The sun rose this morning and I gained consciousness, just as I had the thousands of mornings before, not yet opening my eyes, filled with thoughts and meaning, knowing not yet my senses but merely my existence; I am alive. In just these few moments before I can feel with my fingers or hear the sound of the birds outside or open my eyes to the light of my window, I think. I still live halfway in a dream, knowing now that it is not real but still enjoying or fearing its contents, dipping back into sleep or shaking myself awake. It’s incredible! I know nothing in those moments; only, that I am, basking in the pure cosmic reality of life, desiring to stay there for an eternity, and another few years after that: time spent unburdened by mortal confines, but with the knowledge of meaning.
But I fell from this high. I find my senses again. I hear the birds outside chirping and I mistake it for beauty, approaching it and leaving behind my personal paradise. My thoughts are lost as I begin to move my hands. My dreams—great stories of triumph and carnage, culminating into my personal heaven or hell—fall as my fingers begin to feel. I have walked outside the gates of my kingdom of thought and wonder how I have lost my throne. When I open my eyes, searching for the light of my kingdom, the gates are shut and I am stripped of the memories of my meaning. My mortality taunts me and blurs the formerly clear reason for my life.
And every morning, I know this life and lose it again. Tomorrow I eagerly dread my waking.
It must be questioned if this state is indeed the beautiful nirvana I so praise. Perhaps I simply remember this time wrong and I am lying to myself in order to summon a lucid moment of life in an otherwise desolate search. Maybe this House of Wisdom in my subconscious does not exist, a mere figment to explain the finite hold of time on me and the hours so drained when I yield my thoughts to the fantasies of sleep.
Yes, now I quite well remember this morning! No longer do I explore the most inner depths of my soul, but instead, I am nothing. I know nothing for just a moment and it is overwhelming and terrifying because nothing is not darkness. It is not a white screen room that continues on forever, nor a black room without end. No, it is simply nothing, a lack of existence. In sleep, we succumb to the nothing and have never testified to it, yet in this moment, I see nothing and know nothing and that is something quite remarkable. I try to rush to my senses in fear of the nothing, but I find myself paralyzed in this moment, confronted by this nothing. I cannot describe it, for I cannot recall it, but I suppose it to be more terrifying than the eternal torture of the horned, winged, cruel demons of hell. Pain is something and through it, I live, though I may live painfully. Any person can become accustomed to pain given an infinity of it, for it only holds a very mortal power over the human person. Nothing lures a person into its clutches, or, rather, people are pushed to nothing by pain, living a painful existence well and fearing it. Yet, they know not the power of nothing, numbing only by bringing about the end of existence. They know not the fear of standing before nothing; the great, endless, momentary, finite nothing. It holds not the endless power of pain, but a quick snap that is the end, wake always uncertain. It is a wave of absence that should cleanse a person of the one thing they can know with certainty: life.
That terrifies me.
Perhaps, though, I have not seen nothing. It has known me in my sleep, stalking me as I toss and turn from the pain of my dreams reflecting my ever complex existence. But it would never show its face; even if it did, I would not see it, and should make no effort to see it. No, in this moment, I become the epitome of sluggishness and unproductivity. I lack all feasible capacity to work and I do not desire to reconnect to my senses, recognizing them as an evil that should demand me to work. What should work bring me but a life more comfortable! I am comfortable enough upon my bed. Yet, my thoughts now race and see my life passing so fast, my pockets growing empty, my body growing fat, my friends all succeeding while I no longer lay upon my bed, but on the streets, sleeping beside a cup of pennies all because I never arose from my state of inactivity. So, I submit to my senses, despite it shedding a pure comfort for a reality lacking such, only so that I may be comfortable tomorrow.
But this just seems entirely inaccurate: an illusion I developed to justify my lack of memory of a rather common moment (after all, I experience this moment every morning). I cannot quite remember what I know before I see the light of day, only what I had been dreaming right before, and even that evades me at times. It is a moment of both pure terror and pure greatness, deserving at least a second’s thought while conscious, in an attempt to recall the seemingly divine experience lasting but a few seconds everyday in the otherwise mortal experience.
I could continue quite long, telling you exactly what I have known in this brief moment, and, perhaps, I would find the right thoughts and experience and we will together be satisfied, having explored this moment to the fullest; yet, the hours of the night have grown too long and, with heavy eyes, my mind falters and memories have begun to fade to dreams. It is time that I sleep, and, when I wake, I should try to process this unknown moment to see if it deserves this passage or if I have simply fantasized over a rather ordinary waking; no matter the content, allow me this rest, and tomorrow morning, I will remember with a smile my morning’s wake.
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