How do you define ‘a life’ when every atom in your body changes, your memories are inaccurate, and your personality transforms dramatically from time to time throughout your lifetime? What even is ‘a lifetime’? Are you that same creature that your mother pushed out on the day you were born, or are you completely different?
Perhaps, it is the absence of death which defines a single life. Perhaps, it is the gradual overlapping of substances through space and time around a single point. But perhaps you have died before and merely forgot, as though it were an insignificant dream. Perhaps the entire world ceased to exist for just a moment, or perhaps for a hundred years, but then reappeared all at once exactly as it was. And what is a world anyway?
Do you live in different worlds at different points in your life? Or in different lives? We think of our world as a single thing, but is your world not completely different living in one place than it is living in another, or from one state of consciousness to the next? Is there a path that leads from world to world? Is there a way back again?
Some questions, once asked, will change what you are, who you are. Every philosopher ought to know this. Some ideas, however simple, once thought about will change your being altogether, permanently shift your perspective. Some things, once understood, carry grave personal responsibilities with them. I will not disclose these things here, but instead mention them only to spark the temperaments of those among you with the disposition to engage with futile labors.
I warn all young philosophers and prospective philosophers: The search into your universe, into possibility, and into yourself all end in the same place. Discovering the wisdom that one seeks inevitably reveals to oneself how little one can ever know. Certainty is the first thing you will lose, for it is an impossibility. Next goes one’s naïve innocence—oh what a comfort that was to have. Then you will begin to see the world for what it truly is, and all of its inhabitants too, and the trivial indifference that each has for the other and for itself.
Who else sees the quest for what it is? Who else knows the question to be of more significance than its answer? Who else so disbelieving, so determined to impact the nature of all? This is us! This is who we are: Lovers of wisdom, students of knowledge, bearers of the cross that is the examined life.
We live many lives, change static worlds, question unquestionable truths. We value. We refuse to accept authorities who cannot give us reasons to conclude upon. We were the first; we shall be last. We have given the most; we have taken the least. We had foresight that surpassed the wildest dreams of those around us as we discovered realities, opposed and disbelieved until long after we were gone. And it all came from our intuition.
We do not choose to be who we are, or to do what we do; only who we are not and what we do not. We did not ask to become great, but only wise. We, thrown into the world, were those who had understanding. We treasure greater things: Not wealth, not power, nor even fame. What we seek is a mere glimpse of the bigger picture. We do not covet valuable trinkets, but value itself. We want not to know the meaning, but rather what it is to mean at all.
So I warn you, happy fools of the uninitiated, be wary of what texts you put before your eyes. We have a lust for corrupting youth. There is no turning it off. It cannot be ignored, only avoided altogether. We are the great thinkers, but to such absurd irony, the tortured minds as well. And we know when you are full of shit. We invented that. Now hear what I say to you, it’s time to either wake up for good or go back to your dreamless sleep. Which is it?
To finish, I leave this thought which has infinite regress:
How do you ever know
That the ‘you’ who you seem to be
Isn’t but a vivid memory
In the mind of the ‘real you’ as you’re about to die,
And your whole life flashes before your eyes?