MUTE

Why do we want to be saved?

People have a funny idea of redemption, a fantasy. It's like everything they've done all their lives is wrong, up until that moment, oh that blessed moment when everything is clear, when life suddenly sparkles, and they are saved. It is the harbinger of all the good and the beautiful, the beginning of the rest of our lives.

Why? What is the point of rescue? Are we all so miserable? Are we all so sad? Or do we create our own world of sadness, so we can anticipate joy or happiness--or our perception of it? What is happy, anyway? How do we know we are happy? How are we able to know our emotions in the first place?

Simple. We use words. We define. We describe. I am happy. I am angry. She is ugly.

But words are labels. Labels are attempts by humans to articulate the complex processes occuring in their brains, or soul, or whatever it is inside that we label as well. Yes, words are powerful, but they are limiting. There are only so many words in the dictionary. Simply put, the way most people see the world is determined by their vocabulary levels.

Life is but perception then, determined by our capacity to create and use words, induced by existing societal structures, imposed by millenia filled with previously articulated perceptions that reinforce present molds. Kitsch, as Kundera said. And so it is in this mirage, moving in unison to the beat of a colossal authority passed down through time, that we conceive of impending redemption, and excitedly await it in our pretense of blight and pain. Like waiting for love as we sit in a cafe sipping coffee, wondering if we will ever be "happy" despite all the tribulations in our life. Love--that sweet, sweet word--is our ultimate redemption.

But what if I tell you that everything is happiness, just as everything is sadness? That the filth under your shoe is as beautiful as Brad Pitt? That all our definitions can be washed away by the inherent fluidity of a universe, one that is unbridled by our flawed attempts at comprehension?

There is no happy, no sad, and therefore no redemption. We do not need to be saved, because there is nothing to be saved from. We simply are. We are skin, we are blood, we are emotion and thought. We are all of the world crammed together in, or rather flowing through one being, beyond all description. "Love" is simply a part of that pure truth that cradles us all, the truth that tells us that everything we could possibly crave for is already here, and has been here since the beginning of time. It is the truth that seeps in and saturates our entire being, melting all our perceptions--our illusions--and making us one with everything else.

But then we would have nothing to talk about. What a wordless world it would be. No contest, no questions, no whining. We would all be mute in our total understanding.

We would be like the monks in the mountains, never speaking, only knowing, in pure communion with absolutely everything, every photon in this boundless universe. Yes, even with you, as you sit in that cafe, sipping your coffee and wondering if you will ever be happy.