Isn’t living on planet Earth while it goes around the Sun some kind of giant universe-scale Ferris Wheel ride? Obviously, I’m talking about a Ferris Wheel in a public park where you have no control over it except to buy a ticket and let the Amusement park management take care of the rest. You don’t maintain the thing, you don’t even know if the thing is maintained at all. You just trust the judgment of the many other fellow creatures who ride it, look at how amused, or scared to death they are when they come off the ride and simply decide that you would also like to experience it for yourself. Just that, while most Amusement park Ferris Wheel rides last for about 10 to 20 Earth minutes, a ride around the Sun lasts an Earth year. And, we can sort of get off the Amusement park Ferris Wheels much more easily than getting off Earth.
Then when you finally get on, you can’t really control who gets in the same cabin with you. And most probably, like your ride around the Sun on Earth, you might be riding the Ferris Wheel alone as well. Of course, both the Ferris Wheel ride and the ride around the Sun can both be quite entertaining and interesting if you have creatures in your cabin or in your life that connect with you. However, more often than not, both on Earth and in Amusement parks, you are just lumped together with creatures who bought the ticket around the same time you did.
So, irrespective of who you are riding with, you have to have a satisfactory ride. Got to see the sights along the way, got to stop your knees from shaking when you get to the very top (happens to me all the time… I find it difficult to keep my soul inside my shaking body when I get to real high places… not because I am afraid of the height, but just that I have less awareness of where I am, how high I am, makes me go all nuts and jittery). Then there is also the fact that you have to be a Pleasant Existence to the other creatures riding with you. Of course, you can choose to not be seen, but doing that is so very difficult. I mean how do you not get noticed when you are lumped together with a set number of creatures for a ride? The more creatures there are in your cabin the easier for you to avoid being noticed by the majority. But even in that case, the fellow riders standing closest to you will notice at least the fact that you exist. If this is the case, isn’t it better to be a Pleasant Existence that is easy on the brains of creatures around you? Rather than being only noticed by two or three fellow riders just to be probably accused of being a pickpocket or spy in case something goes wrong aboard the ride. Because, we all know how we work, if there is something wrong it is most likely assumed that the one among us who did not make a pleasant impression is responsible. This is obviously a situation that should not exist in a perfect world, and creatures should only be accused if they are really in the wrong and not based on how they choose to go about experiencing the ride. But that’s how things are, and this nature of the world is more or less something that an individual creature can never hope to adjust in a moment.
Therefore, again I find myself thinking that having a Pleasant Existence on this ride is the way to go about it. However, that too is more difficult than it sounds. One has to be compassionate towards the differences of your fellow riders, not think too much about how fast or slow the ride feels, and deal with any phobias of height and small places. Simply, just lots of factors affect the ride, and on top of all this, you have to make certain to enjoy the key moments of the ride as well. You know, the good views, any other pleasant company you meet along the ride, and all that. And that is if you are riding on a good day. Say for some reason you decide to get on the wheel on a day that the ride doesn’t work the way it is supposed to, do you panic? Or maybe have some trust that the responsible authorities will do something? These things really depend. By that, what I mean to say is, the factors that affect the ride can range from what your neighbour had for breakfast to basically, anything.
Also, it is quite difficult to get off the ride around the Sun. I mean how does one really get off? Even maybe, moving to the Moon or something like that won’t help. Because, the Moon is a comparatively smaller Ferris Wheel ride around the Earth, and since the Moon will stick to Earth’s gravity, you will inevitably still be on a ride around the Sun. But, moving to the Moon will help you drastically reduce the number of creatures you have to ride with. (And during the time, I am writing the Moon is still quite sparely populated.) So, if you want to truly get off the Ferris Wheel, you have to probably find a way to get off Earth’s Gravitational force or simply just die. And, we all know that with the amount of technology we have on Earth right now, it is easier to die than to try to leave Earth’s gravitational force.
However, the question is, if it is quite ethical or respectful to just off oneself. Think about your fellow riders if anything else, what trouble you might cause if you just kill yourself mid-ride. Even, if you associate with no one along the ride, disposing of the body in itself is quite a hassle. And even if you manage to kill yourself in a way that disposing of your body will not be necessary (maybe, say you threw yourself into the sea, or set fire to yourself in the middle of a desert, or get yourself fed to a another creature, and so on), you will still be creating trouble for your fellow riders, what with missing rider reports and all that. Again, if you want to avoid causing that trouble as well, you could slowly stop interacting with your fellow riders and find some corner of Earth where no one will know if you are alive or dead.
All this brings us to the simple point that during the time that I am writing this, it is not that easy to get off the ride around the Sun on purpose. So, there is nothing to do but find some things to do until you can find an opportunity to get off the ride (by death or otherwise). And, as mentioned earlier, it is comparatively easy to go about this ride and do things if you also choose to be a Pleasant Existence to your fellow riders. So, more or less, a ride around the Sun on Earth is very much an exponentially huge and marvellous Ferris Wheel ride (that is also within many other Ferris Wheels in the scale of the whole universe) that will not quite let you get off easily. (And on this ride, I am diligently putting lots of effort into being a Pleasant Existence. Doesn’t always work though.)