary. That’s why I keep reminding myself not to take things for granted. Because you only know the value of something when you lose them.
Since I am living in a complex and mysterious world, there are many things that I can’t understand. But my inability to understand things make me more curious. How should I be answering my heart’s impassioned cries? However, at the end of the day, what I feel from deep inside of my heart is just empty solitude.
May 18, 2019
