“Perhaps I will continue my comic about my high-school life but for now some writing”
LaidbackMarco
A Long Time Ago In a Galaxy Far, Far, Away. .
After an intro like that you’re expecting a giant blaring orchestra, a field of stars, and a wall of scrolling yellow text which recedes into the vanishing point. The texts describes a grand space adventure, the fate of the galaxy, the balance of light and dark, and our feeble fight against fate.
but this story is different. . . it is the start of A Selfish Self Told Story Of Me, By Me, For Me. . . Me, Myself and I
I’m expecting most people to stop reading right there. This isn’t part of an intergalactic space franchise, also I hope I am not sued for using that famous line. This story doesn’t involve the fate of the galaxy, the force, nor does it take place a long time ago. Well I guess that depends on what a long time is for you doesn’t it? The funny thing about distance and time is that they are both arbitrary and relative. Although the passing of time is perceived to be linear and measureable, each second I am alive gets subjectively shorter the longer I live. A second while playing league feels different then a second where I have to do soul killing work. A year to a toddler is surely a lot longer than a year for a parent. Wouldn’t that make both opinions right when a kid says an hour is so long, and the parent says it’s not? Or perhaps it’s the fault of the adult for forgetting the perspective of a child.
“Who am I?”
Why should you read this autobiography? I don’t think I’m anyone special, but I think reading this will help you to get a different perspective on life and maybe help you to reflect on your own life. While reading my favorite light novel I often go into a train of memories that cause me to have to reread sections of the book, because I am thinking of past events in my life and looking at them from my current self’s point of view. I hope that the same thing will happen to you as you read the account of my life. Perhaps you can go from being a stranger to a friend, or realizing that you and I aren’t really so different. We are all strangely connected in a way that I can’t put my finger on.
“Who am I” Always bounces around on the inside of my thick skull. I think this is a question that more of us should ask ourselves. Humans have tried to answer this question through things like science, philosophy, and religion, but we can never really answer this question. Who am I? What am I doing here? We humans push that to the backs of our minds and pretend like we know what is going on in this strange sequence of events called life. I mean the me who’s lived only twenty-two years long has gone through so many changes and iterations. I always thought that if I grow older I would understand more about life. As the years would pass on I thought I had learned more about life in my teens I actually thought I had a solid grasp of this odd reality. In fact there was a certain period when I felt grounded and solid, but as I start to mature I realize that the only thing I know about life is that we are clueless. Excuse my language but we humans have no fucking idea what is going on.
Life Is Strange
Sure you are sitting there comfortably reading this and today is just another average day for you. Did it ever cross your mind how silly of a situation we are in? We are flying through space at hundred thousand miles an hour on a giant rock with water on it and the only thing that stands between us and deadly radiation is a bubble of air, which is held in place by a mysterious force called gravity, which we still don’t know why it works. That giant rock you are on is rotating around a giant ball of fire that puts our earth in a constant state of freefall towards it using that same invisible force. That star that we are rotating around is in a giant cluster of stars known as a galaxy which supposedly is held together by a thing we call a black hole which we don’t even know is real. That Supermassive black hole breaks all the “laws” we have set about our reality. Not to mention that this thing we live in named the milky way is one of the smaller galaxies in the universe, so god knows what’s at the center of all the galaxies. If it wasn’t big enough already the universe is expanding. Oh. . . and the recent theory suggests that there are more of these universes and that the amount of universes could be infinite. Not to mention a lot of the matter in the universe may not be in our plane of existence because there is some form of dark matter which we can’t see.
Alright so it’s absurd enough the thing we call earth is here in the first place. But then you have to consider that life evolved from single celled organisms, into simple multi celled organisms, into “advanced” forms which somehow got killed off in a way we can only make theories about, because we don’t know. The weird life form thing was persistent so it happened again and as time went on some monkeys evolved somehow to have self awareness and consciousness to think about why it is alive at all and why all this stuff happens. Us humans try to figure out why certain things happen whilst contemplating the infinite and our own demise. During our time trying to take apart what is around us we somehow discovered small one celled organisms that can bring us to that demise we’ve been contemplating. And learned that the world is built from microscopic elements, made of even smaller legos called atoms. Which were the smallest thing until the sub atomic particle and finally all this other bs of super states, quarks, and string theory. I mean one thing being in two places at the same time or the observer of an action affecting the result somehow. I’m not even sure what is theory and real at this point. Taking into consideration the size of everything are we big or small? Kind of like the problems we have as humans, you can let the smallest inconvenience in life really get to you and make it so that everyone else around you shares that problem too.
Are We Dreaming
So in this giant shit storm how do I know this isn’t just a really vivid dream. I mean our world has 99% of the silly unreal things that Star Wars has. Let’s see flying machines, mysterious forces(gravity), people fighting for stupid reasons, dumb politics, a good soundtrack, heroes, villians, guns, capes, speedy bikes. . . I mean the only thing that got left out of our reality is a couple cool things like laser swords, but who knows maybe we’ll get there right. I mean Star Wars gives some sound advice for when you don’t know what to do. “Move don’t think and use your instincts”, all we can do is point our boat in a direction and explore this thing called life, which should be an adventure right?
Where do I come from? Where am I going? Such important questions that I never bothered thinking about. The past is just as ethereal as the future. We don’t even know what happened two years ago so why bother worrying about 200 years or 200 million? All we have are thoughts and opinions which aren’t solid, until we put them in a book I guess. Isn’t reality the general agreed consensus of the way the world works? Compound that with the mystery that is the human brain and the way it works and we have to realize that we are really unaware of what is going on. Many dreams feel just as real as some of the memories I have. Human memory is self serving and flawed so the account of my life I have is probably far from accurate, and perhaps so is my self image. How I see the world and how you see the same thing are very different, but are they not both valid?<— This is the reason I never get that heated about religion or politics.
Technology Will Save Us
And you might be thinking with all these advances in technology. With social media, pictures, videos, and all the like how could you not know that much about your own life that you have lived? It turns out that the more we take photos/videos to further grasp the moment, the more willing the brain is to offload that work and let that memory go. The harder we try to clutch onto that experience the further it slips from our grasp.(I’m a photographer my memories might as go straight into the recycle bin, but I do find that photos serve as a good catalyst for memories)
Even if this effect is proven false by science, how much does even the highest quality cameras really capture? Only captures a sliver of what we call consciousness. The feeling of the warm sand between your toes, the smell of the rain soaked cement, the taste of mom or dad’s special recipes, the thoughts racing through your head as that attractive girl you like comes by, or the sound of your favorite DJ live are all nonexistent with the current technology we have to record this reality. Being in that moment sets itself apart from that digital replication as of now in 2017. Interacting in that live environment has some metaphysical an aura of some kind. Metaphysics aside something just feels different when you are there in the moment.
Even if we had a way to perfectly capture and replay reality. That machine would fail to capture things following up to or the events after entering the machine. Could you not be stuck in a time loop if you had a machine replicate you getting into that machine to see the reconstructed reality?
Online Persona
With our current technology the image we put out to the rest of the world is incomplete and inaccurate. Even if you have followed my social media for a long time, isn’t that just a crafted image we put out. Like the celebrities that my generation has grown up with watching T.V. and big media press articles, we put ourselves up on to pedestals and craft how we want others to see us online. Those celebrities are people just like you and me at the end of the day. We don’t like to capture when our family is screaming at each other and tears are coming out of all our eyes, but that made the dinner we ate together three nights after all the more special.
It’s a magical thing to make someone feel emotions through a medium, but emotion is a blanket word we use to describe a feeling. Feelings however are more fluid than perceived. Feeling is a word we use to describe something intangible. Aren’t they a lot more complex than the simple happy, sad, mad, they always seem to be a mixed bag of things. The happiness you feel when you graduate is different than the happiness you feel when eating at your favorite restaurant. I mean sadness can look like a slight strained smile, or sound like a soft voice. Worrying could look like yelling and anger to the untrained eye. Each moment has a different feeling which is dyed with the colors of things that have come before. A normal day where nothing goes wrong is transformed into a paradise after the day where everything seems to go poorly.
I’m Just an Average Human
I guess this is a long way of saying that I although I am a complete 100% average human being, I have a story that is of galactic importance because there is none other like it in the world. Many of these moments and stories have had no record of them happening and with them carry my own personal bias and prejudices. Although in my beliefs I think that there is a multiverse of very strikingly similar Marcos this is my story of Marco C-1337 or Marco S-117 I’m indecisive and I like both of those numbers. This is the only one that is exactly like this one. I mean in the future they could be trying to gather data on all the universes out there and collect all data that has ever been and will be. If they want a complete picture of the universe then they would have to include this memoir right? I mean perhaps kids of the future will have to do history projects of completely random subjects, I’m sorry if you pulled the average Joe who is me. . . Prepare for nothing cool and exciting and a lot of self-reflection to hopefully make you more self-reflective and aware. . . Maybe that’s just me trying to rationalize my narcissism. If I can make you feel emotions through my writing, or remind you of a small memory that you may have forgotten, then my goal will have been accomplished.
These small little fragments and moments are things that I cherish. Nostalgia is something that everyone has a soft spot in their heart for. If you are like me try to take some pride of the “normal” life you live because it is truly unique and special and is of Galactic importance to some historian (or god forbid some now disappointed little kid)to get a complete picture of the universe (or score an A on that history report. . . That’s like super important when you’re young right bragging rights and stuff?).
