More Thinking...

Yesterday, I went to La Jolla to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art. The featured artist was Vik Muniz, a photographer who takes different mediums (such as sugar, chocolate, wire, thread, and diamonds) and uses them to recreate other works of art such as the Mona Lisa and Peranesi's 'Carceri'. Muniz took delight in giving viewers a different way to experience traditional art as well as exposing the flaws in our visual reality. All in all, Muniz showed me that whether or not the Mona Lisa is drawn in oil paints or peanut butter and jelly, we can still experience it as art - one is not above the other in any way. It is merely a different way to experience art.

I took these thoughts as I went to the La Jolla Shores and sat on a grassy knoll and looked out at the ocean. There were two guys in their early 20's standing on the rocks looking down and pointing at fish. Immediately, I thought that whatever conversation they were having about fish in the ocean was stupid. "Of course there are going to be fish in the ocean. Duh!" Then I thought back to the exhibit - "it is merely a different way to experience art". Just because I might not have that conversation does not mean that it is any less of a conversation. Who is to say that I am better or smarter than them? Who is to say I am living a fuller life because I am sitting here thinking deep thoughts and they are pointing at fish? In actuality, both of our lives are equally valid. But why? Doesn't intelligence, success, and ambition count for anything?

I had an epiphany. Our lives were different, but just because one is made using "oil paints" and the other is created using "peanut butter and jelly" does not make one more profound or better than the other. In the end, we are creating our own works of living art. Our experiences dictate the medium for our art, but whether I spend my life eating fast food and playing video games or I climb mountains and seek Buddhist Enlightenment does not make one life any more valid than the other. They are simply another way to live life - another way to create our living work of art.

So if each of us is a living work of art, and we don't necessarily have to achieve anything comparatively significant in life, then why do we exist? Specifically, why does the fast food eating gamer exist, I wonder? I sat their alone on that grassy knoll thinking and thinking. I watched a family play in the surf, and for the first time, appreciated each of their living works of art as they experienced the love of family and the ocean waves. I looked back at the two boys pointing at fish and appreciated their fascination at whatever was swimming down below and how they were sharing the experience. And then it hit me. I was sitting here, thinking all of these deep thoughts, and if the world ended right now, or if I decided to jump off the cliff shores and kill myself, no one in the entire world would have ever known what I was thinking. My thoughts, my living work of art, did not exist outside of myself. Therefore, they did not exist in reality.

In order to have my living work of art exist, I would need to share it. And then it all came together so clearly. Why do we exist? To share our living works of others. Why do we share our living works of art with others? To exist. It was so simple - so cyclical. And everything else in life made so much sense: why we yearn for human contact, why we create art, why we work to fulfill our lives (because our efforts, in turn, share our living works of art with others), and why we are able to generate abstract thoughts (such as philosophy) even though they have no applicable use as a survival mechanism in nature.

We exist to share our living art with others. And when you don't, you cease to exist. Think of the hermit living in the caves. If you've never seen him, heard him, tasted, smelled, or touched him - does he exist? I don't think he does, and the only way he can is to share his living work of art with you. Without that, he is just a thought in your mind, something generated entirely by you - a thought which you can choose to believe or not to believe, but which has no actual grounding in reality.

For the first time, I feel free. I live not feeling inadequate of the things I am not doing right now, and I don't feel superior to others because of the things I have done. I am creating my own living work of art - forged by my experiences and my efforts and a little bit of chance. All I want to do now is share this living work of art with others, and to experience other living works of art - to gain perspective and give it back.