Mona Lisa Lightning

I've had one of those days where I've got a lot of little jobs done. I've did the laundry, fixed a window frame, put down a new rug (I had to hoover the carpet first 😢 ), I've blogged about my fpl team, I topped up the soil for my little orange tree (yes, that's still going strong), I did some shopping.

Yet I still feel somewhat empty, like it's not enough. It's all a bit mundane. When you sort out all the little problems - when you have no problems - then the big questions come rushing in. After yesterday's thunder and lightning I've been wondering what causes it. How do clouds of rain cause mighty lightning strikes? I think I might have figured it out somewhat, but it still seems so mysterious and supernatural - so godly. Like some divine manifestation.

I've also been wondering about fate and destiny. Is there one person you're tied to by fate? A soulmate as they say. It's cringe, but the modern world is more primitive for its disbelief in love. It used to pervade our culture. From medieval troubadours and notions of unrequited love, to fairy tales and black and white movies. The idea that you would go to the ends of the earth for just this one person and no one else.

You'd probably be declared mentally ill today for saying you believe there's one person you're destined to be with. Both left and right have cast all meaning and sense of preordained purpose aside. Reducing everything to biological transactions - just go on Twitter and see all the posts from both sides saying what men want and what women want and yada yada. Even the "based" Christians are reduced to seeing love through the lens of social and psychological logic chains, ala people like Jordan Peterson (who I admire a lot, but it's all too analytical for me).

You can dissect and analyse anything; and then follow things back via a chain of cause and consequence, but ultimately everything always returns to the source. The mystery, the question mark.

If you attach meaning or a sense of purpose to a relationship - "It's my destiny to be with this person !" - the modern mind will rationalise the meaning away.

You only feel this way because you have a biological urge to procreate, and a need to pair-bond to raise the child -- and this in turn can be explained by evolution --- which in turn began in a chemical soup ---- which in turn was the product of exploding stars and swirling gases ----- which themselves were a product of a big bang.

Of course, when we reach this 'big bang' (or any other beginning) we hit the source. Not just a "how?" that we can't answer, but also a "why?".

Why was there a beginning?

Or: Why is anything here to begin with?

Once you acknowledge this mystery you can do something the modern mind never does. Flip it all back round. Perhaps the big bang and the swirling gas and the exploding stars and the chemical soup and the millions of years of evolution and the very hormone filled body you inhabit is all there precisely so you can experience that meaning.

Maybe it all happened for that reason. Perhaps that is the purpose and the "why?". Perhaps love, in the higher, meaningful sense of the word, is the reason (again, I don't want to sound too cringey, but it can't be helped).

Maybe the meaning is the whole point, dumbo.

Of course, we can't know this for certain either. It could all indeed just be a pointless sequence of events that somehow just happened. However, we can't know it isn't meaningful either. Logic can only take us to agnosticism.

The modern mind gets lost in little autistic chains of logic though, missing the bigger beautiful picture. It's like looking at the Mona Lisa and claiming it's just chemical pigments on a canvas. Yes, that is indeed what it is if you physically dissect it. If you want a scientific analysis. If you want to break it down into its material components.

However, if you step back and take a look at the whole you will see beauty and meaning. A beauty and meaning that can't be pinned down by science. That we can't even prove is there, and that will be subjective to the person viewing the painting (you may find it ugly, lacking and overrated - either way you see more than just pigments).

If a painting can be so much more than its pixels or pigments then how much more meaningful can a life or the whole world itself be when you stop dissecting it to its base biological mechanics.

I've wandered somewhat lol, but I think I need to break out of the mundane from time to time on this blog. It seems kinda lame to supress this natural inclination to see god in the lightning. To pretend I don't see meaning in life would make me a liar (however unfashionable seeing it may make me).