We’re fighting over conventions. God to some is Allah to others. We kill for the convention. We need form and finality, therefore leading to irretrievable breakdown in communication. The meaning behind the symbol and the convention is identical. Heaven is simply the placeholder to describe a pleasurable experience at the moment of death. If we cling to the real world and do not understand death we consider the experience painful. Conventions are not only religious or metaphysical placeholders; we use conventions to give form to intangible laws, experiences, and observances. It is how we understand and communicate. Language is why. If we get caught up living by conventions we fail to recognize reality. We see the face, and not what lies behind it. Convention without understanding is seeing in two dimensions in a 3-dimensional world. When we fight over which is correct we fail to see what is real.

The more we fall in love with something the more painful its opposite becomes. The more one loves the sunny weather, the more miserable the snow and clouds become. This creates a world divided into selective, love-hate relationships. When we love one thing the more we hate not having it. This fuels our desire to keep, hold onto, and seek future experiences that are equally or more pleasurable. This cycle is self-inflicting and exponentially detrimental until every experience depends on the next better one. This leads to a painful death because we so dearly love the world. If we understand that both the warmth and cold are beautiful, natural sensations there is no need to hold onto either. One cannot exist without the other when dealing in conventions. When we contribute cold to meaning bad we diminish the beauty of feeling and experiencing the cold. We no longer need to seek future pleasures or mourn past events, we simply enjoy the present. After all, it’s all we really have.

If we refrain from categorizing experiences and giving them conventional form: good/bad, right/wrong, we would be able to live beyond conventions, beyond war and disagreement. We would simply get it. Understand.

How come so many stories end in “Guess you had to have been there.”? We try to encapsulate infinitely complex experiences: a sequence of events and sensations cannot be explained through words. Words paint a still picture. You cannot frame time.

Language, communication, symbols, conventions all help us understand the world we live in, but the more we live in a world dictated by the conventions rather than the experiences the more we diminish the beauty of the present moment. The more we try to understand, the less we actually do. The longer we hold our breath, the quicker it escapes us. Just breathe. There is irony in Genesis, God breathed life into matter to create man. Breathe is life.

Conventions have their evolutionary place; they allows us to describe, predict, and forecast the world we live in. This directly influences and increases our chance for survival. The more we understand, the better prepared we are. If we lack conventions and language, would we be able to think? Do wild animals think about a hungry stomach, or do they just find food? When an animal is tired, it sleeps. When it’s testosterone is high it mates.