you give meanings to illusions

Written by Chieh Wu

1/22/2006

You give meaning to illusions

Do you remember the first time we went hiking, i bought a ticket, and those tickets are still at my dashboard. They are not there due completely out of laziness. But the real reason is because they mean something to me. From those tickets I could see the smile on your face. I can some how through those tickets taste your lips. Something so simple, two pieces of green paper, Normally anybody would just throw it away without thinking about it twice. Yet, it could mean so much to me because of you.

What does this mean?

And what if one day I forgot the reason why I kept it there? What happened to the reason why I kept it in the first place? Where did it go?

You see, the point I'm trying to make is that the paper really don't mean anything. It is I , "me" who has given meaning to the paper, and with this meaning in my mind, my actions change simply because I was convinced of this meaning. Often forgetting that the paper had no mean, I made up everything in my mind.

Now let's extend this idea out that everything with a meaning only belongs to you. Meaning itself is simply something either others give us or something we make up ourselves. You may think somebody is important to you, but you have decided so, when the person really doesn't have a meaning in the first place. We use words to describe the "meaning", the "relationship" between you and others. "my father", "my sister", "my boyfriend", "my girl friend", my car , etc etc etc ........

Once we have made up our mind and our relationship towards that person, we act accordingly. Just like what I have decided my relationship toward those two tickets. I act as if those two tickets have some kind of magical ability that could link us together. And since subconsciously I was so convinced of that magical power, I treated the tickets accordingly. It is just an illusion I made up myself.

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And if I am capable of making it up, so can everybody else, including you. You may think certain situations are "good" , "bad" "so so" , but they are the same thing. They are all illusions.

Situations were never good or bad. It is the person doing the interpretation that has decided the goodness and badness of everything. And what do we use to judge what is good and bad? We use other good and bad in relation to the current good and bad. But the other good and bad is also base on another good and bad. So it just never ends. It all just an illusion we made up. If they are all illusions, what's the point?

All these I realized before I met you.

But after I met you, I realized that without relationship, the existence of one simply doesn't mean anything. Without left, you cannot have right, without right you cannot have wrong, without suffering, one can never know joy. And without you, I would not have known me.

Even though, we have made it all up, without the illusion there are simply no more meaning to existence, the only difference now between, is knowing, and awareness.

Before meeting you, I saw the ugliness of this whole illusion. But it is after being with you that made me understand how beautiful the illusion could be. It is almost like a moth flying towards the burning fire. I knew the suffering it would bring me to love you, and yet I continued.

I am falling back into the illusion knowing that it is an illusion, I have spent a good deal of my life to see the illusion for what it truly is. I have done everything to run away from the illusion. Yet now I have willingly come back to the illusion.

I remember one time you told me about this book, it was about a guy who's looking for the meaning of life, on the way he did everything he didn't, and would never do.....

In the end, he ended up in the same place. You simply reach a point where you realize that there is nothing to do and no where to be. You are simply that person you are suppose to be and standing at the place where you are suppose to stand. There is nothing to do and no where to go.

This is where I am now. I am here. I am me. The same place, yet, I have traveled a long way to get here. And I had you to accompany me. I have you to thank for the journey that has taught me so much. I also have you in my mind while shedding tears saying goodbye to you. Our road ends here for this life time. If only fate will allow it perhaps in another life, I will find you in the illusion before he does.