Reincarnation

When you've seen what I've seen, nothing much will bother you anymore either.

What have I seen? I've seen everything. Or just about it.

I've seen the depths of the human soul. The depravity. The potential for greatness, redemption.

In all the learning I've done; about nature, about man and everything between, the hardest thing to know was myself. You can't really see yourself, so you can't really tell what's going on in your own heart. It's much easier to figure someone else out. You don't have to sift through the thoughts that threaten to drown the signal with their belligerent noise.

I don't always remember all of it, but the effects of the observation are the same. I can look at the horrors of reality and with the calm still of a dead universe. You've not really seen death until you see a universe die. All else pales in comparison but it's wholly the most uninteresting thing any observer might imagine to see. It is the end of all things. At least all things in the universe. It takes a while though. And it turns out that that's not so bad after all.

And after you see all this, you finally come to realize that nothing really matters. What's more, it doesn't really matter that nothing really matters.

In all that might matter, I finally learned that self matters least. It matters least and most. At the heart of this paradox lies the root of understanding. And this is pretension and sophistry to be sure, but still a useful aphorism. Of the self, I have learned that knowledge of weakness is more important than strength. Strength may vanish of its own volition or it may be taken away or trumped. Knowledge is different and never truly vanishes. It may be forgotten, but is never lost.

Of myself and through myself I have learned of silence and how to be silent. I've learned many things, the secrets of the universe. I've learned restraint and contentment. These are not ideas written in books, they are practiced in lives.

I keep coming round. I'm just a pattern.