Experience

In response to "Lightly; Freely" by Lovenvoy.

Sometimes I feel I have found "that place" here in Denver.  That I have discovered a culture and a community that I enjoy being a part of.  A culture and community that I didn't find in Hawaii.

I have come to realize that I never really belonged in Hawaii.  And not just because I am "haole," but because the type of people and lifestyle I wish to surround myself with doesn't exist there.  Or at least not on the scale I desire.

But there is a restlessness in me.  A part of me that gets nervous at the thought of settling down now.  The idea of things left unexperienced excites me.  Makes me antsy.  Makes me want to find those things and make them mine.  I feel my patience to stick it out in one place comes from a knowing that I am achieving things here that will help me to experience more further down the road.  Remaining here to graduate, to become a skilled bartender, so that wherever I go I may find work.  Or gain the filmmaking job that allows me to travel and experience things.

There is also a nagging to move for the feeling that maybe as much as I like Denver, maybe there is a better place elsewhere.  Maybe I am settling for less than I realize.  Who knows?  Maybe Denver is the best city for me.  But I feel I have to prove it to myself.

It makes me wonder if our information age creates this desire to experience more.  While we are presented with so much, and can easily appreciate these things from the comfort of our couch, there is this idea that what is being presented is better in person.  Which makes sense.  Here is someone on TV, or on your computer, presenting a place to you, and while maybe the visuals are fully experienced via the mediums we have created, you can't sit there and feel the place, taste the food, smell the air.  You can't really know what it is like unless you experience it for yourself.

This bodes of "A Brave New World" type mentality.  Of the future being filled with "EM's," or "Experience Machines."  Where you can feel everything from the comfort of your living room.  Where you can be safe and still know everything there is to know.  As a matter of fact, there is a clever play entitled "Harvest" that touches upon this.  It is an ingenious script.

In the absence of a "God" in my life I have begun to contemplate my own philosophy, so to say.  It is an interesting concept to ponder.  And this is something I have reflected upon recently.  That life as a human is about experiencing.  That when I try to explain why I do not want to die, it is because there is so much I have yet to experience.  That there is so much I still desire to experience.  Because maybe death brings an end to my being.  Maybe there is no experience after death.  And that scares me.  The thought that I have not impacted the world in any significant way is only secondary to simply feeling like I would be missing out.

Why does this matter to me?  I don't know.  Maybe it has to do with a God.  Maybe it has to do with a survival instinct.  All I know is I wish to experience.  And find contentment in the experiencing.  And maybe that is why we never desire death, because we know there is no end to the experiencing.  That's why the God of Christianity is so appealing.  It promises a beautiful experience for all eternity.

Am I home?  I don't know.  But I am searching.