MUTSA

We used to look up at the stars and wonder at our place in the cosmos, and for all the magic in such wonderment, we decided that it simply was not enough. It would not do to not know for sure (as sure as we can ever be, anyway) – and so we launched ourselves into the great beyond, and we did not stop. Even now, as Douglas Trump visits the troops and Paul Pogba-Cantona teaches Ole Gundam Soldier how to milly rock, we are hurtling through the black, arms stretched out ahead, blindly barreling into that fascinating great unknown.

We are the only ones. There has been no other species that awoke one day and decided that the good Earth, green, lush and giving, was inadequate, and as Eve and Adam could not resist the fruit, so to do we seem incapable of simply existing, content with what we have and where we are. It seems we are cursed, for in the ever-expanding expanse we can never reach absolute knowledge, and it seems happiness itself will always flee with the ever-moving boundary of the world. And so we ask,

WHAT IS THE POINT?

We live, and then – blink, death, and in that time we fight and feel and fall and for all our floundering, the end is the same. We work towards this dream, this hope and then we attain it, or something like it, or not, and then that is that. This is not news to any of you (I hope), and yet we live as if tomorrow will stretch on until it meets forever. It is the single-most curious thing; we chase knowledge and power and wealth and handle it all so reverently, with an almost ridiculous sentimentality. Beyond the murk, in the black sea of space we pray that we find our happiness, and so we run a race whose ending is known.

I do not understand. All I know is that I too am privy to this uniquely human condition. Perhaps the most difficult thing is to exist, and to be purely content as a result of one’s existence alone. (Strictly speaking, a purely content person is not content – they simply are. To call oneself content is to already place some standard to judge one’s contentment levels. I can tell you do not like or appreciate this segue, but as I have said before, I care, but not a lot). This raises an interesting question I do not know I can answer:

What does this say for all the good that is done because of the discontent we feel at perceived wrongness?

For surely this has been the backbone of the progressive fervor that has gripped society – a discomfort that arises at seeing a black man who cannot vote in his own country, or a young girl who is not allowed to access the privileges afforded by education. What is there to be said of the person who can completely dissociate themselves from the world, unmoved by all the good – and bad, that goes on around us? I think that we do not talk enough of these things – for I see value in both states of being, and as much as there is ample conflict between the ideals, I do think there is space for compromise.

I present now a divisive figure – the boy Gandhi, otherwise called ‘Mahatma’ (not the rice, I think). The boy Gandhi was both a very negative and positive man, with both vile, racist beliefs and noble, pacifistic ideals. It is possible to both like and dislike things said, done and proposed by the same man (as opposed to the nonsense of society having you choose who is ‘good’ and who is ‘bad’). In the same vein, perhaps there is a way to live, and be alive, aware and open to our fellow man’s plights and pleas, and yet filled with thankfulness for what we have, which is, and always has been life.

We are nearing the end. The world seems smaller everyday, and yet each ‘answer’ brings with it a myriad of questions. The greed of man has not shown any signs of abating, and rubies and jewels have not lost any of their shine. There is still war, and famine, corruption and crime, and yet we are here. You are here, somewhere around the heart of Stall 13 and for that alone I am grateful. I still look up at the stars and wonder, and that is all I will do for the wonders down here, all of you, are enough to span a lifetime of love and questions, and beyond.