What follows is an edited version of a notebook that I filled between 2015 and 2017 with random thoughts and quotes I didn’t want to forget, along my journey in search of happiness and truth.

 

***

We exist. Why?

And everyone worries about everything else…

 

What’s worth living for?

 

Welcome into my head, I’m Michele, but this name doesn’t tell you anything; who am I, really? This is what I’m looking for, and most importantly: why am I here? And what am I supposed to do? 

 

They pop into my head like pop-corn on a frying pan: justice, love, truth, beauty, cruelty, existence… there, gone… vague and indistinct, I don’t understand where they come from, why, what they are, why, where they are going, why…

Pragmatic life and reason, cave-men and philosophers, homeless and time-wasters, what’s the answer? What’s the all-solving equation? I don’t know if it exists and I don’t know what “existence” is.

I do things and I think, I think about time when I’ve got time to think, I think about relationships between people, and between people and the world around them. Relatives. Granma. Friends. School. Future. My part in the history of men.

Reality, imagination, wonder.

 

School gives me a bad feeling… I’m full of Physics, Chemistry, History and Philosophy, but, despite this, I feel empty.

 

What’s reality and what’s important?

 

I don’t know if pain builds or demolishes the armour of our human fragility.

 

Suffering because of loss.

Is the solution not to possess?

 

Rituals are the consolation of survivors,

For a while it’s just like engaging the autopilot.

 

Everything happens because of something else, neither merit nor blame exist.

 

By ignorance and suffering evil is caused.

 

There must be something important to do, right?

I want to know it. And at the same time I’m afraid to find out what it might be…

 

Life is odd…

What do you mean?

Well, there’s no handbook. You don’t know what’s important and what’s not…to live is hard, very hard. And to choose to live, too. I don’t know if I did, yet.

A lot of people live out of habit… right? They don’t ask themselves what life is, what living means. I don’t know it, yet, but I want to. Why do we live? I want to understand deeply the importance of life.

 

I don’t know what to do, right now. I don’t feel like reading, I don’t feel like hiding in made-up places, I don’t feel like watching movies or videos, same reason, I’ve had enough of external inputs for the day.

 

I’m not smart enough. I can’t get a clear and comprehensive view, I can’t visualize my feelings, much less express them. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what I’ve got to do. I’m tired. I’m empty. I don’t know what to do.

I’m not bored, don’t get me wrong, I’m a victim of existential ennui, and uneasiness, why? I’m conscious, it’s a curse.

I’m conscious, it’s a curse. …like something existed that could curse me. Questions. Questions upon questions. Doubts. What do I do? I’m writing because I don’t feel like doing anything else, I could read, draw, create something. But why? Why? Is it worth it? Is doing good worth it? Surely doing evil is not. Good. Evil. Maybe I’ll learn what’s right. Maybe I’m about to understand something. I like that… I’m about to understand. Something. Anything. Hate and passion. Blind. Who can see anyway?

 

I Perceive but I don’t Understand. …it’s frustrating.

 

Should I take refuge inside fiction, indifferent to the probable cruelty of life?

 

Immersed in the world, I watch it from the outside.

 

I don’t want to live out of habit…

 

Existential ennui… and I don’t know if it’s possible to overcome it, yet, if there’s a solution. We surround ourselves with people and objects, but what if all of this should vanish? What would we do then? How would we go on?

 

Who am I?

Who? Who? 

NO ONE   maybe

WHY? I DON’T KNOW

 

I’m hungry.

I’ll eat. Will I feel better?

I’m tired.

I’ll sleep. Will I feel better?

I can’t see anything. Reality.

Ideas. Willpower. Time. Time to think. Curse. Tonight.

What? I want to understand. What? Maybe do? What? It’s the answer. But  how?

COWARD. STUPID. CLOSE-MINDED.

What?

 

I don’t feel so apathetic anymore, or at least I haven’t got time to be.

Am I emptying out? I don’t think so, I’m just living.

(Spoiler alert: I was emptying out. Meaning that I was taking my life for granted, without questioning my happiness. And it all came crumbling down, in the end.)

 

If men didn’t have to survive, what would they do to pass the time: to wait for death?

 

If you and a child survived the apocalypse, every last human memory and trace gone, what would you teach him?

 

How much can you take from a man until he stops being one. 

 

Pleasure and excitement for what’s forbidden and dangerous(?)

 

What do I need to do?

I don’t know what I need to do. I have got things to do, but they’re far away, not pressing. There’s an infinity of things I could do, but… here I am, writing. Because I can’t think of anything worth doing, that needs doing or that I need to see done. I could draw, I could write, but it’s always like this: when I’ve got no time, I have a thousand ideas and I want to make them happen, and when I’ve finally got time, I don’t feel like doing anything and I feel this annoying sensation… boredom? Like there’s something better to do but I don’t know what it is.

Like nothing’s important enough. 

What do I need to do?

 

Sublime…?

The pleasure one experiences when perceiving something that exceeds one’s comprehension, that reason can’t fully comprehend, surround, organize, grasp, imagine, visualize.

The sublime highlights a conflict between imagination and reason, it points to the existence of a supersensible idea.

 

Do you ever think there is more to it than what we see?

That there’s something that evades our intelligence?

 

“One needs to make his own life, the same way one makes a work of art. The life of the wise man needs to be of his own creation.” 

– D’Annunzio

 

OVERVIEW EFFECT

“Well, in the ancient literature we found a description called ‘savikalpa samadhi’. That means that you see things as you see them with your eyes, but you experience them emotionally and viscerally, as with ecstasy, and a sense of total unity and oneness. I said, well, that’s exactly what the experience was.”

 

Why was I happy?

Laying down with her

On the blossoming field

Under the warm sun.

What is happiness?

 

What is existence? What does it mean to exist?

To give and to receive. I’m a living being, I don’t feel pain right now, did I do anything to deserve this?

 

He’s dead.

And birds keep singing.

The sun rises and the sky is clear.

I saw a butterfly dancing

And the trees didn’t bow their heads.

The earth didn’t shiver

And the Universe wasn’t moved.

 

It’s easier, with a dull mind, to regret the past, resigning, with comfortable melancholy, to its immutability, rather than striving to make the present a work of art, that, in the future, you will admire with fulfillment. 

 

Maybe true and everlasting happiness does not exist. Maybe we have got to accept the fact that the only happiness that we are ever going to find will be partial and imperfect, based on things that will eventually disappear. 

 

Everything happens randomly, there’s no merit nor blame.

 

Does pain strengthen or weaken the armour of our spirit?

Does it make it hardened and coriaceous, numb and dull, or vulnerable and helpless?

 

Maybe it’s ‘cause I’m in search of some kind of… universal ethic, a way to be happy that anyone, always, would be able to pursue, that I can’t settle for fleeting and material pleasures, nor for the happiness that comes from somebody else…

And I feel a bit guilty, because my happiness is without reason, but I give in to it without deserving it (or without knowing why I do). Because it doesn’t seem fair that there are ways to be happy, but not everyone is able to pursue them. That’s it. And maybe truth is indeed bitter and it doesn’t match the dreamers’ hopes, and no matter how long we look for happiness, we’ll always find it fleeting or we won’t find it at all. How long can we keep hoping? How far can hope take us? 

What’s the truth? Can reason reach it? Is there a faith that leads to the answer? An instinct, an insight? Then, again, how can every human know it and gain access to it? What’s the answer?

Why do I think these things? Why? What do I have to do? Is my reasoning not good enough? What is reason? What’s the reason why reasonable thoughts are reasonable? How can we judge reality, if not through reality itself? 

How far can language go in describing reality? And beyond that, how much can it question it? Can we think about anything other than reality and combinations of it? Can we think about things that don’t exist and that can’t be linked with reality? And, once having thought them, can we express them? We can’t think about colors that we can’t perceive…

Is there something inside of us other than matter? If there isn’t… how can reality conceive of something that’s foreign to it? If there is… why?

And why these laws? Why these particles? Why space and time? Rather than nothing…? No-thing… absence even of absence itself…

Infinite

Things that however hard we try, we couldn’t understand.

Sublimities that overcome reason. (?)

Help

 

I’ve got to stay with myself.

I’ve got to understand.

 

You have to work on your pain, not saddle others with it.

You have to understand it and accept it however possible, not ignore it or drown it temporarily.

 

Seek a timeless and universal purpose (?)

 

Know and accept yourself.

 

Know your Inner Self and seek the Truth

 

Happiness is addictive.

 

Happy: one who feels fully satisfied with his desires, who has a serene spirit, not troubled by pains nor worries, and who enjoys this state of his.

 

Happiness only real when consciously chosen.

And how do you choose happiness?

I feel to human to understand

 

I don’t feel like being with anyone.

Or rather, there’s no one that I feel like being with.

 

What am I afraid of??

 

It takes time… I must be patient with myself

 

Now I have to seek truth and understand who I am.

I would have been happy, but my happiness would have depended on her.

 

To love a person doesn’t necessarily mean to hand them your pain, so you can forget it and avoid facing it. 

 

Why did I cry so badly?????

 

I feel the world crumbling down on me, I don’t understand what the problem is and I can’t think of a solution

I’m sorry you had to end up with me…

 

Do I think I’m a difficult person to stay with, to love?

 

I’d like to find people I’m in syntony with.

Do I think I’m boring?

 

At the moment, fun seems to me like just another way of ignoring one’s thoughts, worries and fears.

 

Why do we need to share…?

Because we need to feel appreciated, we need to feel that we have something in common with somebody else, that we are not alone, different or inadequate.

We need to feel like we belong to something greater than ourselves. We need feedback, so we can prove to ourselves that we exist and that we are necessary and that we are worthy of love.

 

Also people make the odds higher.

 

Maybe that’s why I felt indebted and guilty.

Because I felt I abandoned myself to her.

I abandoned myself to her, so I wouldn’t need to think.

I abandoned myself to her happiness, so I wouldn’t need to find it myself, because I couldn’t find it myself.

I looked for happiness in the romantic and idealized love that existed in my head.

 

Being happy is hard…

Because it’s tiring, it’s a constant effort, though it’s different from eating or working out… because no one explains it to you, no one tells you what to do, no one tells us to practice happiness… and it’s not an instinct either.

Our happiness doesn’t come from just food, health and mere survival, neither it comes from reproduction and the continuation of our species.

 

We need to practice happiness. And it can’t depend on external and temporary objects, but rather on ourselves, who we can count on until death.

 

I felt guilty because I couldn’t make the effort to practice happiness.

 

This is what has always troubled my happiness and love, the subconscious awareness that I didn’t earn them, that I merely gave in to them; before feeling love and happiness because of something external, you need to reach them on your own and for your own sake.

 

It’s easier to wait for happiness instead of working to find it. But in the latter case, it’s deeper, lasting and more fulfilling.

 

Our happiness doesn’t depend on mere survival.

 

You are conscious. You exist. No sensory input. You know you exist.

 

Who are they that know not what they do?

 

What you call reason is just the consequence of reality and the laws that guide it.

 

Is the concept of “unity” absolute?

 

TURNING PRO

It’s procrastination if you feel hollow and unfulfilled afterwards.

If you didn’t love a project that’s terrifying you, you wouldn’t feel anything at all.

No matter if you fail or succeed, keep going on.

 

If surviving on its own does not bring happiness, what does?

 

Human beings NEED other human beings in order not to be just animals. 

We just can’t sort it out all by ourselves.

We need communication and sharing ideas.

 

I’ve got to accept the effort to go beyond.

 

I’m trying to know myself, I’m trying to listen to myself and to understand what it is that I need… I cannot give in to someone else’s love and ignore these problems.

I need to be on my own.

 

Thank you for making me realize that your own happiness must depend on yourself alone before any other person or external thing.

 

Sometimes I wonder how could I possibly be happy again,

Other times, how could I’ve ever been sad.

 

How can you comfort an awareness that’s crying

On a rock thrown into the void?

On a rock floating in the dark?

It’s crying because it knows it is fundamentally alone

In an indifferent space.

It’s crying because even if it managed to be happy,

At some point it would cease to exist anyway.

 

We are constantly in search of something familiar so that, just for a moment, we can lower our guard. We can allow ourselves not to be afraid and alert. We can forget that we are waiting for death and we don’t know why.

 

I don’t want to get distracted.

 

No… that’s a place you would go to with somebody…

 

Inside a community you necessarily give up a part of your decisional power. But it is worth it, if you find relief in your freedom from an equally large part of responsibility…

 

Meditation is a balm for my crowded mind.

 

Dad speaks without thinking about what he’s saying.

Mom listens, while thinking about a thousand things.

There’s no conscious identity…

Dad just wants to appear,

Mom wants to do, instead,

The best way;

Neither wants to be. 

 

“I wake determined and I sleep satisfied.” 

 

To relish in a sea of surrender.

 

I don’t want to entrust my happiness to nothing and to no one, other than to myself. 

 

Because I don’t like the idea that my life is being controlled by something other than myself and the things I can control.

 

How much control do I have over myself?

What do I do that doesn’t depend on me?

 

What do I WANT to do? What do I HAVE to do? What CAN I do?

 

(Until psychological well-being isn’t realized) Entertainment for its own sake is just an illusory relief, a distraction aimed at ignoring the effort to reach the deeper and lasting psychological well-being. A effort that can be, not ignored, but controlled, through meditation.

 

I don’t want to settle and live out of habit: I want to live out of choice.

 

Who am I? When am I? When I choose? When I think?

 

I’m trying to learn from my mistakes… I’m trying to find a way to be happy that depends on myself alone, autonomous and independent.

 

Is every relationship a form of dependence?

 

I have to reproduce what is, not my idea of it.

 

(The need to feel needed…)

 

Belonging to something greater.

The communion that lets us feel less insignificant.

 

We need to feel “normal”.

We need to share (actively), we need to have something in common (passively).

We need to feel normal and necessary.

We help and we love.

 

I am grateful.

Because you made me realize that, in a relationship, you can’t entrust the other person with your pain, nor with your happiness, with your responsibilities, nor with your merits and blame.

You taught me that, before I can care about someone else, I need to listen to and know myself, and that, before worrying about others’ judgement, I have to understand what I need, first.

 

Words and reality… language… mmh…

 

“If I put my happiness in the hands of you, well, I no longer have control over my happiness.”

 

Freedom.

Freedom of choice.

Survival is a given.

Eternal health.

Choose.

 

I feel sad because, when facing this problem, you didn’t consider that I could have helped you…

 

Maybe I just want to feel different… to feel special…

 

Never take anything for granted.

 

I want to live in manual mode, not in autopilot.

 

Sometimes life sucks… it’s unjust and indifferent… and to convince ourselves it doesn’t does nothing but make it worse.

 

Mental illness is scary because it highlights the material and fleeting nature of consciousness.

 

It’s imperative not to be lulled and numbed by temporary pleasures, but to be able to look for happiness, not just when you’re sad, but also, and especially, when you feel content.

 

I feel more confused, disconsolate and disheartened than ever.

I feel lonely, foreign and unable to express myself.

But today the sun rose, despite everything.

The Search continues.