Enlightenment

Enlightenment was achieved by nearly everyone at some point during the sixties. This is something that later generations have never, ever been allowed to forget. This is because there was a certain kind of enlightenment you could only experience between the years of 1960-1969. Connoisseurs of the sixties will insist that the optimal year for enlightenment was 1968 (although a certain subset argues 1967, and a smaller one swears by 1963.) Those who claim 1969 are generally thought to have achieved a slightly less enlightened state. A very select and special few actually achieved and maintained enlightenment from 1960 all the way through to 1969. Hippies hold these people in extremely high regard, even though most of them are now in jail.

What is enlightenment? Asking this to people from the sixties is kind of like asking a congressman about porn – they know it when they see it. Of course everyone else knows that enlightenment means a state of absolute empathy. They know this while they go about their day and do the laundry and make eggs and do a great many things that don’t directly involve celebrating themselves. But to people from the sixties, the idea of enlightenment is one of the best vehicles they have found to remind themselves of how amazing they are. Because they either 1. have it or 2. are seeking it, and both sound and look positively fabulous.

They will ask themselves, in a soft voice whilst stroking their chin and pensively gazing at their most recent Japanese inspired rice paper brush painting – “What…is…Enlightenment?” This question is even the name of a magazine run by someone from the sixties who likes to tell everyone about how enlightened he is while also being humble enough to examine the different ways in which he and other people from the sixties are still seeking it. No, it doesn’t make any sense. For hippies, its not enough just to be enlightened and lord it over everyone else. They must also take pride in emitting a soft a chuckle while throwing their hands up to the sky and smiling, saying things like “but I am just a man with his own failings, and scarcely deserve the praise you bestow upon me!”

There’s a reason why people from the sixties have so much trouble with the concept of enlightenment. Its because there’s nothing pragmatic about being enlightened. Everyone else knows and accepts this, but this is very challenging to people from the sixties. This is not just because they find the clothing that enlightened people wear both practical and fashionable. This is also because they are unable to accept that 99.99999999% of living on this earth is done so at the expense of other living beings, which simply doesn’t jive well with absolute empathy. Its hard to reconcile standing atop mountains and silently mouthing the words “we are one” with sitting down to eat one’s chicken sandwich not two minutes later. Free range or not – someone had to cut that chickens head off. Yes it lived a better life, but at the end of the day, I think it would have preferred continuing that life to being in your sandwich. It also does not matter if you bless and honor the chicken. It honestly does not give a shit, its dead. And you killed it.