Dear Void,
Last night a teenager in a rabbit suit hijacked by evening.
Not because he frightened me. Not because a jet engine fell through a roof, which I hadn’t yet added to my list of worries. Not even because time folded in on itself…
Somewhere between the beginning of Donnie Darko and the end, I found myself asking a question I wasn’t prepared to answer. What is being alive supposed to feel like? It seems the sort of question a person should know.
I’ve been alive for quite awhile now. I pay bills. I work. I buy groceries. I answer emails. I fulfill roles and responsibilities. I participate in society with what I would describe as an appearance of reasonable competence.
And yet…when I asked myself this question, I realized I wasn’t entirely sure of the answer.
(Possible Spoilers for Donnie Darko–just a warning)….
The film spends a great deal of time asking whether Donnie is mentally ill or awakening to something deeper. Our culture tends to have a preferred answer for such things. We need a box to check, after all.
Someone feels different?
Fix them.
Someone feels sad?
Fix them.
Someone feels hyper?
Fix them.
Someone sees the world differently?
Fix them.
Someone questions the assumptions everyone else already accepts?
Definitely fix them.
Humans have become remarkably uncomfortable with experiences that cannot be explained, measured, categorized or medicated. The possibility that someone might be responding appropriately to an inappropriate world rarely enters the discussion.
What struck me wasn’t whether Donnie was seeing alternate realities. It was how many people seem to move through life without seeing reality at all.
We become our jobs. Our roles. Our expectations. Our schedules. Our responsibilities. Eventually we become so identified with the machinery that we mistake the machinery for ourselves.
Who are you?
Most people answer with what they do to make money.
Who are you?
We answer with who needs us.
Who are you?
We answer with what we have accomplished. Very few of us answer with what we experience. Or what we love. Or what fills us with wonder.
Somewhere along the way we stopped being human beings and became human maintenance crew. When I start pulling at that thread, I expected uncertainty. After all, I wasn’t sure what Donnie meant. I wasn’t sure whether fate exists, whether alternate timelines exist, or whether any of us are making choices as freely as we imagine.
But then a different question appeared. If all of this is meaningless, what remains worthwhile? And for the first time all evening the answer arrived immediately.
Experience.
Connection.
The natural world
Other living beings.
That was it.
No debate. No rabbit holes. Just certainty. Which raises an uncomfortable possibility.
Maybe I haven’t forgotten what matters. Maybe I’ve forgotten to prioritize it. Because that’s the difference isn’t it? We don’t need another guru to tell us what matters. We already know.
Ask someone what they treasure most and they will talk about sunsets.
Children.
Dogs.
Friends.
Gardens.
Laughter.
Music
Love.
The every day, quiet moments. The things that feel embarrassingly simple when compared to the complexity of modern life. And yet…those simple things are often the first sacrifices we make. We trade them away for productivity. For status. For survival. For expectations we never consciously agreed to carry.
One day we wake up and realize we have been astonishingly efficient at maintaining a life we no longer have time to experience. I think that is what many people are experiencing. The loss of a feeling. The feeling of being fully present inside our own existence.
Children seem to understand this instinctively.
A puddle is an adventure.
A bug is a fascinating creature.
A cloud deserves twenty minutes of observation.
Sticks can take up an entire afternoon.
I miss that. Being absorbed by the world. But adulting happens. Where we must be responsible. Competent. Dependable. Useful. The rewards for these traits are obvious. The costs are easier to miss.
Little by little, our attention is redirected away from experiences and toward management .
Manage your career.
Manage your finances.
Manage your image.
Manage your schedule.
Manage your productivity.
Manage your stress.
Manage your retirement.
Manage your health.
Manage your relationships.
Manage your time.
Manage.
Manage.
Manage.
…
Eventually it begins to feel as though the purpose of life is preparing to live rather than living itself. Like endlessly organizing supplies for a journey we’ll never actually take.
Perhaps that is why Donnie Darko lingered with me. Beneath the time travel. Beneath the giant rabbit. Beneath the philosophy and paradoxes. The movie felt haunted by a question:
What if everyone is sleepwalking?
What if the strangest person in the room is simply the first to notice? Not cosmic secrets. Notice the absurdity. Notice the performance. Notice the strange agreement we have all made to spend most our lives indoors beneath artificial light pursuing numbers that only matter because we collectively pretend they do.
Notice how far we have drifted from the natural world that shaped us
Because despite all our technology, all our convenience, all our progress, the human animal remains surprisingly unchanged.
We still feel calm when we hear running water.
We still feel awe beneath a night sky.
We still respond to birdsong.
We still crave community.
We still need touch.
We still find comfort in firelight.
Thousands of years of civilization have not removed these instincts. We have simply learned to ignore them. Or drown them out. Or postpone them until later.
After the meeting.
After the deadline.
After retirement.
After we finally have enough. But what if enough was never the issue? What if the things we are seeking aren’t waiting somewhere in the future? What if it has been patiently waiting beneath our feet entire time?
Donnie spends the entire film searching for something hidden beneath reality.
A secret.
A pattern.
A truth.
A reason.
Something beyond the ordinary world. And maybe that’s why the story resonates. Because we search endlessly for the thing that will finally explain everything.
The right philosophy.
The right spiritual path.
The right book.
The right breakthrough.
This thing that will make existence suddenly make sense. Meanwhile, life keeps happening in the background. Quietly. Patiently. Without demanding explanation.
The breeze continues to move through the trees.
The moon continues to rise.
The world keeps offering itself to us. Not as a puzzle, but as an experience. And maybe that’s the part I keep forgetting.
Not how to think. I’ve spent plenty of time thinking.
No how to question. I’ve become exceptionally good at that.
Not how to analyze. Goodness knows I’ve followed enough rabbit holes to earn honorary membership in Wonderland.
I forget to simply BE. To inhabit a moment instead of dissecting it.To experience something before evaluating it.To witness instead of interpreting.To participate instead of managing.
Remembering each moment that the moment is the thing.
This breath.
This conversation.
This sunset.
This person.
This fleeting and improbable experience of being conscious on a planet hurtling through a vast and indifferent universe. Maybe being alive was never supposed to feel productive.
Maybe it was supposed to feel alive.
And perhaps the strangest thing of all is that a teenager in a rabbit suit can remind me.
Love,
The Void
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