"I have dreamed a dream, and now that dream has gone from me."
Morpheus
"Matrix Reloaded"
It's incongruous that I should like the second Matrix movie as much as I do, given its overt biblical subtext. However, I'm equally entertained by pretty much any mythology, so I don't hold all this Judeo-Christian referencing against it. And in fact, there's an awesome existential soliloquy in the movie, delivered by Merovingian. He talks about causality. And while he says there's no choice, he DOES say there is only cause and effect, that everything is chaos born from action and reaction.
An excerpt of his commentary:
You are here because you were sent here; you were told to come here,and you obeyed. It is of course, the way of all things. You see thereis only one constant, one universal; it is the only real truth:causality... action... reaction; cause and effect.
Choice is an illusion, created between those with power...and thosewithout. ... And this is the nature of the universe. We struggle against it; wefight to deny it, but it is, of course, pretense; it is a lie. Beneathour poised appearance, the truth is: we are completely... out ofcontrol.
Causality. There is no escape from it. We are forever slaves to it. Ouronly hope, our only peace is to understand it; to understand the why.Why is what separates us from them...You from me. Why is the onlysource of power; without it, you are powerless. And this is how youcome to me; without why...without power. Another link in the chain.
That astute Merovingian ... you gotta love him. Existential to the point of nihilism ...
I have been more and more aware of this of late. It does not matter what constructs you put around your life: the safe husband you marry. The nest egg you save. The respectable home you buy. The careful way you tend your diet, or your health, or the expectations placed upon you by parents. The rules of polite society you follow. The possessions you accrue in some nameless race to amass ... stuff. None of it matters, because we are all at the mercy of the chaos of the universe. At the inescapable, unrelenting passage of time.
My uncle died recently. He left behind an early onset-Alzheimer's wife of 30 some odd years of marriage. And he left her nothing. He spent the vast majority of their mutual savings on ... something. We don't know what. A quarter of a million dollars is just ... gone. And so is he. So is the superlative reputation he spent a lifetime building. So is the appearance of a loving marriage, as he leaves his widow appalled, destitute and in riddled with debt. Had he no idea he'd die someday? Certainly he understood, as all sentient, mature humans should know, that he was not immortal. A day of reckoning would come. Did he not care? Did he not CARE to care?
Cause, and effect.
I watch the trees begin their journey to early summer in earnest, with the pagans' Wheel of the Year emblazoned on the green flags of tender new leaves. And if I sat here, unmoving, and watched without ceasing, this same scene would play out before my eyes over and over and over. The root cause of change in sun and temperature creating the ceaseless effect of pollination, maturation, then decay and death.
Cause, and effect. And inescapable, inasmuch as the climate remains stable of course.
I see the same incessant rippling of time in my own life, and I wonder ... if I gave up caring how it all turns out, if I stopped pondering the "why" of everything, of anything, wouldn't it all just keep unfolding anyway? Whatever happens, happens. Que sera, sera, as the French say. I get stuck in the riddle of it ... to act, or to fail to act. Will it matter? If so, to whom?
Isn't the reality that I'm really just along for the ride, up until I decide to stop breathing? It would seem so.