Wishful Thinking

A fundamental agony of being human is due to the fact that we feel like we are minds in bodies. Even though this exact metaphysics may not actually be the case, the intuition is intrusive nonetheless. The intuition is the infinite being contained within the finite. The limiting and constricting nature feeling embodied can feel like entrapment— a sentencing to a life not of one’s choosing. Our minds have the ability to imagine and from this astounding ability comes a myriad of disappointing consequences. We can imagine being free from our loathsome ‘meat sacks,’ for one. We can imagine retaining consciousness as we know it, but without being tied to the earth by forces of gravity: flying freely in the air. It doesn’t matter to us, in this state of imagining, whether or not it is possible or ever will be. What matters is that we can see it and taste it vividly. We can simulate in almost mirror-like resemblance the sensations of weightlessness and boundless energy, but they always remain just out of reach. Instead, we are left to take care of this material body and its ceaseless needs.

On the flip side of things, we can also imagine not having the unfortunate disposition to, at some point, die. And from this difference between imagination and reality grows a deep, deep feeling of longing and disappointment. Again, it doesn’t matter that immortality is impossible, we still mourn our impermanence, despite it being unreasonable. While we are also able to engage with a certain kind of acceptance of our condition, sometimes this acceptance feels like defeat: bathing oneself, but not being happy about it. Yes, we may get on with our day, doing what is necessary to live, but all the while there is this perspective available to us: the perspective of infinite possibility. If only it were unimaginable! To be spared from seeing what you cannot have. To be a blissful toad, catching flies with its tongue, unconcerned with the nature of its toad-like condition and the limitations of its existence— a pipe dream.

What a strange thing to say: “I am a mind in a body, but I am not happy about it.” What an odd idea to be communicated by a thing about itself. A thing doesn’t like being itself? But it doesn’t have a choice in the matter, now does it? Yes, that is the point. It does not have a choice about what it is, while it so dearly wants one. You see, this is probably an inevitable phase of human development. People grow from the smallest of embryos to eventually moving around the world and seeing how they can interact with it. They want to learn what they can and cannot do. They want to see what they are capable of. This process can take a long time. In a way, it is a grieving process: to grieve the realization of who you are, starting with denial (I can do anything) and ending with acceptance (ok, fine, I can’t do everything). To learn to be able to say: this is the way I am (a being with limitations). Yet, even when that glorious moment has arrived, when we have finally accepted the nature of our condition, we still long to transcend it. If only to transcend for the briefest amount of time, to rise above our nature, if only.

The desire to transcend is so strong that we frequently hallucinate the reality that we want. This wishful thinking, to want to be more than, or above what we are, leads us as a people to do many bizarre behaviors in pursuit of it. The wish to be ‘chosen’ and ‘special’ leads us to build structures of fairy tale resemblance: palaces, kingdoms, skyscrapers, and elaborate temples. If only to tell the world: “I am not merely a meat sack! What I imagine is real!” But what this behavior always implicitly implies is that they are special in relation to others who are not. And if that is not grandiosity, then there is no such thing. But to the grandiose, everything makes total sense. The one holding the gun feels no cognitive dissonance, no internal inconsistency, in fact, they feel as if it could not have been any other way. The hallucination becomes their reality so that when confronted with reality, there is nothing left to do but conclude that reality is the hallucination and wish desperately to be returned to their ‘senses.’

There is no conclusion; there is only observation.