clarity and death

I have never been able to achieve clarity on demand. It happens to me every once in a while when things suddenly fall apart.

When things really fall apart, you do not feel a sense of emergency. On the contrary, the very notion of emergency disappears. Priorities do not get reshuffled. Something less destabilizing but more drastic happens: They lose their order structure altogether, aimlessly drifting in mid-air, like specks of dust. You become a passive spectator of your own life, stupidly gazing back at your own gaze.

Clarity clears. It makes you so empty inside that the sheer pressure differential physically bends your body into a withdrawal position. You feel hunger pangs, but weirdly start enjoying them. You start forgetting things, but feel no discomfort for doing so. 

It is amazing how effectively body and mind can let go in the absence of the will to live. We as a society focus heavily on our positive adaptive capabilities which give rise to all the heroic content that we shovel into our popular narratives. Our equally remarkable negative adaptive capabilities remain largely ignored. 

In short, clarity kills, but it does so only fractionally, not in a wholesome way. Of course, when you die one third, no one even notices...