Descent to mediocrity

The thing with beauty; true, untarnished beauty, resplendent in its own glory,is that she can not be appreciated fully by the mediocre, and doesn't care a damn about it. Whereas the truly perfect is naught but an abomination, bringing destruction upon itself and its maker, in the manner of Athena and Arachne, beauty, as humans perceive it, is chaotic, mesmerizing in its asymmetry, which, while not immediately apparent, forms an inherent feature of its appeal.

The mystery also plays a part. We have always been intrigued, awed, frightened by that what we do not know. Figaro, yes. The arms of the Venus de Milo. Mona Lisa's enigmatic half smile. The crescendo that a concerto rises up to, the percussion beating against our hearts, synchronous in its solid thump, the strings quivering in its high notes, vacillating between ecstasy and torment, while our body responds in a thousand different ways to what we do not understand. The slow rise, followed by the near deafening music, yes, music, not noise, and ye unfaithful be damned. The rapture of rhapsody, the untold words of  a picture, the primal attraction of a dance, they speak to the soul, insofar as one exists, in tones of exquisite sensitivity, in a language made up in equal parts of thoughts and silence.

But this isn't for the mediocre. No, the mediocre have been cursed, to live in this world, of unparalleled beauty and unequaled horror, and yet, to go through life, either content in their ignorance, or suffering in the eternal torment of yearning to listen, not hear. To surrender, not understand. In the manner of birds that want to take to the sky, they wish to fly where others shamble along the ground, not looking up, and yet their wings are clipped. And so they live, nudging and shoving, fighting petty squabbles, concerning themselves with trivialities, wishing, but not truly knowing what they're wishing for.

The only thing that is worse, pain beyond all measure, that drives one to the brink of a cliff of sanity, then pushes them off, is the pain of those who have risen above the rest, who have seen, and heard, and felt, something that touched their souls and changed them forever, but lose their ability, either by quirk of a fickle fate, or the premeditated malodorocities of malcontents, and are, like Icarus, thrown down to the ground to live with the heathen, the hoi polloi, to have their thoughts drowned out by the incessant meaningless chatter that is the vox populi. Their silent screams rend the fabric of their existence, in a desperate, last-ditch attempt to push themselves off the ground, to push off themselves the chains of an uncreative gravity that binds them to the maximal plane of the many.

What kind of a life is that?

Gedanken

Think, for a second. All right.
Now think of something else.
What did you think of?

Think of all the things that you could have thought of, from musing upon the past, to contemplating the infinite excesses of the future, to present counterfactuals, to imaginaria, problems, solutions, corundums and doldrums. Think of all the good times that simply rolled, and those that sat like a rabid hippopotamus surrounded by the vertical sea. And all the birds, the bees and the potatoes.

Now go in a step further and refine.

Think not of counterfactuals, of musings of what could have been, and what might have been if the past had been what it could have been. What has happened, has happened, and you are where you are, for all the multiverses in all of their infinite wisdom cannot prove otherwise. At least, not yet.

Think, in the meanwhile, for you surely you ought to have freed up some space among all that grey matter, of what could be, depending only on what you do now. Of conclusions, results and outcomes based on non predeterminate input actions, and of possibilities, and the probabilities of their happening. Fantasize about the wide world, and everything that is in, on, off, remotely connected to, abrstactly visualizable, completely irrational, seemingly logical nuances that comprise it. It takes all kinds.

Sum them up over all of the dimensions that you can think of.
You get one, no?

Then think of the fact that you could actually have done something instead of simply sitting and thinking.

And finally, think of the cat in the box, and the fact that indeterminacy is a way of life. So is asymmetry, by the way. And that the blackness is where the light seems brightest. Nope, not metaphors. only tautologies.

And if in the course of these contemplations you happen to hit upon the solutions to one of humanity's greatest mysteries, then do one of the following:

1. if its a mathematical theorem, relax. take a shower. and then rush out in the middle and run around shouting 'eureka' till you get arrested for public indecency, or pelted with stones.
2. if its an earth changing physical revelation about the matter and fabric of the universe, then go to germany and occupy a position at the patent office over there.
3. if you realise who the one true love of your life is, then call her up. (assume) Either it will work out, or it wont. no sense in sitting and thinking. you've done that enough already.
4. if its a solution to world peace (fight less), the food shortage (grow more potatoes), AIDS (porn/condoms), the depleting ozone layer(fart less), or what the girl next door is wearing today (black lace, one can always wish, can't they) and any of the ten billion thousand other problems, then mail us at ohmygodifoundit@dontpissmeoff.com. Actually, no.
5. and if you found the answer to life, the universe and everything, then go cry in a corner. Somebody's done that already.

And if that isn't an experiment enough, my dear, then what is?