"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed." -Blaise Pascal
The ideas surrounding this statement are simply wonderful. Man does emerge from nothing, does he not? Even from a very literal point of view this is true. Before pregnancy there was nothing there; in Christianity Mary was a virgin; therefore, Jesus would come from nothing. God also comes from nothing, if nothing existed before God. (The arguments following that logic are tedious.) This holds true in other aspects of life, etc.
This idea, this statement had a reminiscing effect for me. I did come from nothing. I am engulfed in something so vast it cannot be comprehended, in infinity. It is a nice reminder of one's insignificance. I don't mean that I'm insignificant in an emo, I-think-I'll-go-die sort of way, either.
We all get so caught up in our own little microcosms that we forget others are suffering or celebrating something just as monumental (if not more so) in their own lives. When one thinks of birth and death as something less personal, something that everyone and everything (corporations not included, har har) must experience it becomes a connecting force. We are all connected, if only because we all emerged in the same ways, and we are all engulfed in the same thing.
The disconnect present in a world that is so connected is disheartening, to say the least. The more that I seek such things, the more that I try to connect with the energies and natural things around me, the more noticeable this disconnect becomes, yet because of that fact I find myself pushing even harder to find this real connection and existence. One that I can truly be proud of, one that I can look back on to see that I've actually "stopped one heart from breaking" (see Emily Dickinson).
I've many a goal, but that's it, that's the one, put concisely.
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