All Return Is Return to the Womb
In some book on Jiddu Krishnamurti (that I can no longer find nor remember), an elderly woman who is grieving the loss of her husband happens to meet Krishnamurti, declaring to him that she would give anything to have him—her husband—back. Instead of giving the usual, automatic, socially acceptable responses, Krishnamurti asks her: What year? What age? What era of your late husband’s life is he going to be in when you bring him back?
The point, of course, is that he’s simultaneously revealing her selfishness and her idealizations, whilst exposing her grief as mourning not the total reality of her husband, but her idea of him, her memory, the role he played in her psychological economy.
This exact same point applies to all notions of ‘Return’ or, in the more infantilized form, RETVRN!
When the woman in question finally had her husband back from the dead in the idealized state, wouldn’t it be the case, then, that she would not want him to age? Not want him to change? Because in doing so, surely they would enter into the exact same dilemma once again?
This exact same understanding is present in contemporaneously prevalent notions of political return. It’s not the case that one of these infantile, political fetishists desires to return to some prior political reality and have that reality move back to where they now are, no, that would be nonsensical. It is apparent that any notion of return is both return and stasis. The prior state is idealized as somehow ‘correct’ or ‘better’, a state from which we should have never moved.
This is an utterly infantile and life-denying position. Telling of a psychologically stunted, trembling, and ultimately, fearful mind that wants nothing more than to return to the womb and nap until death.
To return to an idealized time is to presuppose a time and place where things would be such that everything was just right. Of course, like the example of the grieving woman, everything would be just right for you. To return is to believe that the world, the earth, and ultimately life should stop just for your vague, nostalgic whims.
You want to be a soldier? A prospector? A homesteader? A fucking knight? Pull your head out of your ass and accept the only time you have is now. An entire lifetime spent elsewhere, dreaming of how things should be, despite the fact that the words should, could, but, and if all denote the fact that things are not as you are stating them to be.
This is masturbatory suffering. The mental engagement with an objectively impossible fantasy that both bolsters one’s self-righteousness, whilst also allowing a high degree of justified melancholy. Woe is me, I don’t get to be a crusader. Get a grip.
Guess what, you got modernity. That’s when you were born, that’s when you will die, and that is, like it or lump it, the consciousness you have inherited. And, every single romantic fantasy you’ve developed has been filtered via that modern consciousness.
Where does it end? How about we send you back to WW2, and you can fight them on the beaches? But then, maybe seeing your buddy's guts get blown out will be too much. Back to the Frontier, and you can be a rootin’ tootin’ cowboy. But then, maybe you’ll get bored with treating your VD with vinegar? 6th-century Britain, and you can fight alongside King Arthur. But then, what if the armor is a bit too heavy and the hair shirt chafes? Let’s send your ass back to the caves! Maybe you’ll be the da Vinci of cave paintings….but then, hunting a mammoth might be tough? I tell you what, let’s send you back the ontological prenatal state, where you can exist in the warmth of the abstract cosmic mother womb. Cosy.
If you want to entertain yourself, state that what is should be otherwise.
If you want to suffer, push against what is.
If you want to live, be.
Give up.