Any students of philosophy would be very familiar with the conundrum of the scenario whereby your plane crashed and there are survivors and your mom decided to die so that you can eat her and live on. What would you do?
Back in those days when I was actually studying philosophy and very naive too, I must say, my answer was firmly that of course I'd fucking eat her. She sacrificed her life so that I may have some chance of survival so that I may continue living my life and do whatever I have to do in this life. If I don't eat her, she'd have died in vain.
But that was back in the day. Today, my answer is the total opposite. I would not eat her, not because it's unethical to be cannibalistic (it's no longer the issue here anymore, see) but because I know that this life is not the only life and it's definitely not the be all and end all.
How and why, you might ask. I have no fucking idea. All I know is that I have searched and searched for the answers my whole fucking life. Yes, really from as early as I can remember. Maybe not searching for the meaning to life at age 3 but possibly something along those lines. Why does life have to happen the way it does? Why do we not always get what we want? Why do I have to be parted with my beloved Yimama? What does it mean now, my life without her? Who are these strangers who claim to be my family?
I never got any answers and neither do I have the answers now but what I did gain was some sort of understanding. Understanding comes when you learn not to judge. My favorite saying of all time is "don't judge when you don't understand because when you do understand, you won't be judging" That's putting yourself in other people's shoes, literally. When you have lived their lives and experienced what they've experienced, you would not be inclined to judge them. Very hard to live their lives but easy enough to just simply imagine.
Sympathy is when you can't put yourself in their situation but you can imagine what it's like and you can feel sorry for them. Empathy is when you have lived their lives and know exactly how it feels for them and therefore you can empathize. Is it even possible to empathize then, since we all only have this one life? I don't know, can you empathize with the protagonist/antagonist of a movie? Did you cried when Jack died in Titanic or some such case? Of course it's possible! The question here is have you tried hard enough? Is it even worth your while and time to empathize with another human being within close proximity?
Movies are awesome, that's how we learn in our current state of mind. If it's possible for us to be so moved by a scene in a movie, knowing that it's not real life (and it's really not real life, guys), how is it possible for us NOT to be moved by a real life scenario happening before our eyes? Can we not spare a moment from our ever so important lives to just take a glimpse into our neighbour's life? I don't mean this by snooping into their lives to find out juicy gossips etc but as a concerned citizen. Within love.
So anyway, my choice today of not wanting or going to eat my mom after that plane crash is because I KNOW that there is a life after this life. This death is just the beginning of something else that is so wonderful that our current state of mind cannot even comprehend. The reason for my oobe and all these nonsense is to prove this but alas, I have not been successful in doing such, I may never be successful but the point is that I just know in my heart.
I've been advocating the heart to my family lately. You have your thinking brain and your knowing heart. Which one should you listen to? Some major tragedy happens in your family, say for instance someone died. Do you get a heartache or a headache? Brain is the head and it will tell you all kinds of nonsense. What education is doing is to train your brain. You need to learn to think critically to write your dissertations. You have to first come up with some theorem for your dissertation or whatever ( I have no idea because I never graduated with a degree but I did finish writing class of some sort (I was high)) and then you have to use your brains to support your theory. I learnt in psychology that confirmational biased is possible. If you go seeking for an answer with an agenda, you will definitely suffer from confirmation biased because you're seeking with a tunnel vision. You can find all kinds of answers to support your theorem or whatever comes before some theory. Because you were actively seeking for it and therefore your brain will just simply disregard any other information that does not confirm with your line of thinking.
What's the difference between the would be graduate and seeker of truth? I am a seeker of truth. Still seeking. The difference is that I don't already have a theory I'm trying to prove. I read stuff, I hear stuff, I experience stuff and I take them all in. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to prove. Not in my intellectual mind at least. But I do come upon some stuff in my seeking that resonates with the heart. The heart as we know it is without agenda except for love. Love is where the heart is so listen to your heart if love is what you seek. And love should be what you should be seeking. What's the meaning of life? My answer when I was ready to make a mom stew was just love for the people around you. That came from the heart. I don't want to make a mom stew now because I'm speaking from my heart and not my brain but I still stand by my answer to the meaning of life. It's really just about love. For me at least.
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