On Having Reached the Location of "Where Am I?"

How upset would you be if you woke up this morning inside a 6 by 6 jail cell where the only part of the entire room that had any privacy from the prying eyes of the prison surveillance cameras was the 3 or 4 meters surrounding the uncomfortably small vicinity of the toilet?

Or would you be upset at all?
I apologize for my blatant generalization in saying that everyone coming too in such circumstances would not enjoy them in the slightest. That was simply our society's attempt at an 'objective' moral definition of what's good and bad perpetuating itself into my subconsciously gullible mind. I am just as much a part of the herd as anyone else, and I won't deny it.
But I've always wondered what I would be like in jail. Would I be upset? Disillusioned? Surprised? Bored? Frightened? Lonely? Despondent? Indifferent?
Or would I suddenly smile at the realization that I was not a prisoner sandwiched between these sour metallic bars and this dry, tasteless wall of stone so much as I was a prisoner of ideas polarizing each other in the furthest conceivable extremities, missing the color and simply seen in black-and-white, bringing an alarming 'if you're not with me, than you're against me' mentality to the whole consensual construct of the rule of law?

Perhaps I would consider myself as having reached the final frontier of my political affiliations and ambitions, and in doing so unintentionally creating a lack thereof. Perhaps I would decide that true anarchism resides within the lonely confines of prison, yet then I would make the chain realization that it wasn't within the lonely confines of the prison that this anarchism truly resides, but within the empty and wide open spaces of my mind, always talking to itself in a vein attempt to access the highest frontier of thought conceivable, only to have its echo-location never return leaving only one tangible hypotheses: that there is no final frontier of thought. It simply continues on and on and on, with my brain acting as a home that's roof was violently torn away during a hurricane of existential epiphany.

I can't say I wouldn't be frightened. Perhaps I would even be horrified. What kind of beasts would roam these prison hallways, walking about in a state of perpetual indifference to my existence, ready to snuff me out should I become an obstacle of inconvenience? Yet, Wait, I would think of myself.
Why would such a being horrify me in the slightest? Would it not be true that this horrifically amoral creature is simply the state of the universe personified? That may be the very reason it frightens me so. Like any rational human being, I do not want to face a universe that does not work with my best interests at heart. I do not want to face an empty mortality of 'now it's over, and there's certainly no sequel to who you are.'

Nor do I wish to embrace the idea of an empty morality, I think to myself. And then I make the realization that it is impossible to embrace what doesn't exist. It is impossible to embrace what was always eternal nothingness.


It then comes to me in fragmented sentences cutting each other off in tandem, like a telegram with *STOP* after each period, yet at times the *STOP* is placed mid-sentence before I have a chance to comprehend what was about to be communicated through myself, and to myself. What a strange feeling it is, when you gain the ability to silently interrupt yourself using words invisible to all but you.

The universe is inherently empty of all meaning. Meaning is a human concept; one that we apply to all we wish to be partially or wholly personified for our spiritual benefit. Yet I know spirituality exists, even if only inside of myself... or better yet, inside of each and every one of us who makes the decision to embrace it.
Because you can't embrace the opposite, which was always eternal nothingness.

It is then that I realize what seems to be an optimistic truth to it all: the universe may not make anything of me, but I choose what to make of the universe. In fact, it is human nature to make something of the universe. The universe is only silent and meaningless to itself, designed by nothing and for nothing. And I'd say we're pretty lucky to have the ability to make that nothing into something, and not only something, but something true and believable. The universe itself is not moving inexorably towards any higher purpose; but we are. Or, more accurately: we are if we so choose to be.

So, it would be within this lonely prison cell that I would discover who I am. And it would be within this lonely atmosphere of perpetual pessimism that I would discover the truly optimistic truth to it all.
I would discover that, despite these walls, and these guards, and this atmosphere of pain and suffering and wasted time, that I was, and always would be a free man. And none of this would change that.

And were I ever to forget how truly free I was, all I would have to do is ask myself: "Where am I?"