— Editor note: This one is heavily edited. My notes made no sense but they contained very important ideas. I felt compelled to give them some justice. —

Most people don't want anything. Wanting something requires choice and we have much less than it seems.

We all want the same things. Going places, nice objects, attention, security, respect, and some random chocolate candy in the middle of the fucking night. But none of these are want I would call wants. Or at least, there's a different type of want that most of us never get to exercise.

What would you do if you had everything? If you've traveled everywhere twice, had every object, everyone's respect and admiration, and security for a lifetime. What would you do if the world stayed out of your way, people left you the fuck alone and you had the the means to peruse or not pursue. That's what I mean with want. Everything below that is a need, a desire, fantasy, lust, greed, or whatever. It doesn’t impress me. You don’t really want it. It’s a different type of requirement that comes from desire, lust, fantasy, greed, imitation and such basic, banal, trivial drivers.

More importantly, it fully predetermined, though functionally arbitrary.

There’s nothing subhuman about these drivers. But I think it’s also true that the want I’m talking about is more human. You are the most you when you exercise real choice of what to pursue.

For some reason, this IM journey revealed to me some of the meaning if this thing in the picture.

It’s called a Sand mandala. I first saw it in Samsara and it stuck with me. It will stick with you too. You can’t unsee it. I Never knew what to make of it. The gist of it is that these monks spend a long time making these intricate paintings. I find them very ugly, but you can’t fault them for intricacy. The monks take days, sometimes months, carefully pouring colored sand in these precise formations and then when they’re done, they just destroy it. They just take brushes and wipe it all off. Google it. It’s somewhat disturbing.

Now why the fuck would you do that? They say it’s “to symbolize the impermanence of all the phenomena. “ Whatever that means. Fuck that is what I always thought. Buddhists being Buddhists, doing esoteric shit with some impressive sounding explanation. But this last year, this thing kept popping into my mind repeatedly. Today, it’s making more and more sense to.

The spirit is what we call our most human component, that which makes us different from a predetermined automaton. Perhaps it’s our only human component. It follows that these monks, the people most interested in spiritual ascent must not chose things that have a reason behind them, because reasons are substantial and predetermined. Monks must peruse the most futile endeavors. The point of doing it is that there’s no point to it, therefor choosing to do it is an expression and a demonstration of the choice mechanism, rather than the choice itself.

There’s a million reasons to read a book, do a mindfulness meditation or wolf down a pint of Häagen-Dazs (espetialy those with the two flavors in the same tub). Therefor doing these things is no demonstration that there is indeed light inside the dome. But building a sand mandala is different. This is some whacky shit. No bot would ever come up with this and start doing it.

If you go deep enough, the source of choice seems completely arbitrary. It’s anti-deterministic and I never really connected with that until I really wanted something and followed through with it. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t feel like anything. It’s not a feeling. It’s just a realization that I’m experiencing something that non-automatic. I’m experiencing the most human state that I ever did (as opposed to a bot). It’s not a good experience. It’s not bad. It’s experiencing the thing with which we experience. It’s like measuring the ruler.

Perhaps that’s why the image of the sand mandala kept coming to me. IM is not futile, but it has the same effect of making me experience what it’s like to chose.

There’s plenty of reason to do an Ironman. It can be fun at times, it can contribute the our lives in many measurable ways and one might get a positive return on investing in this experience. From that perspective, it’s just like any of the other trivial pursuits.

But the reason I get so philosophical about it (other than me being me) is that the equation for me is completely lopsided. There’s nothing about this that’s worth it. Yes, my learnings in this journal are valuable, but fuck that. This is hard. It’s not my level. I don’t give a fuck about the bragging rights because I get enough hate without them. That’s why I’m reminded of the image of the monk, hunched over doing something beautiful for no fucking reason. There’s no subjective benefit, just objective cost and no point. There isn’t supposed to be a point. You just aim high, and you do it and in doing so you experience glimpses of you, as you.