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HEADING DOWN THE DRAIN

JON FERGUSON

When one finally realizes that one is heading down the drain, should it be a day of celebration or gnashing of teeth? I would tend to say the former. Confronting truth might be the most difficult thing to do in this world. Hence, admitting once and for all that one will really go down the drain of life is certainly a moment that should be duly celebrated. Figuring out what truth is is hard enough. Facing it head on makes one a veritable champion in this world. 

But what is truth? Who can really say they have it? No one that I know of, that’s for sure. 

For decades I have said that no one really knows what “life” is. If such is the case, surely we are also equally ignorant about death. It seems highly possible that life and death are no more opposites that up and down are, if one looks at the totality of the cosmos. Stars are not above or below. Only our silly minds think such things. There is no up or down in the universe. The truth might be that there are no opposites in our universe, e.g. there is no such thing as big or small or hot or cold; there are only continuums of size and temperature. Words like “up” and “down” are purely relative terms depending on the observer and where the observer might be. They have no meaning otherwise.   

So are life and death really opposites? My guess is that they probably are not….But regardless of “life and death” and the problem of opposites, we still go down the drain. We still get old and wrinkled. Our muscles wither and our organs lose their punch. We eventually all stop breathing and our hearts stop beating. Some people, of course, think our “souls” continue and that we are all as old as the universe itself, which in fact is not “young” or “old” because those terms too are relative and finally meaningless. 

Let us ask this. If all Being is eternal, i.e. neither young nor old, and if Being was never “created”, then what are we to think about our going down the drain? This is the question I asked myself as I finally realized that I am slowly, but surely, turning into pixie dust.  

The truth is, I don’t believe anyone on earth knows what happens when one “dies”. I do believe is that everything we learn on this earth is – in the end – a bunch of hogwash. None of us really knows what he or she is talking about. This is not a bad thing; it is actually a liberating one. This realization came to me at the same time I became cognizant of the facticity of my bodily (and to some extent “mental”) decay. I knew I was heading down the drain, and at the same moment I also sensed that everybody on earth is pretty much full of baloney. This concomitant moment of enlightenment made the certainty of my decline much easier to take. Suddenly realizing that everything one has ever been taught about existence is probably wrong (or at best partial and skewed) can be a kind of epiphany. And I’m not being hyperbolic. As I was walking through town yesterday, I suddenly looked around at everybody and thought, “O what a circus it is! Nobody really knows anything about anything. We all think we do because we have all been to school and learned a language or two and know how to count to a hundred and multiply and divide and know what the capital of Hungary is (“Budapest” for the real morons, but the word itself tells us nothing about anything) and how to tie a shoe and how to bake a cake… But the fact is that no one really knows anything about the nature of Being itself. I repeat…no one. Just like all other creatures, we human types all know how to do certain things in this world, but we are all blind with regard to the truth about existence…” 

Yes, in October I will be seventy-two-calendar-years old – just another old man for people to ignore (women especially), take care of (I have often said I will do away with myself before anybody has to take care of me), and look at like I used to look at my grandma and grandpa, i.e. like they were somehow always old. I am no longer an attractive human being. I am no longer solicited to do much. Were I an American Indian I still might have some clout. But in today’s Western world, other than the Joe Bidens and Nancy Pelosis of the world, most members of the over-seventy crowd don’t get a whole lot of cookies or status. But hey, they too will be going down the drain before they – or we – know it. Because when water does down the drain it spins faster. At least it seems that way. 

                                                               Morges, August 21, 2021 

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