Origins of Ideas and Ideas of Origins

2020


There I was, lying in a hospital bed, with no hope, with no directions, with no purpose. What would I do from that moment on? Who am I? The feeling of oblivion, of being nothing, of living a false reality.

Life in Colorado was never too majestic. I mean, how do you even describe an "exciting" way of living? What is the right way to lead your time on Earth? My name is John Vita, and I want to tell you about how my life ended.

I come from a remarkably low-income family from the Rocky Mountains region of the United States. My mom was a high-school teacher, and my father was, as best described by my mother, a drunk. Regardless of my economical difficulties, I was incredibly in love with philosophy. If I am honest, I was never the brightest kid in class; for the most part, John Vita was utterly ordinary. But I had a passion. My mother, Aileen Vita, called "Astro" by most of her peers, played a fundamental role in my enthusiasm for philosophy. She had a love for teaching. Regardless of her dream coming true, she had never been genuinely happy. And I will never know the reality of my mother's hidden melancholy. She tried to hide the facts from me, hence why we never talked about it. However, I could speculate it had to do something with my father. Her hidden feelings led me to think about an individual's ultimate purpose in life. How does one genuinely become happy?

Regardless of what life would have expected from me, at the age of 25, I graduated with a philosophy degree from Community College Of Denver. Life was not going exactly all that great after graduation, but it did change the day my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. For four months, I had to experience my mother undergo chemotherapy and its side effects. The constant pain pouring out of my mother's eyes was not something I could even remotely manage. She was my everything in life, seeing her like that was destroying me from the inside out.

As a philosopher, I had studied the meaning of life for years upon years. Yet, I had not arrived at a conclusion that compared to all the pain and suffering that people have to experience in this world. How come such a loving human being such as my mother could die of lung cancer? How come she had to go through all that pain? Life seemed meaningless. It seemed absurd to live in a world where suffering is the very description of being alive. The thoughts of being alone, of not wanting to live due to a lack of purpose and dissatisfaction in life itself, let me to depression. Depression, which led to stress. Stress which led me to a heart attack at the age of 26.

Remember that hospital bed? Well, there I was; who are you? I asked myself over and over in an unstoppable infinite loop. My mind had no control. The feeling as if every action in my life had turned out to be false. There was nothing, and I was nothing. It seemed as if life was just a delusion, and I was so isolated and experiencing so much fear that the very thought of death seemed like a liberation from the pain. And somehow, when I thought of death, my fears would go away. And it is not that I was not afraid anymore, is that the possibility is so terrifying, that you are tempted to consider what could be so terrible that leaping to your death seems like a liberation from life itself, from all the misery.

My mind was made up. The feeling of loneliness, of losing all hopes in humanity, of losing my purpose, was so powerful that I could not endure it anymore. I had stopped thinking about going. The will was no longer there. I was not myself. My brain was functioning only to compute the way of ending everything. If life after death is as tranquil as life before death, if I could return to that same unchanging, unmoving peaceful unconscious eternity, I would do it in a second. That thought led me to the edge of the tallest building near where I lived. Jumping was inevitable. I put one foot in the air and lean forward. At that very moment, reality disappears. I'm not in Colorado anymore. I am not in this world anymore. But where am I? All I see is light. All I see is blank. The color white dominated the pure space in which I was. My mind was clearer than it had ever been. No thoughts of concern. In a matter of what seemed like seconds, I blackout. A complete paradigm shift.

When I wake, because, contrary to my assumptions, I do wake up. I'm on Earth, but I do not recognize the space I'm in. Everything is alien to my reality. Where am I? Then, I see the building from which I supposedly had jumped, right in front of me. And there I was, once again, but, "Am I dead? Did I jump? What happened?"

Stranger – John!

I look to my right. Nothing. I look to my left. Nothing. Am I crazy?

Stranger – John!

I try again, and there he was. I don't know him, but I do.

John – Where did you come from?

Stranger – From everywhere.

John – How do you know my name?

Stranger – I have always known. Since the day you were born. Since the day you had your first thought. I have always known you.

John – What's your name? Who are you?

Stranger – Call me Aquinas.

John – Aquinas? From where?

Aquinas – John! Focus.

John – Did you see me jump?

Aquinas – I have seen you jump. I have seen you cut your wrist. I have seen you drown. I have seen you poisoned. I have seen you die.

John – Who are you?

(Sustained stare)

Aquinas – I hope I keep seeing you, John.

And he is gone. No signs of Aquinas anywhere near me. Like a ghost. Was I dreaming? Was that an illusion? "I hope I keep seeing you?" Confused, I go to the edge of the building. Put one foot in the air, lean forward... and I am down again. This time there was no empty white space, no gap. This time was as if I had never been up there.

Aquinas – John, Stop!

"How is this even possible?" I thought. I was experiencing something that goes against all my philosophical views of reality. "Who is this Aquinas guy?" I kept asking myself.

Aquinas – You are a philosopher John. Stop making irrational decisions. Why do you want to kill yourself?

John – Why would anyone want to live in a world like this? The basis of life is to suffer. Our only purpose is to try to avoid pain or to overcome suffering. Life is meaningless. One way in which you could look at it is the following; emotional, physical, and sexual desires produce misery and can never be satisfied. Therefore, the only way in which a human being can, in fact, live, is to accept the reality that life is suffering. And I, my good sir, I am not willing to accept that.

Aquinas – Willing. What an essential word you have said, John. You are not willing to accept that life is suffering, but what if life was not suffering. You are basing your beliefs on the assumption that sympathy and compassion have a benign effect upon those who experience those very emotions, but the truth of the matter is that what is making you unhappy is not that you are not willing-to-live, but rather, that your will-to-power is in a constant state of decrement.

John – What are you trying to say?

Aquinas – I understand that the struggle for life is real, but not for hunger or distress, but for wealth or luxuries. You see, the decrease in your will-to-power directly explains your very feelings of unhappiness or even suffering. Happiness does not come from the result of an action, but rather from overcoming obstacles and achieving, even with the impediments. When one struggles, our sense of power increases, and with it, our sense of happiness.

John – You are making an assumption about what brings happiness to a human being; therefore, the same could be said for the weak and the unhealthy. What is making me unhappy is the very knowledge that others suffer greatly, that people are encountering deadly diseases just like my mother did, that there are people without a place to live or even food to give to their children, that there are people who are born in a disadvantage. What is making me unhappy is that I have come to understand that life is just not fair. I have come to realize that renunciation to living is, in part, necessary for humans.

Aquinas – John, the strong and healthy, cannot respond to the suffering of others by losing their will-to-live. One can acknowledge, but cannot let those emotions take over their lives, and even less their mental health. Pity is a harmful human quality that augments the misery in the world; it preserves the feeling of the weak or that who suffers. If you are able to be unaffected by the suffering of others, there is no need to react to the acknowledgment of the pain, even less by denying the will-to-live.

John – I believe that you are basing your beliefs on the premise that the "strong" or the "healthy" do not suffer.

Aquinas – Your statement could be true if, in fact, I was referring to strength and health as the immunity of suffering. But the sad reality is that in a world like the one in which we live, suffering is inevitable, even for the prosperous and healthy. Nonetheless, your suggestion that suffering is essential in regards to human existence is flawed in itself. Even the most deadly disease, poverty, enemies, can be annihilated by the enlightenment of the community, moral wisdom, or the noble spirit of the people.

John – What is still bothering me is that you are contemplating sympathy towards others as an unnecessary attribute and declaring that it brings no benefit to those not suffering themselves.

Aquinas – Pity attains in contrast to the sentiments which heighten the power of the feeling of life.

John – No, a good man is that who appreciates the external world as he appreciates his own true existence. He is one who cares for the well being of others and thinks in the following way. Before I perform X action, do I want X to become a universal principle. If the answer is no, then X is not performed. If the answer is yes, then X is done. Thus, this connection with the external world as One, brings peace, tranquility, and calmness to the mind of this virtuous character.

Aquinas – You see John, that is where I wanted to get you. You are starting to think like a virtuous man. The struggles are what brings happiness to all human beings. You are avoiding the struggles, rejecting your will-to-live by decreasing your will-to-power. I guess the question that lingers is: Do you want the decrement of the will-to-power to become a universal principle?

At that very moment, I realized that I had remarkably exaggerated the reality of unhappiness and suffering. I thought that the denial of the will-to-live was the most reasonable approach toward life. Suffering is not inseparably united with all human reality. At least not in the same way that I assumed it was. Pity and sympathy are not the harmful attitudes that I claimed them to be, rather a benefit. What allows us to live in a world full of disenchantment, suffering, and pain, is the relationships that we nurture with love and compassion. I was wrong.

Doctors – (murmuring) He is responding to all the signs. We are expecting him to wake up soon.

I opened my eyes, and my father was standing right in front of me. He hugs me and tells me everything will be alright and that he loves me. I had died. But I came back to life. My will-to-power and my will-to-live kept my mind strong to keep fighting while my body was dying of stress and disillusion. They told me I hadn't jumped, but I had jumped. I was committing mental suicide. I didn't want to live, but I found a way to survive. And I still ask, "Who is Aquinas? Who is the man that saved my life?"

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