Air Conditioning of Our Lives

We as a society like to sit with our backs to the proverbial air conditioning, letting our communal sinus get stuffed and drippy. Cold air fills the room like some sickly gas, enveloping us within its opium-like texture. We convince ourselves though, that this sinus stuffing metallic air that surrounds us is pleasurable. We kick back, so to speak, and breathe great breaths of moist, rag-like-air, grabbing for it, gulping it down as if it were water touching our parched lips. We crave for it, our minds convulse; like a man possessed we do all we can to power this box of artificial oxygen. I recently read about a man who killed a young calf in anticipation of wrapping its cool flesh around himself, in the hopes of simulating the air conditioning experience. Friends, is that not addiction?

Have we gone mad? Have we, as a society, sunken so low that we cannot recognize what our natural surroundings are? Dare we forget that the Garden of Eden came equipped not for air conditioning? Shall we fall into the modern day Tree of Knowledge trap? Who controls us, our minds and souls or a fuse box?

Furthermore, what is this hallucinatory substance that fills our lungs and our minds with sweet dreams of clanging metal and cans of cold green tea? What is it that slowly forces us to lose our grip over what reality is, and slip into this medically induced abyss.

I remember meeting a child in Bangladesh, he played with a spinning top under the sweltering Himalayan sun, and then, out of nowhere, a venomous snake attacked him. The town elders saved the boy, and gave him a new top. Then we all sat and drank hot tea and laughed and laughed. We had all, from the young to the old, experienced life. At that moment life had been so tangible, so tangible that I thought the old men would grow twenty years younger. Alas, they didn’t.

What connection has this personal recollection to the natural condition, and the lack thereof? This story was the beginning of our search, our Maggelanesc voyage through thought. With the beginning of this collaborative search for the divine truth (expressing ourselves through art and through words), we can delve deeper into the complexities, peeling away the layers, pouring healing salt upon the wounds.

Air conditioning is the re-conditioning of our natural surroundings. It is the re-education of our feeble minds. We were created to live in natural surroundings, enlightening the savage world that is olam hazeh hagashmi, and then we just joined it. We joined with not only our bodies, but with our hearts and minds. We told ourselves that we needed this cool air, we told ourselves that we could not live, that it would be utterly unbearable to sleep a night without a synthetic buffer encircling us. And then it was true. We had convinced ourselves into a physical and even more, a mental addiction.

There is but one elixir to healing our searing gashes. We must pull the plug. We must rip the wires from the machine. Break the knobs and buttons off. Pull the filter out, and poke holes through it. Intervention in a very real way. And then, then we shall kick back our feet and relax in the path of the divine central air-conditioning, who’s spigots shall never cease to blow wind from its bottomless innards. Amen.