You are told your smartphone is smarter than you. The above title is what your speech-to-text interpreted as “existential angst.” You begin to believe that you are smarter than your smartphone. You are told you cannot leave the house nor inhabit public places. Your driver’s license is going to expire on Friday, your birthday, but the governor has closed the BMV and told the police not to ticket you for expired anything. You begin to keenly wonder if there are any truly valid expiration dates besides those stamped on milk. Due to a milk shortage, the news media tells you to freeze milk to lengthen this date. If you cannot believe the black-and-white truth of milk expiration, then what can you believe? What is necessary? What is true? What is black and white? School is closed, and the government has said that kids will learn plenty from being in the woods and from reading books. For once you agree with the government. You cannot get your hair cut, or your body tattooed. You enjoy both of these things but recognize that they are not imperative to human survival. The only things imperative to human survival are food and drink and procreation, which you enjoy more than haircuts and tattoos. However, you acknowledge that a good haircut and cool tattoos may help with procreation.
During the quarantine, you read a clever book written in the second person that influences your prose. You also spend time looking at opinions online. You acknowledge that Siddhartha Gautama warned against cleverness and opinions, and you wonder what is left to enjoy on the Internet. You remember that the Buddha also said wisdom cannot be imparted, so you are wondering about the futility of typing anything, which leads to depressing thoughts such as, “is typing just an anal-retentive death spasm?” And the classic, “if you cannot think of anything that truly matters, then what truly matters?”
So you ask, deeply, truly, sincerely. What truly matters, my dears? What is permanent? What endures?
What?
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