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The daily tedium tumultuously tumbles you into a tired, detained and default state… and it’s not your fault: we’ve all been there.

You wake up, work your exhausting (sometimes mindless) 9-5, get home, exercise for a minute, eat dinner… and it’s 9 pm? Where’d the day go? And then there’s always more to do… and then suddenly it’s the next day, week, month, and then your friends are getting married and then it’s 2018 with President Trump deflecting nuclear war by making peace with North Korea.

We live in a crazy fucking world. And a busy one.

Yet, caught in all this confusion, noise and nonsense, there is (at least) one holy place remaining for everyone. A spot so deeply personal, so utterly universally invigorating, and enables one to be so superbly in solitude that we must abuse it for our mental sake; our showers.

I’ve probably (definitely) written about showers in the past as a way to cultivate your thoughts but I’ve begun a new practice that I find particularly powerful…

Crank the water to the most frigid: extra cold, sit, cross-legged, hanging your head over your feet, letting your arms rest on your knees, closing your eyes, begin counting to 60 slowly…

And you’ll feel how long a minute is. And you’ll respect and appreciate every second. Contour your core into rigidity while embracing the freezing water, enjoy each second and you should feel an abundance of peace — despite the fact that there are dishes piled up in the kitchen, your room is a mess, another mass shooting occurred, you need groceries, and your monthly rent is due.

Then, do it every day and see continuity in improved energy, mental clarity, and positivity, shedding negative people like an Akita sheds fur, waxing poetic on somethingindifferent.com for the sake of humanity.

benefits-of-cold-showers-636x310

Boom.

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The age-old debate. The alpha and omega. The quintessential question we yearn to know. We want to know, because, we think in light of this, we’d better live our lives. But, here is a wrench in the proverbial gears:

Let’s assume that,

  • Fate is defined as “not choice”
  • Free Will is defined as “choice”

If you’re not willing to make these assumptions, then you should read no further.

Furthermore, if in saying something like, “I love you,” you would agree that you could insert “choose to” before “love you,” and it should not change the content of that message. Essentially, you can do this with anything as long as it is in the first person. When you say, “I am going to work,” you’re saying, effectively: “I am choosing to go to work”. These two statements mean the same thing. Inserting “choosing to,” or “choose to,” does not change the statement you’re making, it is just redundant because the first person casts possessiveness on the direct object via the verb of the sentence.

Okay. If you say, “I think fate exists,” you have immediately negated your statement. If you add those two words, which we previously agreed do not alter the content of a statement at least in the first person, then you’ve said, “I choose to think fate exists.” And to replace “fate,” with “not choice,” you get: “I choose to think not choice (or choosing) exists.” In an attempt to claim that you believe in fate, you condemn fate. You logically contradict yourself.

So, we’re left with free will. It seems that it is must logically conclude that free will exists. However, this is not the case. Let’s use the same scenario that we have previously agreed to and replace free will with “choice”. If you say, “I think free will exists,” you have immediately negated your statement. The statement becomes “I choose to think free will exists,” or, “I choose to think choice exists.” This seems perfectly congruent with logic, until you recognize that there is no choice but to think choice exists. You cannot “choose,” to think that “not choice,” exists so if your only option is to choose to think choice exists, then you didn’t have an option at all. And, in having no option, you had no choice… that we had earlier agreed is equivalent to fate.

Therefore, in having no choice but to choose free will, because you cannot choose fate, then you must be fated to choose free will. The condition of fate, as we agreed upon earlier, is “not choice.” And, if the very fact that you talking in first person necessitates you to choose then you had no option to have free will, which means you are fated. But, talking in the first person negates fate, because of the ability to choose. This shows that you cannot argue fate or free will exists because in arguing for either side, you negate your argument and agree with the opposite.

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I laid in my bed at 5:00 a.m. and realized that I would only get 3 hours of sleep. It irked me that I had done this to myself. I had no way of escaping the fate except for, of course, calling out of work. But, that was only an illusory option. I felt my eyelids sinking, my body tingling and I began to drift. I began to drift into that realm of imagination and infinity. I began to fall asleep. Suddenly, I was in a car about to crash and whoosh! Hypnopompic hallucination jolted me back into reality; 5:03 a.m. I felt so rejuvenated. I thought I had slept the entire night. I checked my phone again; 5:03 a.m.

It made me think about how elusive time really is. I thought about how an hour at a shitty job feels like a year or how a decade can “fly by.” Cliches rushed to mind. Time flies by when you’re having fun! I thought of Lucretius’ concept of “tempus fugit.” I decided to write down my thoughts in a mass text message. So, without further ado:

I needed to stretch a second into a minute
into an hour into a day
into a week, a month, a year, a decade
into a millennium into infinity
just for a moment. A moment, a glimpse of the metaphysical.

A time when billions of thoughts (dreams) occur but no time
appropriately encapsulates the quantity of dreams we have…
because they happen in the moment. The moment being
the past, present, future all simultaneously occurring
because in the metaphysical every and anything happens.

And we can create the world just like our envisioned Gods,
but we don’t care about consciously doing so, we just care
about sensation… and reality.
And reality.

- n.v.