Confessions of An Existentialist

We're always in a rush. In a rush to prove people. In a rush to prove to ourselves. In a rush to achieve. In a rush to survive another long day of existence. We are so much obsessed with rushing into living our lives that we actually forget what's actually there to be in such a worry. There's no finish line that we so much obsess over. Life is not a race even. Life is today, this hour, this moment that we suffocate with our ill-placed expectations and choices. Just pretend you're living a life worth living and one day when you get really good at it, that day sir, your life would actually begin.

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” ― Franz Kafka

The only truth is cinema. The truth that reveals every speck that this universe has to offer. You see its darkest side and its brightest through it. It takes you in and out of the ugliest and most beautiful faces of society, it's not fabricated and they call it scripted but it's not. It reveals the truest form of life and anything that doesn't do that isn't cinema. Cinema is important for more reasons than one could imagine.

Film lovers are perhaps among the hardest to impress. They know art, cinema, philosophy, logic, hate, grief, love and all kinds of things in their flawless form. So, whenever a person whose life has been built on cinema loves you and/or likes you or even takes interest in you, believe that you ARE extraordinary and just really SOMETHING.

You look like you're going to spend your life having one epiphany after another, always thinking you've finally figured out what's holding you back, and how you can finally be productive and creative and turn your life around. But nothing will ever change. That cycle of mediocrity isn't due to some obstacle. It's who you are. The thing standing in the way of your dreams is that the person having them is you.

We're all going to die pretty soon, so I had this idea, and tell me if it's stupid, but maybe we could all just stop encouraging this mainstream culture of giving too much importance to the likes of these in the name of cinema and accept that it's just a seasonal crap being churned out solely for cash which is not good for art's sake. Isn't it high time we start taking this art form a little more seriously?

Drugs ranked by how addictive they are: 5. Caffeine 4. Alcohol 3. Nicotine 2. Heroin 1. Cinema

Ikuko (Sufi word): meaninglessness. Life really has no purpose, it has no meaning, and that’s the most beautiful and profound thing about it. To reduce it to some meaning is to make it mundane; it loses its sacredness. The sound of running water has no meaning, the wind passing through the pine trees has no meaning, the waves of the ocean roaring have no meaning, the clouds and the thunder have no meaning. Meaning is a man-made thing. Remove man from existence and there will be no meaning left. Meaning is imagined, projected, and because it is a projected thing, again and again we will feel frustrated. Again and again we will come to know the truth: that the meaning we were giving to life was not true. Then one starts feeling cheated, one starts feeling worthless, accidental. And the reason is that we were searching for a meaning which is not there. If we don’t search for meaning, there is no frustration. If we don’t search for meaning then there is nothing meaningless either: then things are simply as they are. Sometimes it is cloudy and sometimes it is very sunny; sometimes it is very silent and sometimes it is very noisy. Things are as they are, and one starts enjoying whatsoever is moment to moment. That is the basic message of sannyas: to live life without any idea of purpose, meaning, profit, to just live it for the sheer joy of living it, loving it for the sheer joy of loving it. It is life for life’s sake: no goal, no purpose, no destination. Great freedom happens. When you are free of the obsession for meaning, you are really free.

A Slice of Hemingway “Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”

Self-destruction is so fucking beautiful. It's an art that opens you up from the inside and shows you your ugly version that has been smothered either by your own pretence for the outside world or by the people you love. It shows you anything you ever did in your life has no meaning and makes you inherently naked of all mistakes so that you can start fresh... All over again.

Love and Hurt. One of my favourite quotations is from Perks Of Being A Wallflower. It says, "We accept the love we think we deserve". That sums up who we allow to come close to us, and eventually hurt us. Another quote from the book The Fault In Our Stars by John Green has a message on the same line of thought, "You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices." These two quotations perform as conversational sparkler for a subject which is often overlooked by our heart - hurt. While we may hurt someone unintentionally, hurting someone on purpose is evil. The same holds for letting others do so. Allowing someone to hurt is as bad as hurting someone. An act prepared to hurt someone on purpose is defined as abuse, mental or physical violence, it is the very opposite of love. Hurt and love collide only so far the hurt doesn't override the hurt. If someone begins to hurt us more than they make us feel loved, chances are they don't care enough. Carefully observing the aura and energy of a person can tell us the potential of hurt they can cause to us and how much of that hurt is okay. Let's sit and think. Think about which action or thought of others make us sleepless? Think about how much have we hurt someone, be it with our speech or actions in the past? Reflection over our actions is the best way to humble down.

"Happy is not the right word. This world is not a place where we can be happy. lt wasn't created for man's happiness, though many believe this is the reason of our existence. I think we are here to fight, so that good and evil can clash within us, and good may prevail, thus enriching us spiritually. It's difficult to say whether we are happy or not: it doesn't depend on us... There are times when one regrets being born, but life also gives us surprising things that, alone, are worth living. The issue of happiness doesn't exist for me: happiness as such doesn't exist." In loving memory of Andrei Tarkovsky (April 4, 1932 -December 29, 1986)

Philosophy should be taught more in high school. There aren’t enough deep thinkers anymore. Everybody performs mindless tasks thinking they will benefit their futures when really it’s just another a cycle of performing dreadful tasks until you retire, then ultimately die after not living your ideal life. The time on earth you have is a beautiful gift that’s wrapped in dog shit. Life has great potential but naturally it sucks ass, and it’s those who think whether or not they’ll be happy following their current path that truly realize they need a change.

Get a job. Go to work. Get married. Have children. Follow fashion. Act normal. Walk on the pavement. Watch TV. Obey the law. Save for your old age. Now repeat after me: "I am free."

A thing about life, from Richard Dawkins: We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?

I fell in love with being alone with myself ever since I decided to mind my own business and go back in doing the things I used to do while growing up. I found solitude in books I haven't finished reading and even found my way back to writing again. It was hard at first, but as time passed by, I learned how to enjoy spending my time without disturbing anyone. Of course, I still go out whenever my friends invite me to hang out. But sometimes, I just prefer being in bed and listen to some music. I'm not closing my doors to anyone. It's just that there are times I prefer not having visitors at all.

To be honest, I prefer not knowing what the meaning of life is. Because it will probably end up being something lame like, "go out and find love" when in reality I don't even want to talk to humans. I perfer sitting back at home, enjoying my collection of films.

Existential Dread I Sometimes we find ourselves trapped, trapped in versions of ourselves, hating on each and everyone of them; simultaneously chasing the one version that would change our lives forever, and when we finally become that version, bang, we start hating it too. The chase goes on and on and in the meantime, as Ferris would say, life goes by without us realising it. Funny thing is the said concept doesn't limit itself to us as people, but it lingers on each and every thing we do in life. Eventually we'd start hating the job we do, start looking for the next big gig and everything just starts crumbling like dominos. But that's how we all choose to evolve, isn't it? We focus on something that at the given moment seems like the most important moment of our lives but in retrospect loses its meaning because eventually the passion would fade and it would just find something entirely new to focus on. While the world's in such a dire state, and our lives have been turned around for God knows how long, living life to its fullest doesn't really seem like a bad idea. But to what extent shall we stretch the concepts and definitions of life to live it in the best way possible. Wouldn't that mean that we have again kept a version of life on a pedestal that we'd constantly be chasing? Are we stuck in an infinite loop of longing and not getting what we desire? Was Hank Moody really right when he said longing for something is better than actually having it? Damn. This quarantine really needs to end. Or I should be productive and make it the best quaranti... FUCK!

Check out the first trailer for Christopher Nolan’s #TENET, in theaters July 17 @ChristopherNolanMovies

There was once a quote that I read that said "Art comes from unhappiness" but it always felt incomplete to me. So I then added "...but my happiness comes from art." There's a sense in which tragedies do inspire art, but I believe it has more to do with its cathartic element. It allows for the visual creative to find an outlet to express what words cannot. It allows for the writers to put words in their griefs. In other words, art is the means by which tragedies can be processed, inspected, scrutinized and then turned into something that offers a semblance of reason and beauty for the sufferer.