An Unfiltered Glimpse into the Mind of a Quarantined College Student
An unedited conversation with myself at the peak of quarantine-inspired introspection.
Why do we hate and love in but a single moment? What is a feeling? A fleeting, ephemeral burst of dopamine, followed by a fall from a great height.
Eternal falling, it often feels like. Never to come to an end. A body full of emotions it is not equipped to handle. A mind full of ideas it is too naïve to understand. We know nothing, and yet we aim to know everything. If only for a moment everything were to stop — complete silence … complete freedom — how wonderful would that be? A dream for which we all hope, while confined to a reality created by illusions. We know not what we see, we hear only what we want to hear, and we speak nonsense half the time. I have tried to understand, but I have been met with no success.
In this moment, there is so much, and I feel everything — yet I also feel nothing. Perhaps the entanglement of so many emotions within the human soul results in a feeling so powerful that the mind knows not how to experience it — thus resulting in emptiness.
How to feel? I know not. Does anyone? We spend a lifetime complaining of feelings while in reality we experience so few as a result of our own denial. So stop denying? But then you must deal with pain. The solution is unclear; the path ahead is invisible. In the dense and misty fog, we follow our footsteps into a future that likely holds something quite different from what we expect. For the present, once the future, is likely not what we envisioned it to be in the past that was once the present.
So why try? If you are already doomed or destined to a fate not of your own choosing, then what is the point in your own decisions? Perhaps we do it for a sense of ease. Or perhaps the future is unpredictable and yet still a product of our actions. That is somehow more frightening — to know of a million possible outcomes, yet not know what they are. To know that your decisions will choose one — yet not know which one. But, perhaps that is the meaning of life. To continue forward in spite of wanting to fall to the ground and sleep.
I know not, for I cannot even understand my own feelings. An endless amalgamation of colors and lights, endlessly spiraling into a vortex which I can feel but cannot see. Some days it feels exceedingly happy; other days it feels hopelessly sad. Today, it feels nothing. I do not know why. Perhaps it is an indication that this storm I will soon weather and my heart will find peace? I know not, for that seems a premature thought. But the feeling — or lack of it — is odd, and I am intrigued to be experiencing it.
To know what is from what is not must be the greatest of all human gifts, that enlightenment which the heart so deeply desires. Perhaps this is the path by which one reaches it. I know not. I wish to know, and yet I know not. Perhaps someday I shall know more, but as I await that day, the only wisdom I have to offer is that I know not. I know not. I know not.
I wish to know, and yet I know not.
