The Absurdity of Energy Is Absurd
I grew up with a vision of becoming a scientist. Galileo & Newton were my childhood heroes. I craved having the authority they had over the realm of reality. The way they turned the world of science and philosophy upside down woke millions around the world from their mythical dreams. It may sound extremely simplified & crude, but an intellectual movement — initiated by Descartes, built by Galileo, Newton, Copernicus and many other scientists of that era, and finally formulated by the epic attempt of Nietzsche & Karl Marx — transformed the age-old myth wrapped world of Gods & angels into a mundane practical one.
To be honest, I denied every instinct I had as a human and followed the great thinkers who rejected everything at first to pass each idea through the litmus test of logic. I used to mock anything that isn’t proven. I laughed at anything that seemed to fall out of the “science” league. To me, God became an unnecessary element in the universe, Life became a long process of metabolism, and death became a step in the ecology. I didn’t realize that my world is contracting to a dot as I was spending all-day rejecting the possibilities of life. Until one day I started reading about energy.
The laws of thermodynamics, the theory of relativity, the uncertainty of Heisenberg & the realm of quantum mechanics washed the certainty in science that was my key card for rejecting all ideas that were not yet proven. Suddenly uncertainty appeared as a hardcore legitimate science. The only thing became certain that we are not certain about anything. It is at this point I started taking the energy of life seriously.
My scientist self believed that life is the interaction of biochemicals, which are made of atoms — and my body is a strange arrangement of atoms that has no more value than a tin can, which also is made of atoms. The rudeness & crudeness of the idea is what we get when we try to oversimplify things. I was looking for an answer without being sure there is one. As Camus said:
The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.
I started looking into everything that felt absurd to me. The energy of life was one of that. I haven’t looked deeply into the idea yet. But I am at a stage where I am sure about the energy resides within me. I denied it all my life, but it was there with me, emitting in an invisible wavelength. I still don’t know how to interact with it, how to harness it inside me, or amplify its effects. But if anyone asks me to name my life energy, I would name it The Mystic Optimist. I have been hyper-optimistic all my life. In any given scenario I imagine the best possible outcome and something inside me start compelling me to believe that only that outcome will be the final result, nothing else is possible. Obviously the outcomes always don’t match my vision, but every time I feel my desire for that outcome so strong that the desire itself feels like a force trying to generate the outcome. It is hard to illustrate a near-spiritual experience, but there have been instances when I experienced a turn of events leading to a certain outcome that was seemingly impossible, but my desire for that outcome was really strong. I tried to explain some events by the logic of coincidence or luck, but that sounded more illogical.
The hyper-optimism in my character is compensated by my limitation in expectation. I expect only the minimum, I prefer not to run after the luxuries that don’t add anything to life. The balance sometimes feels divine. When your target is within the boundary of your capacity, happiness resides by the door. I am the kind of person people like to be around. I am lucky to have a constant circle of people around my desk at work, sometimes even standing in silence just to be around me. My colleagues have said to me that they feel less anxious around me, they feel in control around me. Their comments inspire me to look into that hidden energy I explored really less in my life.
Thank You Diana C. for this prompt that invigorated me to peek inside me again.
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