The Present

A drunken philosophical ranting about life, its purpose, and the present moment.

Everyone has something they wish in life. Some wish to be rich; to have security. Others wish to have a family and a farm. Whatever differences we find in our wishes, we all want the same thing at our wish's root. That is satisfaction. But how can we find satisfaction within ourselves? When someone looks for satisfaction externally, they lose sight of where satisfaction begins. Take money for example, when given the option to choose a house, or two million US dollars, many US citizens would choose the two million dollars, as the average house price at the time of writing this is $800,000 in the continental United States. After some time, they are given another offer, a larger piece of land somewhere else, or ten million dollars. The people who took the two million dollars would likely choose to take the ten million. The point I am trying to make here is that satisfaction within external factors will never occur. A billionaire will keep cutting costs within their company to obtain more money, even though they have more than enough to last many generations without them making a single penny. We like to think of life having a purpose, as it makes it easier to live our day to day lives. We have no such purpose. The purposes we give ourselves are just that, ones we put onto ourselves to keep our minds stuck in the construct we believe in. We are no more animals than humans. You could say that our minds have a biological purpose to reproduce and continue on with our species, but why? Does passing down genetics have a purpose? With all of these thoughts, we give ourselves meaning by looking for satisfaction, yet most if not every human looks for external satisfaction, which does not suffice.
In modern times, it is hard to find any meaningful satisfaction. Countless people in Generation Z “doom scroll”. The act of ingesting inconsequential and unsubstantial media for hours at a time. I for one have been doing this all too much. I have also noticed older people partake. Many people’s mothers watch short videos on Facebook at full volume in a different room for hours at a time. When faced with the fleeting thought that you should do something with your time and commit yourself to something you would have internal satisfaction for doing such as a creative activity or being social, you are still glued to these meaningless videos with information that has no substance. Why have I, or you, or we let ourselves become slaves to this soul sucking behavior?
Time is the most precious resource, as there is only so much of it we have left. That is a saying I have heard from a friend countless times, and I understand it's worth, meaning that spending time with someone or doing something for an amount of time is worth more than any material good due to its inherent scarcity regarding our lifespan, but does time matter? Many people often find time to be that way, important overall, but I do not see that. It is not that I wish to die or wish to live long, but I don’t care. I understand reality in the now, and thinking of reality in terms of past events or probabilities of the future hinders us from finding satisfaction internally in the present. Finding some sense of satisfaction internally and presently is one thing that we can fully understand, as our minds have not altered our memory of the past, and our minds have not predicted the future. When living, use your senses. That sounds simple enough, but it is definitely not. Think critically about what you sense. That will help with satisfaction. Really focus on taste and texture when eating an enjoyable dish, for me that is a breakfast burrito. If you see a pretty flower, bend down and smell it. It might seem odd to others, but it will provide a smell that cannot be replicated in the same way. Something truly unique. That should make us satisfied. Our minds get in the way of living. We find things to worry about, we conform to these invisible social structures, and we remind ourselves of past failures.

Imagine a potato in a refrigerator.
What does it do?
…
It grows roots.