A search for life Copyright- Robert Fullarton 2012

A search for life

 Copyright- Robert Fullarton 2012

So many notes are playing together in unison. Many instruments are playing through many different rooms. It plays a single pitch

But if I were to partially explain what I meant earlier in the previous chapter to

“the beautiful truths of life” I would have the reader imagine any one given fact of nature. To picture one single fact- one single momentous truth- to give credence to nature, imagine a supernova, the infamous hunts of the lioness, the very poison from the boxer Jelly fish, the sight of a rainbow, the taste of honey and the flashing turquoise gleam of the Kingfisher as it flashes past the lone witness. Let me zoom in closer, to a more appealing, more fixed examination of these subjects. Let me describe the proximity of notes, their timing, their performance, their sound, their carrying resilience and then the receptivity of the beauty received in the emotions, while the brain filters, distils and understands what takes place, the emotional beauty lasts longer, it defines so to speak the theme of the concerto or the mood of the symphony to perfection. The very instruments combined, the combined crescendo, the very written notes, the notation timed and spaced perfectly, all combined is the preliminary function that gives expression and perfection to something that is represented in the mood and the emotional beauty that comes secondary to the very sounds and the music itself – but nonetheless neither are less important, both are intertwined in each other, one functions for the other, the music is for man and the man is for the music, neither part of the process can be viewed with a lesser importance. Likewise I use this example as one of many, that can come to mind, for a higher truth, a functional adhesive for life, as a synchronised truth and beauty that speaks, of logic, intelligence, meaning, importance and sequence. Man must elevate man and become something wholly new, but no revolution is born within, without the floods and strains of pain, that is guaranteed. I myself have had to become more than man, to live through the floods of life, the humiliations and the pains – call them growing pains if you like- but I have sought something beautiful in this life and I still search, despite what events tomorrow may bring, I must search even if the sky were to fall upon me!

These examples themselves are the blueprints to a universal and a super sensory truth, that exceeds and expands itself above and beyond society, they are the exemplifying images that combine to create the truth or the overall collective picture itself.

Likewise individual men and women must utilise their own nature, and self discover what purpose they have and potential they have for the over all truth. If men and women remain as mere units of the state cell or organism then indeed the meaning of life has been lost and the disorder of the age has only made us into another typecast stereotype of the times. Our age leaves the thinking to a minority, the happy life is rarely pursued or attained, the pain of life understood, the actors of the earth have indeed attained the devotion of the many because too many indeed have become the units of the state and the individual pictures of an older, more beautiful truth itself is left to the individuals of the world.

Parents seek with the highest expectation that their sons and daughters will emerge in the affairs of the world, will rise to meet the challenges, the stresses, the quotas, the strains and the responsibilities that come in the cycle of preceding generations and lifetimes. They seek the maturation of their children, to become healthy and successful children, to seek a profession, to eventually flee the nest and seek an elopement or happy partnership with a spouse or lover. The curriculum of modern and even primitive aspects of human life- in full circle- are imbedded in the minds of each generation to the needs, rights and abstaining factors of each society and generation-  and parents too often seek to fulfil something of their own ideology and their own professional desires in at least one of the offspring. This of course is to satisfaction where a previous generation had regressed from such professional pursuits and aspirations.

I myself left school when I was eighteen, I graduated with a meagre figure, my points were indeed low. I struggled with the notion of studying –loathed it more even then- and of course I hadn’t the brain for it. I couldn’t study for long periods, just couldn’t compete with the other students, who would boast for hours at a time how many A1’s they had scored and I think I should have realised that that was my signal for a nap or an early death from sheer boredom. I had few opportunities, just as I had entered Secondary School; I once again faced the unknown, to face new people and new subjects to fail. During the summer of that year I had spent time in Croatia with my parents, had smoked a lot of Cannabis over the period of summer with so-called friends and went drinking with them at the weekends. I started to suffer from depression and to make matters worse I began to binge drink on the odd occasion, on cans of lager and even whiskey, the odd time. 

I laughed and put on a pretence, listened to heavy, loud music and went to parties. But deep down I felt lost, amid a

swelling crowd of unloving faces. Social anxiety would wash over me, self-hatred, self-doubt, a deep disorientated state of loss, or a hunger for meaning was beginning to unravel within me, but I still did not have the courage, the sheer tact or the confidence to realise that these people –along with my own weaknesses- were dragging me down into an abyss of self-hatred and loneliness. I couldn’t sit around girls, they were very attractive, with the full treatment itself- mascara, lipstick, eyeliner, wearing sultry clothing etc- I was still living in my childhood fantasises and my mind of naiveties and of course I felt unbearable at ease around thee women. I have to state that I have never felt at ease around young attractive women- but I do find a sense of ease around older women, who are more accepting and less fussy- but generally I have always felt like a second rate citizen when I am around girls or women my own age. I guess that it has never been easy for me to release a sporadic moment of confidence on the spot and I have always felt that such Friday night pretence seems petty, artificial and contrived. I became addicted to hash over a period of several months, and even began to think on the lines of desperation to get myself some hash. Luckily enough, I became temporarily estranged from a certain friend of mine and of course, with the source removed I found that it was easy for me to simply quit and move on.

As I said I did not score high on the Leaving Certificate, so I had few options open to me. I decided to study Archaeology and Cultural Studies at a Post Leaving Certificate (PLC) course in Dundrum. I had meticulously drawn up my own genealogy with the help of my aunt Rosemary and the help of my uncle Peter. I even went to work for a weeks’ work experience off on an archaeological dig in Ashbourne Co. Meath and I found the toil, the sheer distances I had to travel and cover along with all the digging to be very tiring –but luckily enough I had the help and support of my mother who offered to give me a lift in the morning to the bus eireann terminal- indeed I was spoilt and sheltered back then, and I have always pitied and felt an empathy for the hardship my mother has had to endure in silence, with no other alternative available.

I also worked for a week in Kells, cleaning and filtering out old bits of pottery, silt and even bone in a washbasin. I had to clean down bits of old bone with a tooth brush, beside a group of uninspiring, dour and beautiful Latvian and Lithuanian women. I naturally enough loathed the work, and was relieved once the term of experience was up. I studied hard for the first time in my life, drew up diagrams and profiles on cist burials and megalithic tombs in Ireland. I found the study of the Megalithic and Mesolithic periods of Ireland's history, and the early cultures of Europe to be partially interesting. I completed my family tree, with great excitement and began to study for my exams. My results were not exceptional, nor were they amazing, but they were a improvement and a satisfactory result in consideration of my past attempts at academia.

Over the course of that Year, I had a sort of spiritual awakening; an identity was beginning to form itself within my my being. I would describe it in the sense of the mystical and the religious experiences, which we have, and it held me to see a greater reverence for life and the abundances of majesty and mystery that surround us. It was and is one and the many, every thing is connected, a religious experience in my eye has no definite answer or conclusion, but it must be of objective and universal analysis and its goal or purpose is self revelatory for a transformation of some kind, that increases, one’s self knowledge and capacity, for something entirely greater than the subject of the experience themselves. 

Such is the joint union of equilibrium, the cessation of psychological torments and desires, so that the mind senses a state of immense peace and tranquillity, the overwhelming worries and anxieties of daily life are removed and the subject views life in the moment, is aware of the world around, the macroscopic environment of nature and a state of grace envelops towards this environment. The subject and the object are one, everything is accepted, there is for clarity of life, life becomes a mission to act upon and delve into.

Some could call it the activation of a sixth sense- namely the intuitive sense of the animal over the five immanent senses- some could call it apex of evolution, where the conscious brain and the human mind can experience something which clinical psychology and modern science has not touched upon. Others will identify the mystical as something wholly different altogether within a transcendental category. For me it is indescribable and for what I have described it touches all the categories mentioned and yet it is intuition of my character, my world and my religion. I myself disagree and call a spade a spade, and call it something out of the ordinary for that is what an experience or blessing of the spiritual kind is indeed.

Since I have became a Christian I no longer use the word mystical.. nor do I use any modern...new age jargon or junk....but focus on the words...Grace...Holy spirit...Salvation..and of course the Christ Life as Christ's people are joined with the spiritual body of Christ himself.

It is ultimately the resolution of mind and body for a short period, where anxiety retreats and equilibrium is achieved, but it is wholly different to say experiences done with deep relaxation. I for example went walking one day in a local park, in the heart of summer, I was child again, I walked deep into the woods, where no people even stirred.

 The sights of fresh meadows surrounded me, the scents of wild flowers, the blue sky and the mountains caught my gaze, and I was watching the birds collecting seeds grounded in the earth. I was deep in contemplation that evening, was walking to my own pace, my own space and time and while my mind was indulging in a richness for thought, I compared my thoughts with these natural settings and found my emotions were overwhelmed with the beauty of what I saw, I felt a lightness, a great joy and a sense of great purpose within myself.

With an appreciation for aesthetic beauty in nature, I could see something which words could not fully describe, but of course this is a mere description of an event which few of my readers will ever understand and this event is a mildly desensitised event – and I use this word to describe the root of experience and knowledge, because we sense something often before we fully rationalise on what it is exactly- it is an event that seems to be a footnote to other, more profound events in my life. Each man and woman seeks their raison d’etre and is that not enough.

I have not always been a thinker, I have had to learn, to reassess and revaluate from scratch and have to work on nothing. In some ways I am a self educated man, for I learned nothing from my school education, I have learned more from my experiences and my passions in life, for these are my reasons to live, but even I must admit that every day will be difficult way in its own right, each day is a day of work, even in a minute sense.

I became interested in the bible, the Jewish scriptures, some of the early Jewish works of mysticism. I felt on occasion that I was in direct contact with God, through prayer, through contemplation, through my individual life that was a source of the totality of nature and God. I was interested in the charismatic movement of the Holy Spirit, read the gospels of Christ and even began to try and view my life from a wholly new perspective. I did in some way view things in a more black and white way than I do now, but I still view this all as something sacrosanct in my education for life.

I would rise at dawn, feeling at ease, sensing something alive within me and I would go nature walking, would channel all my energy into my prayers and meditations.

I sought a meaning to life, to pain, to death and to the questions that most people simply avoided for their whole life. I refused to believe in nothing, and sought to rebuild my very world, up from its dregs to the top. (See Note at Bottom)

With music, with words, senses, memories and pictures we humans come full circle into a tapestry of expressionistic power, we go on an odyssey into the unknown and when our emotions unfold to perfection we sense something wholly new, something indescribable, for in art, nature and religion man is trying to seek a sense of equilibrium, a sense of his pure nature must be summed up and spelled up and this comes in a surrender and acceptance in the source of such power. I myself have felt my spiritual inquests to be very much the same and view my love for art, music and the written word to be the tools and instruments in my orchestra, they will utilise my emotions and the chemical processes of the brain and the higher functions of the mind into unison and perfect, high pitched perfection. In dreams and in moments of revelatory worth in life we shall see this come into fruition. But I emphasise, that these experiences are self explanatory, one will choose to see these as meaningful, as important and purposeful, for if the subject does not then these experiences surely were not really that bizarre and sublime as we first thought. Our picture and outlook on meaning is the central understanding to our livelihood and our existence and this goes with pain and pleasure, our perspective will induce the suffering or the acceptance we give with the central view we have asserted through our will for our mind to adapt to. Often the mind can indeed influence the brain and this is the person dictating to the body, not the body dictating to the person. The person seeks to fulfil themselves against the restrictions of time and space. The truth runs deeper than the water of a spring or a well; it can only be known when we have made a decent into the dark.

Life is a peculiar process, that is what I believe it to be, wake up from childhood to face the inundation of responsibilities and labours that are ready to meet us. If we don’t work hard to create a gap between the labours and the responsibilities then we shall have little happiness and solace, everything needs to be worked for and strived for, happiness is not compulsory, and confidence is essential, it is the power of one to bluff himself or herself over others.

Over the course of the following summer my father had encouraged me to study legal studies –Irish Law- in college and to contemplate the notion of studying to become a barrister or solicitor at law. I enrolled in Griffith College Dublin to begin my first semester and of course decided to myself that I would have to work hard –in fact I was waiting and counting down the days, telling myself how long I would last with this course- but over the course of my first year, my results were mediocre once again.

I found myself swamped with paperwork, assignments and research and found such subjects as Civil Litigation to be seriously boring, stuffy and drab- to sit through a class on civil litigation is one of the chief torments you can experience!

I found acquaintances in the college who kept the distance with me and I kept the distance with them. I could not stomach the pretence of young College goers, the distance and the sheer projections of rich masculine boys living off mommy and daddy’s money and the rich girls trying to look sensational, with both sexes trying to fulfil the stereotype. Of course I too was one of those boys, having my mother mostly pay the expensive fees for the college. I was genuinely grateful to here for her financial support, but at the time, I was greatly unhappy in the college- the college life was better than I had previously known- and had made a few enemies with certain students, with a certain animosity having been born out of several stupid misunderstandings between myself and them.

Often life in the college brought a certain indefinite loneliness, the hoards of students and the rigidity of deadliness and exams, with the intense amounts of preparation work that had to come before I even sat down to take my exams. I did enjoy learning law in certain ways. I found the advocacy and oratorical improvisation skills were interesting in their own right. I loved to study employment law- loved to study up and learn the various legislations, acts and quite humorous cases that accompanied- I also enjoyed studying Tort Law, Family Law, Contract Law and Criminal practice and procedure.

I found it difficult to confront and tell the others on my course that I couldn’t cope with close contact and yet I couldn’t cope with their reticence and their distance they kept with me at times. So I was a self-fulfilling contradiction, that couldn’t bare to face the long days with a class full of confident young adults who seemed to be cleverer and more competent than I could ever be. I was deeper than night, spent most of my time alone, brooded and delved into my issues, could be rancorous and moody as I was bottled up with anger and sorrow. I simply could not sit in a room with girls whom I found attractive, I found it all to be an engrossing sense of fear or nausea that caused me to have palpitations and pains in my chest and the atmosphere felt like a court martial or trial rather than a mere class room lesson! During this time I became friends with an older woman who was initially on the same course as me. She was kind, very friendly, artistic, well read, and intellectual and a good listener and some times I think that I sought a surrogate mother figure in her. I began to meet her at my breaks, went for lunch with her and I found that we had some of the most interesting conversations that I can ever record. I guess that in the end, when I departed from the college, I missed her the most, but people are always parting and disappearing from each others lives, there is no singularity to life, it is constant, it flows and moves with a heartbeat, a vibe and a pulsating energy. People seem to be like passengers that board and depart from the trains and many are temporarily waiting at the train station for something else to happen!

On my summer holidays that year while abroad in Croatia with my parents I found myself consumed with depression. I had my first major bout of depression, it lasted several days, and I felt so sick with depression that I simply lay on my bed for hours in silence and in a state of paralysis. I cried a lot that day, my mother simply came and tried to calm me, she stroked my hair and talked to me. I had been so overcome with my inconsistencies in life. I could not bare the loneliness, the lack of confidence, the sexual inadequacy, the lack of friends, the lacking feeling of love, the problems I had with girls and of course my directionless existence itself.

This existential crisis was just one of many, the tip of the iceberg and the beginning of something bad, the beginning of the dark tunnel and the start of my depression. Often people with mental illnesses cannot address the source or sources for which they are depressed. I refused to address or to confront the pathology and the reasons for why I was so unhappy and was drowning in depression and getting angry with everyone. Often it was everyone’s fault, and I would even think that I am too unbearable to be seen on the beach, I have to cover up and get away, I cannot be seen, I am so ugly to behold! These were my thoughts and my torments. I couldn’t relate to the image or notion of what other young people were doing, they were partying, they were getting drunk, having sex, having relationships, getting jobs, meeting friends and of course they had much more confidence than I ever could. I never wanted to be like everyone else, I wanted to be me –just me- I did not want to lower myself to any belittling standards whatsoever.

 I sought self-knowledge, freedom over hoarding generations and I sought my meaning in relation to the world. The world to many others has seemed to be a mere dalliance, and nothing more.

My brother John had struggled for many years with an inward sense of estrangement with his own identity. He now stands as a confident, gregarious, somewhat flamboyant individual. He is an extrovert, a passionate man for sport, who loves to go socialising with friends and a man with a great sense of humour- he could light up a room with his warm sunny nature and his sheer ability to speak his mind. His confidence stands head and shoulders above mine. But as I was trying to state, he had troubles with his won sense of meaning. He suffered depression for a period of time, about ten years ago to be precise. He was struggling with the curriculum and workloads of college life. He found the studying difficult to adapt to. He couldn’t relate as well to girls as he had hoped and of course he worried incessantly about the future.

All these mounting pressures eventually took their toll on him and he had to be helped, comforted, related to, reached out to and understood –and I wont for private reasons state too much on this matter- and my brother’s loss of meaning I believe had come with his belief that he had failed his family in some form or other. Of course this was not the case whatsoever- he simply compared himself with his friends too often- he could not mount to the familial pressures of having to find work, his sense of estrangement with society, with his peers and his own identity was muddied up with fear and all his previous acts of rebellion, parties and past confidence were an act of a troubled being behind the public persona that was seeking love and understanding, Too many people want to live up to some expectation, some image or pressure that exerts a mighty toll on their mental well being. I have known these cases all my life and I too have been one of them myself. With my Aspergers, I found the repetitive thinking that has driven me too the point of despair, has had to be confronted on a number of different levels, with different approaches and techniques used. My ingrained sense of rooted fear and social anxiety has always been the worst to deal with and it still cripples me from time to time, but bore within me a terrible inferiority complex that has been a source of much of my depression over the past few years in particular.

My brother moved out when he was 27 years old. He had met the love of his life and I was –and still am- generally happy for his long sought after wealth of happiness. I would come and visit him after college on a Thursday evening and each time, we would fraternise and joke together like free men, as adults together. I generally enjoyed being in the opulence of his new apartment, happy that my brother had started to work in the passport section of the Department for Foreign Affairs. Our friendship blossomed –and though we occasionally fight- our relationship has taken a new meaning and reached a new level of brotherly understanding. In the past we would never see each other even eye to eye and would never spend time together. But now we drank together, we watched films together and we even discussed intimate matters together. I did indeed find a friend in my older brother.

When I turned twenty, I sensed that it was the beginning of a new face in life; little did I know that my brief transitory states of freedom, peace and happiness would later be disturbed. It was indeed the brief calm before the storm In all honesty though I have never had no truly happy period in my life, all periods have bore me turbulences that shape me in some form or another. Sometimes I credit my life and how I am even still alive to some unforeseen kindness, I could call it a miracle, but not a fluke I have had to work tirelessly, have bent myself from ride downwards to pick up the pieces that have fallen apart over time. In my delicate disposition I have to learn, through painful lessons and expositions of experience that I have been reluctant to accept and the changes are almost invisible to me, but I still have to remind myself that they are there. When I turned twenty, I thought instantaneously that all the changes of adulthood would come to me, but I grew to be more depressed and moody, I swung like a pendulum between one phase and mood and another. I developed a sociaphobia that was relentless and it left me feeling useless and hated by general society. I even developed paranoia; sometimes I would even shout aloud to myself, I blind rage, at the frustrations that I experienced. I could not be free of my past and its immense baggage. I went to see a psychiatrist, who I personally found to be a waste of my precious time. He sent me to a psychiatric ward, during the summer of 2007 and I found some amount of courage just listening to the stories of others, their desperation, their lives, which left me feeling incredulous with the health care system and the psychiatrists in general. A field of doctors would visit me in my bed, to analyse me and they even thought that I was psychotic at one stage. I had simply overwhelmed them with my interests for religion, theology and my growing obsession for finding God.

Overtime, through the course of that very year, I developed my tastes for literature, and this was the start of my love for writing. I began to read and write poetry. Read the theology of C.S Lewis, the poetry of Blake, Eliot, Milton and Dickinson. I began to take an interest in lively debates and matters of the intellect for the first time ever. I even began to concentrate, to learn, to focus on the very words, to improvise and improve. I became an innovator and sought to teach myself as both benefactor and beneficiary combined. I became my own protégé and began to teach myself, to read up on improving my diction and I began to go hiking and developed an even greater ardour for nature, for wildlife and the outdoors. All of these activities even inspired me to write more poetry. My results in college had improved drastically at the end of the year, as I bucked myself up, began to study for hours on end and worked even harder than ever. I was still as abrasive and as conscientious ever with my college acquaintances and that is why I was still very much a loner in college, I couldn’t handle the intensity of having to pretend and to lower myself to the standards of others and I just couldn’t even sit beside girls for very long periods –for this had always felt alien to me and often I felt as though I were going to have a heart attack!

I add to this…that my old take on life was very naïve…it was at one point a gargantuan consumption of books and knowledge…a consumption of the incomplete and contradictory philosophies of men and the weight was enough to sink a ton of lead to the bottom of the sea. I have since come to reject psycho-analysis and mainstream philosophy…It is good to embrace the charity of others and indeed as Christ said…”If any man wants to follow me he must deny himself and take up his cross” Through all I have been through this has been the truest and greatest for our man to forget the self worship of many modern schools of thought…and in time and maturation I returned in strength to the Christian faith, but this time I had no childlike pretensions in me…but instead a hunger as vast as the firmament above me…to forget what I arrogantly thought I knew and learn instead what comes from the lessons we often do not seek but what a habit of finding us instead!