We take ourselves very seriously and pathetically. We are very proud of ourselves. And it’s really very funny.
“We take ourselves very seriously and pathetically. We believe that man is the crown of the so-called creation, the most important being on Earth. We are sure that our ideas about the meaning of life, good and evil are of decisive importance. We are very proud of ourselves. And it’s really very funny.
In all our affairs, we are guided by our own invented system of explanations. All our successes, defeats, social hierarchies are conventional units, which for some reason we consider unconditional. We live in order to achieve something in this conditional system. And then on our tombstone they write: “general such and such” or “composer such and such”. So, you have reached.
The need to constantly strive for new achievements makes us sick. We are afraid to fall out of the system even for a second. We build a “busy schedule” of our life and work (which is the same thing), and God forbid we admit to ourselves that there are at least 15 unaccounted minutes in this schedule. Busy — therefore, I exist. Not busy — I’m not there … Is it funny? Yes, in general, not very much. Buddhists call samsara the ocean of sorrow: those who wander on it do not understand that they themselves have built a prison for themselves. But as soon as you realize that the prison is only in your head, it becomes as funny as it has never been before.
* Yuri Mamleev, Russian writer. Quote from the novel «Wandering Time» (Limbus-press, 2001).
- Elizaveta Boyarskaya «Do today what you can do tomorrow»