Stephen Coetzee

Individuality.

The word got caught like a fly against fly paper.
I got to thinking. What is individuality?
Where does it come from?
Where does it lead?
And how exactly do you define something as individualistic?

Is it the essence of randomness lent into any given situation?
No I don’t believe so, as given the right pressures, anyone can be made to do anything.
Dark thought, but it has been proven.

I began by breaking up the word.
Upon study there are 3 parts, I saw no more and no less.

In - Unable
Divi - Divide
Duality – Consisting of two parts.

All was fairly simple and mundane until I hit the third.
Duality. Consisting of two parts.

Now I’ve understood individuality to mean there is only one.

One.

Yet here, in the very essence of the word, there is another defined.
Long have I pondered this, wondering what to make of it, letting the subconcious wheels turn.

Then I stumbled upon it. There is another. More than one more, an infinite more, to be precise.

Years ago, I was reading a text on quantum physics, on how ethereal the world really is,
and how each step we take on seemingly solid earth is in fact a miracle in itself. In fact
we shouldn’t be able to walk at all. You see, there are 2 levels to this thought.

First, there are the actual atoms to consider. We, a loosely-woven carbon based lifeform,
an animated sack of mostly water, are made up of uncountable number of materials.
Materials that are made up of molecules, molecules that are made up of atoms etc etc.
I won’t go further just yet, that is for the second level. What makes it such a miracle
that we can walk? This: There is no “glue” holding these atoms together. No fancy
force field to stop our atoms from rearranging themselves to a form of least resistance
(shapeless blobs). And yet we hold our forms, somehow. And we walk on a earth that
is just as immaterial as we are. And yet we don’t fall through. We are made of the same
stuff. Yet we don’t fall through. It can break us, rend our flesh and crack our bones. Yet
we have the same elemental make-up.
Why is this?

Second, What are we made up of exactly?
Normal atomic law states that everything is made up of something else.
Easy enough to take in. Lets put it into practice shall we?

Forest => Trees. More Trees, and a few more trees to your left.
Tree => Bark and Leaves
Leaves => Cellulose and water
Water => 2 Parts hydrogen, 1 part oxygen
Hydrogen => 1 Nucleas, 1 Electron
Nucleas => 1 Proton, 1 Neutron
Proton => 2 Up Quarks, 1 Down Quark.
Quarks => Nothing.

Wait. What?
Yep. Quarks, at the sub atomic level, are made with fresh, wholesome nothing.
There is a lot more to this, but that lies in the realm of hyperphysics.
I’m no physicist. At least, I don’t imagine so.

Now ask yourself this question. If the very bottom of the chain is a quark built on nothing,
What is the tree really made up of?
What am I made up of?
What is this computer, feeling so real under my hands, made up of?

Answer? There isn’t one.

But I can guess.
My answer (Yours might be different) is Belief.

I believe that I exist therefore I exist.
I am a figment of my imagination, and so are you.
Everything fits in my imagination.

You exist because you imagine, and believe it to be so.
I exist because you’ve imagined me.

Now that I’ve explained where I’m coming from, let me show you where I am going.
I return to duality. Right now, I am imagining you, and you are imagining me.
That is a link that can never be broken. It connects the world. It creates the world.
It is a link between everything, both animate, and inanimate.

Yet somewhere along the line, we stopped believing in our own power. Our own link
to the Source that we have always envisioned. It has received many names, and I don’t
imagine I know them all. Valhalla, Heaven, Nirvana. It exists for many only as a goal,
reachable only as this world ends, and the next begins.

It IS attainable in this life. I have been there, for a brief moment on a spiritual workshop
I attended a few years back. I’m certain it lasted both a few seconds, and a lifetime.
Such a beautiful place does exist.
Such a beautiful place must exist.

It gives us something to look forward to,
When we have grown weary of the sights here..