Symbol vs. Reality and Hot Soul-less Women

Swingaling ding dong, Donny’s got another case of lockjaw. Yeah, he’s got it pretty bad this time. It’s pretty bad. I didn’t want to say anything because I know the funeral for the town manatee is this evening, but it’s pretty bad. I mean, he’s all locked up. Rock em sock em bop em and lock em, cause that boy is CLENCHED up. Yeah yeah, it’s pretty bad. But hey… hey! You look great in those pants. Are those cashmere? Did you get them from the pants store down the road? I heard that’s a great place for pants but not so much for shirts. I mean they have them there. Like, there’s shirts at the pants store. Like… they’re there. Don’t get me wrong, they are there. The quality is just subpar. At least compared to the pants. Which is honestly to be expected considering it’s the pants store. I mean it would make sense if the pants store specialized in pants. If the pants store specialized in shirts that would seem a bit backwards. I mean, at least to me. At least to me. I know a lot of people like to live their lives backwards.

Boy, do they. People have it all mixed up, constantly sacrificing reality for symbols. Money is the most obvious one. Money symbolizes value, and then we trade the money in for something of actual value. $100 isn’t actually worth anything until it is exchanged for something. Maybe it’s firewood. Now you have firewood, which is valuable because it will help keep you warm and allow you to cook food. We live in a primitive society in this example where firewood is still essential. Whatever. You get the idea. You exchange the $100 for electricity when you pay your bill.

The point is the money itself isn’t actually worth dick or balls. It’s just paper and rarely even that anymore. Numbers on a screen most of the time. A lot of places don’t even take cash anymore, which is both wild and insane. I just feel like if I owned a business, turning willing customers away at the door with cash in hand would seem like a poor way to grow my business and endear myself to my consumer base. Talk about backwards.

So, what? We just aren’t going to have any physical representation of value anymore? Everything’s going to be digital? Yeah, good luck with that. That only works when they system works, but what happens when the system doesn’t work? It inevitably crashes and then nobody can pay for anything? That’s just it? Okay, thanks guys. Cool cool cool. I’ll take my money and shove it up my ass.

It's actually kind of funny how screwed we inevitably are. We have become so reliant on the digital world that when it crashes (which it will, at some point) we won’t be able to do anything. We won’t be able to pay for anything or bitch about it on the internet. It’s truly ludicrous how much is reliant on the internet, especially considering how the internet is still so incredibly new. Over just three decades our entire society has transformed to be entirely reliant on this one thing. Yeesh.

I’m not going to plan for doomsday, because that’s just a bad idea. It makes a lot more sense to enjoy the miracle we’re living in and become completely consumed by the present moment, because it’s pretty sweet. I mean, the fact that I can write this and then people across the world can instantly read it is both bonkers and bananas. The amount of convenience available to us is unprecedented. We can order food on our phone and then it will just show up on our door in less than 30 minutes. That’s not normal. That’s king-like behavior. You should have to be a king to order Uber Eats, but that’s not the case. You can just be an everyday jabroni who works at Sears. That’s insane, that the people with the lowest level jobs in our country can still have food delivered to their door almost instantly.

The wildest thing about this is that everyone is so sad! Lord of the flies is this population depressed. Everything is so incredible, and nobody can see it because they’re caught in the cobweb of their own thoughts. I suppose that’s the ultimate juxtaposition of symbol against reality. We have thought vs. experience. WWE Supersmash presents today’s epic battle between THOUGHT and EXPERIENCE. Who’s gonna take it down!? Stay tuned to find out!

We get so bent out of shape about our experience because we are riddled with thoughts, which we grant validity. We believe our thoughts are important or meaningful. They are not. We don’t even know where they come from. We say, “I had this thought,” but what the deviled duck does that mean? Who has this thought? Show it to me. Where is this thought you speak of? How did you come up with it? How do you know it was you who generated the thought and not the thought that generated you?

Our entire sense of self is thought-generated. We think about ourselves constantly, thus creating a conceptual self. Our actual self is simply revealing itself moment by moment, always changing and constantly evolving. This perception we have of ourselves is a thought-generated symbol. It’s not the real self. We symbolize ourselves so we symbolize the world. Unaware of the distinction, we find ourselves blind to the reality in front of us.

We don’t actually perceive the world as it is because we are layering our symbols on top of it. We generate thought-driven abstractions out of everything, constantly labeling, defining, and interpreting the world around us. Instead of experiencing a person as they are in front of us, we immediately attempt to box them in. We take account of their looks, their style, and how they speak. Then, we create a conceptual self out of this person and define them categorically in a lackadaisical attempt to “understand them.”

You could never understand another person, they’re too complicated and too shifty. You can only become aware of their patterned tendencies. Most people move in the same patterns over and over. They go to the same job, see the same people, make the same food, etc. etc. Then, a definition of self is constructed out of these patterns, either by them or somebody else, or both. We describe our occupations in terms of self. We don’t say “I sometimes account.” We say, “I am an accountant.”

This is merely a definition constructed out of patterned behavior. We think, “I do accounting in a defined pattern for eight hours, five days a week, so that’s what I am. I am an accountant.” But this is not true. This is an interpretation of a pattern followed by an attachment of definition. When we define ourselves, we limit ourselves. We become static and stale, boring and depressed. Reducing a human to a definition is a great disservice to the chaotic beauty and spontaneity of our true selves.

If we reduce ourselves to a definition, we must become depressed. Really, we’re more compressed. We’ve compressed our entire being into this tiny, defined box. The rich complexity of our nature is stripped down to four walls, and we convince ourselves there’s no way out.

If we awaken to this, the compression on our faces smacks us like a ton of bricks. Suddenly we’re walking around town, and it becomes painfully obvious how compressed everyone is. Stuck in a stare of stern sordidness, the people walk along defined lines of pernicious pavement. Their serious disposition is written in eyelids drooping and fearful frowns. Curiosity has evaporated from their posture as they’ve become the mundane they claim to hate. Asleep, the compressed soul only digs further and further in, never waking to what wiggles beyond.

Ain’t that something, partner? The lack of curiosity is strikingly obvious to me these days, particularly in women. This isn’t to say anything about women, I just happen to notice it more in females because as a straight male I am naturally captivated by woman. In the past I would pay more attention to a woman’s body, and this would be the first thing about her I would notice. The first thing about a woman I notice now are her eyes, because that’s where the story lies.

It's the most beautiful thing in the world, to see curious and feminine eyes. Sadly it has become increasingly rare to witness such pearls. The curiosity has been replaced by certainty, identity, and deep sadness. The darkness in her eyes, oh the darkness in her eyes…

I’ve noticed it has become especially pronounced in women who are physically attractive. There’s often an entire posture persisting around those compressed eyes, hiding the scared self underneath as their physical prowess acts as a cloak to the cold soul underneath. Once captivated by the cloak, it no longer distracts me and all I see is someone who could use a good laugh.

That’s the folly of an attractive woman, I suppose. If your whole life people have told you how great you look and insist on defining you by your looks, how could you not define yourself that way? How could you not become so mundane? With eyes constantly looking back at you full of amazement and wonder, it’s no surprise the curiosity in your own begins to turn around and drown in a sea of self-absorption.

If the attractive woman really believes it’s her who is beautiful and not the world, she’s in for a torpedo of trouble. Only if she understands that her and the universe are co-existent and co-emerging can she radiate true beauty and become the finest gem known to man. But fine gems are rare. Oh so rare.

- Butternut Billycream

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