Zukzwang in prose

(Zukswang - A state in Chess, when the only viable move is not to move)

What do you see when you look into the future? A world of realized dreams, of possessions, of possibilities? What is human existence all about? Why do we all struggle until the end? Why do we taper our conscience with endurance? Why do we go out into the wild only to tame the self? Why do we chase the material, only to be inevitably drawn, and inescapably stuck in it?

The answer is implicit in our views of the future. We all collectively strive for a single thing. Each one of us is suffering all that one is suffering to pursue that one thing – something that no one else has. It is in itself pretty ironic that what we look for is in essence the same, and yet must necessarily be dissimilar. We’re all alike looking for something unlike everyone one else’s everything. We suffer, kill; we indulge ourselves in a mockery, a horseplay that eventually turns into a game of life and death – as if we could outrun death by the virtue of that sole possession.

The idea of death as a concept is conspicuously inevitable, and yet so mysteriously imminent that one can at the least attempt to flee and at the best persist in vein.

Often, as it happens, this vision, this thing of ultimate covet leads one farther and farther from oneself – towards a cognitive event horizon – the point beyond which there is no return. What happens when one reaches this place, this point in time? I have no answer!

What is that one thing for you? What is that one of the many possibilities that would constitute a window of perfection in time? What is it that you wish to have which no one else has?

When I leap into the future, I see not a world of possibilities but of impossibilities. There are infinite boundaries that prevent me from reaching out to the wish of such possession. How do you live through convinced of the impossibilities? Does it set me free then, of the race against time, the race against everyone else, or does it chain me to myself?

“Where would you go, if you could go anywhere” is indeed one of the hardest problems, one that poses a threat to individual freedom – a choice. Even harder is “Where would you go, if you could not go anywhere” – what sort of trickery is that? A choice between impossibilities!

So I ask myself, question my very existence, my purpose – Why am I here? What am I doing without a purpose? And most importantly – who am I? Am I still me, as I would be had I not my life but the will to be anyone but me?

If you must run, run faster. If you must stay, stay still. Blindness is fundamental to fearlessness. If you must see, you must doubt. This implicit contingency of awareness will not let you be convenient nor arrogant. You must only be confused, fearful!

This is the state when to find a purpose becomes the purpose. There is no end to this battle, no peace to this war.

I don’t wish to die a warrior. I don’t wish to live in a battlefield. I wish to live in peace. I wish to die in peace.