"If the rules you followed brought you into this, what use of the rule?"
Anton Chigurh in No Country for old men, the greatest villain
This is the question Anton Chigurh, asked, Mr. Carson Wells, just before he shot him, with his cattle gun. If you haven't watched the movie, and you are onto chilling cold blooded villain type of movies, I would recommend you the 'No country for old men'. And for me, Anton Chigurh would be the number one villain so far, from all the movies I have watched. Not even the silence of the lambs, comes even a little closer. Moriarty is just a villain of a fairy tale, when compared to Chigurh. The reason, the reason is I think Chigurh is an intellectual with no regard to human rules. He follows his own rules, and really unpredictable, the way he uses uncommon and brutal ways of killing combined with given choice to his victims with a choice of destiny as a coin flip does add to the chilling feeling. However, in this article the objective is not to describe the character. It doesn't matter, the bad rules he followed to end the lives of innocent people, but the above quote attracted me as a philosopher, because it has the potential for someone to trigger a change in their lives.
With this in mind, I invite you to read the following paragraph from the book what is time?
Look at a young traveler, solo traveling around the world to see the unseen, to face the unfaced, feel the unfelt pleasure of delicacies. He or she would believe that we are made for this reason, to do everything before we die. For most of us this will feel fine, and we would encourage them. He would die happily at the end of the life thinking he has spent the life for the maximum. He might jump off a cliff into the ocean to feel what it feels like risking own death. (we all want to feel this energy) Where are we not jumping from? We jump from skies, we jump from hills, we jump from buildings, and running horses it's a constant thirst for an adrenaline rush.
Life as a free fall
It is a big risk to take a lifetime of decisions to depend on views which are shaped by our teachings, culture and science. As nobody can answer why we were born, it is a gamble. We have only information, given to us by our own ancestors to make these decisions. There is no difference between someone who gambles at a casino, someone who takes a cigarette for the first time in their hands or someone who wakes up early to go to the job, in his office. We all take the free jump, pushed by our will. As all those decisions were made possible and limited by the information we received. We are clueless, risking our lives in everyday decisions, as we do not understand the limits of the current understanding in science and nature. What if life is a free fall, what if there is no destination but it's only a journey? What if we all are in a train which never stops?
It seems good idea to ask the question, often than necessary. Imagine you fail an exam, or get a divorce, or something which makes you deeply sad about life. And that is a good time to ask yourself, "If the rules you follow brought you into this what use of that rule?" You do not have to wait, until someone points a gun at you, to think about the question. It is not to dishearten you, but to improve the life by great margins, as it is time to change your rules. More importantly I suggest you imagine, your last day on the earth, on your bed as an old man or women, and ask yourself, the question "If the rules you followed brought you into this what use of the rule?"
Fortunately, I had similar circumstances, on and above earth, to ask myself the similar question. If you would like to read more on this, you can read the near-death experience in an airplane. Someone would say it is about the telos of life. But, when you are in such a place with need of new direction, I suggest you take mindfulness, and wisdom as your choice. In this blog I have collected a decent amount of such rules for you to follow, presented as poems and stories. Hoping it would help, as it helped me.
Meeting Death on a couch
Unfortunately, in the modern world most of us do not have the luxury of having a peaceful mind to create opportunities to revisit our beliefs like our ancestors had. So, I invite you next time at the end of a hard-working day, when you get back to your comfort of home and relax on the couch, take one minute of your time to appreciate the beauty of silence. Meet your death like a friend on the comfort of your couch years before it reaches you. Let it wander in silence like our ancestors did. Who knows, with the wisdom it provides you can be the next great philosopher, the leader of the next great religion or simply it can let you revisit deep dark holes and gaps in your past. And once you do that, answer the following question.
Can I really learn lessons from the past? If not, why? If so, how?
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