"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration and this is where I think language came from.
I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another.
And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like you know, "water." We came up with a sound for that.
Or "saber tooth tiger right behind you". We came up with a sound for that.
But when it gets really interesting is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we're experiencing.
What is like... frustration? Or what is anger or love?
When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person's ear.
Travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I'm saying and they say "yes", they understand.
But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They're just symbols. They're dead, you know?
And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It's unspeakable.
And yet you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think that we're understood I think we have a feeling of spiritual communion.
That might be transient, but I think it's what we live for.
I had a friend once who told me that the worst mistake that you can make is to think you are alive, when you're really asleep in life's waiting room.
The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. 'Cause if you can do that you can do anything.
The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses.
And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he's not talking about something abstract. He's not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about.
It's something very concrete, it's you and me talking, making decisions, doing things, and taking the consequences.
It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference.
It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, it makes a difference to other people, and it sets an example.
In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are.
A thousand years is but an instant. There's nothing new, nothing different; same pattern over and over.
Same clouds, same music, the same things I felt an hour or an eternity ago. There's nothing here for me now, at all.
Now I remember, this happened to me before. This is why I left. You have begun to find your answers. Although it will seem difficult the rewards will be great.
Exercise your human mind as fully as possible knowing that it is only an exercise.
Build beautiful artifacts, solve problems, explore the secrets of the physical universe, savor the input from all the senses, filled with joy and sorrow and laughter, empathy, compassion, and tote the emotional memory in your travel bag.
I remember where I came from, and how I became human, why I hung around, and now my final departure's scheduled. This way out, escaping velocity. Not just eternity, but Infinity.
They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn't you say the same thing about life?"
― Walking Life (2001)
