An internal scenario playing out right now:
Heart - George vs Brick Wall, experiment #1023.
(George hurtles himself against a brick wall and is promptly knocked unconscious.)
Brain - Why do I keep letting you convince me to have him do this?
Heart - I think we're making headway!
Brain - Ugh.
12/12/2009
6/02/2009
Loneliness
Little do men perceive what solitude is, and how far it extendeth. For a crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. - Francis BaconI'm starting to actually understand this quote. It is sad, but true. I'm stuck in a dead in job where my boss apparently loathes me. My father's health is slipping away. My friends are scattered across two states, and I rarely see any of them. Even when I do, it is for fleeting periods of time and they apparently get bored with me rather quickly.
I don't know who to turn to. I don't know what to do. I feel like I am a man lost at sea. I'm at the mercy of the waves of life, and I have nobody and nothing to cling to. Right now all I want is to sit with someone, hold their hand, and tell them all the gut-wrenching feelings in my heart. My fears, my worries, my joys, my sickening doubts, and my clarion sureties. I want to share it all with someone, but I haven't found her. I haven't found the woman who wants to share that with me. I know she's out there somewhere, but the waiting is hard. The waiting is painful. I want the waiting to finally come to an end.
.
.
.
I miss you, whoever you are. I'm here, I'm waiting. Let's find each other soon.
4/16/2009
*Shrug*
This was originally posted on 1/20/09. It was the first post of my other blog (I'm Still Here), but it doesn't fit at all with the tone of the blog. Well, I've decided to move it here to my old/personal emo blog. Why? Because I can.
My unrelenting insomnia has led me to start writing blog posts again, but I didn't want to just continue my old blog. That was last updated around 7 months ago, and a lot has happened in those months. I didn't want there to be an empty hole in the blog that made it seem like nothing had happened in seven months, so I am just starting from scratch. I've saved all of my old posts. Depending on my moods and how well an old post fits, I might repost or reference them in the future, but for now, this will be a completely new blog. This post. . . well this post is approximately two years in the making. Looking back, the issues I address in this post actually started far more than two years ago, but I can point at the two year mark as the approximate point at which these things started simmering.
(Disclaimer: This rant is about how I live my life. I am not angry at anyone in particular. I don't want anyone to change how they act around me or apologize. This isn't about any one person or event. This is a buildup of events over the past several years, and something that happened at work today was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I just want anyone who reads this to understand why I might be acting differently in the days to come.)
Einstein famously said, “Only a life lived for others is worth living.”
A noble sentiment, and one that I have built my life around.
I spend my days working at a treatment facility for troubled young men. Each day I am disrespected, insulted, and generally disdained. It is a regular occurrence for me to be threatened or hit. I accept this as part of my job. I enjoy the thrill I get when I see that a young man has made a breakthrough and attributes some of his success to my help, but unfortunately such an event is rare and usually short-lived.
When I get home, I spend much of my time helping my family, but what time I don't spend with them, I usually spend online talking to friends. Often these conversations with friends become me helping them through whatever problems they are having at the moment. I sometimes spend hours acting as a relationship counselor for people; giving advice, consoling, analyzing, and empathizing from dusk till dawn. This trend continues at work, as I hear coworkers complain about their boyfriends, wives, and husbands (I'm the only non-married man on the program). I hear about the boyfriends who don't give enough attention, the wives who nag, the love interests who emotionally abuse, the husbands and boyfriends who cheat. I listen to the bitching about the forgotten anniversaries, wish happy birthday when the significant other treats it as just another day, and console through the heartbreaks.
AND I AM GETTING SICK AND TIRED OF IT ALL!
All around me I see men acting like assholes, but living with a wife and kids. I see guys cheating, lying, ignoring, and generally hurting women, who then make excuses for them, blame themselves, and in many cases go right back to the guy who just hurt them (Note that I said most cases. I have nothing but respect for my coworker who is currently splitting from her deadbeat husband). It boggles the mind.
Maybe I should have looked a little deeper into Einstein's life before I subscribed to his theory. I naively thought that judging from his statements, Einstein was a firm believer in the Golden Rule and Karma. . . HAH! The man was a womanizer whose first marriage fell apart because he was too lecherous and she left him. His second marriage (which almost didn't happen because HE ALMOST MARRIED THE WOMAN'S DAUGHTER INSTEAD) was anything but happy, and there is evidence that he had at least ten mistresses over the course of his two marriages. He was one of the men I described in the above paragraph, and yet he is described as a romantic and charming man.
I'm sick and tired of the way I've been living. What, other than the whole asshole factor, is different between me and the men I see around me? Well, tonight I think I figured it out. They did one thing very differently from me. I've taken relationship advice from countless female friends, and each and every one of them has told me that I'm a good friend, and that is what women want in a relationship. But that isn't what the guys I see in relationships have done. For the most part, they have gone into things with no illusions about being friends. They've gone into the relationship with the intent of it being a “romantic relationship” (I use quotes because most of these relationships are anything but romantic, but it is the generic term for them). Looking back at my history, I can see that most of the time I have failed to attract the interests of the women I have been interested in because I had already established myself as the “lovable, non-threatening, and always dependable buddy who's always there when Mr. Right screws up” and not as a potential partner. So, from now on, when I start a new relationship, I will assess the situation and decide “friend or lover” from the get-go.
What does this mean for my life and the people I already have relationships with? Well, I'm going to start doing a little less for everyone else and a little more for George. I'm taking less overtime and spending more time out enjoying myself in the world. I'm going to start worrying less about making everyone else happy, and a little more about making George happy. I'll probably still listen to your problems and give some advice, but don't expect me to pander anymore. I'll give my view of the situation, and then move on to another topic. I'm not your therapist, I'm not your relationship counselor. I'm George. I'm your friend, and while I will give support and advice, I won't spend five hours analyzing why your asshole/bitch of a love interest is an asshole/bitch. I'll just do that now and will refer people to this post in the future.
There you have it folks, that's my philosophy on relationships. Now if you will excuse me, I have to be at work in 15 minutes.
Now I shall end this with a quote I was shown tonight that just fits right now.
My unrelenting insomnia has led me to start writing blog posts again, but I didn't want to just continue my old blog. That was last updated around 7 months ago, and a lot has happened in those months. I didn't want there to be an empty hole in the blog that made it seem like nothing had happened in seven months, so I am just starting from scratch. I've saved all of my old posts. Depending on my moods and how well an old post fits, I might repost or reference them in the future, but for now, this will be a completely new blog. This post. . . well this post is approximately two years in the making. Looking back, the issues I address in this post actually started far more than two years ago, but I can point at the two year mark as the approximate point at which these things started simmering.
(Disclaimer: This rant is about how I live my life. I am not angry at anyone in particular. I don't want anyone to change how they act around me or apologize. This isn't about any one person or event. This is a buildup of events over the past several years, and something that happened at work today was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I just want anyone who reads this to understand why I might be acting differently in the days to come.)
Einstein famously said, “Only a life lived for others is worth living.”
A noble sentiment, and one that I have built my life around.
I spend my days working at a treatment facility for troubled young men. Each day I am disrespected, insulted, and generally disdained. It is a regular occurrence for me to be threatened or hit. I accept this as part of my job. I enjoy the thrill I get when I see that a young man has made a breakthrough and attributes some of his success to my help, but unfortunately such an event is rare and usually short-lived.
When I get home, I spend much of my time helping my family, but what time I don't spend with them, I usually spend online talking to friends. Often these conversations with friends become me helping them through whatever problems they are having at the moment. I sometimes spend hours acting as a relationship counselor for people; giving advice, consoling, analyzing, and empathizing from dusk till dawn. This trend continues at work, as I hear coworkers complain about their boyfriends, wives, and husbands (I'm the only non-married man on the program). I hear about the boyfriends who don't give enough attention, the wives who nag, the love interests who emotionally abuse, the husbands and boyfriends who cheat. I listen to the bitching about the forgotten anniversaries, wish happy birthday when the significant other treats it as just another day, and console through the heartbreaks.
AND I AM GETTING SICK AND TIRED OF IT ALL!
All around me I see men acting like assholes, but living with a wife and kids. I see guys cheating, lying, ignoring, and generally hurting women, who then make excuses for them, blame themselves, and in many cases go right back to the guy who just hurt them (Note that I said most cases. I have nothing but respect for my coworker who is currently splitting from her deadbeat husband). It boggles the mind.
Maybe I should have looked a little deeper into Einstein's life before I subscribed to his theory. I naively thought that judging from his statements, Einstein was a firm believer in the Golden Rule and Karma. . . HAH! The man was a womanizer whose first marriage fell apart because he was too lecherous and she left him. His second marriage (which almost didn't happen because HE ALMOST MARRIED THE WOMAN'S DAUGHTER INSTEAD) was anything but happy, and there is evidence that he had at least ten mistresses over the course of his two marriages. He was one of the men I described in the above paragraph, and yet he is described as a romantic and charming man.
I'm sick and tired of the way I've been living. What, other than the whole asshole factor, is different between me and the men I see around me? Well, tonight I think I figured it out. They did one thing very differently from me. I've taken relationship advice from countless female friends, and each and every one of them has told me that I'm a good friend, and that is what women want in a relationship. But that isn't what the guys I see in relationships have done. For the most part, they have gone into things with no illusions about being friends. They've gone into the relationship with the intent of it being a “romantic relationship” (I use quotes because most of these relationships are anything but romantic, but it is the generic term for them). Looking back at my history, I can see that most of the time I have failed to attract the interests of the women I have been interested in because I had already established myself as the “lovable, non-threatening, and always dependable buddy who's always there when Mr. Right screws up” and not as a potential partner. So, from now on, when I start a new relationship, I will assess the situation and decide “friend or lover” from the get-go.
What does this mean for my life and the people I already have relationships with? Well, I'm going to start doing a little less for everyone else and a little more for George. I'm taking less overtime and spending more time out enjoying myself in the world. I'm going to start worrying less about making everyone else happy, and a little more about making George happy. I'll probably still listen to your problems and give some advice, but don't expect me to pander anymore. I'll give my view of the situation, and then move on to another topic. I'm not your therapist, I'm not your relationship counselor. I'm George. I'm your friend, and while I will give support and advice, I won't spend five hours analyzing why your asshole/bitch of a love interest is an asshole/bitch. I'll just do that now and will refer people to this post in the future.
Why is [Insert name here] acting the way [he/she] is?
Well you see, it is quite simple. Assholes are assholes, and bitches are bitches. Contrary to popular belief, if a person is an asshole or bitch, they tend to stay that way. Cheaters cheat. Liars lie. Abusers abuse. That is the way things go. If you realize that someone is an asshole or bitch, leave them. Now, I am not saying that if someone makes a mistake you should drop them like a hot stone. Humans make mistakes. It is when they do the same thing repeatedly that it can be identified as a pattern or habit, and those are extremely hard to change in any significant way.
Move on with your life and find someone who is better for you. Don't give someone infinite chances because you love them. If they loved you back in the same way, they wouldn't keep doing whatever it is that hurts you... at least, if you have opened your mouth and expressed that what they are doing is hurtful. If not, then grow the fuck up and do so.
There you have it folks, that's my philosophy on relationships. Now if you will excuse me, I have to be at work in 15 minutes.
Now I shall end this with a quote I was shown tonight that just fits right now.
"The moral purpose of a man’s life is the achievement of his own happiness. This does not mean that he is indifferent to all men, that human life is of no value to him and that he has no reason to help others in an emergency. But it does mean that he does not subordinate his life to the welfare of others, that he does not sacrifice himself to their needs, that the relief of their suffering is not his primary concern, that any help he gives is an exception, not a rule, an act of generosity, not of moral duty, that it is marginal and incidental—as disasters are marginal and incidental in the course of human existence—and that values, not disasters, are the goal, the first concern and the motive power of his life." - The Ethics of Emergencies, "The Virtue of Selfishness," 49.
6/09/2008
The Power of PostSecret
For those of you who have never heard of it, PostSecret.com is a blog that began as a community art project by Frank Warren. It started as him handing out some postcards and asking people to write their secrets on them and mail them to him. What started out small, grew and grew. Nowadays Frank gets around 200 postcards a day. People from all over the world pour out their secrets on these postcards.
Why?
What is it about anonymously divulging one's secrets that is so cathartic? Why have millions of people read the secrets on the blog? Why are there over a million topics on the official PostSecret message boards (that's just the number of topics, not the number of responses)? Why have people begun sticking their postcards into copies of the four PostSecret books in bookstores across the country? And why have people decided to stop being anonymous and start divulging their secrets on the Facebook fan page for PostSecret?
Because we as a society hold too many secrets. Everyone grows up too afraid to be themselves. In reading every PostSecret online, all four books, and the postcard that I found stuck in one of those books, I have found myself moved to tears countless times over the past month or so. Humans are simultaneously immensely frail and immensely strong.
I've also learned quite a bit about myself. I've learned why I have been so focused on "being honest" and "expressing my feelings" in the past on this blog. . . I've been hiding things from myself and everyone I care about. I know why I act the ways that I do. I've learned more about myself while learning about thousands of people I've never met than I have in hours of insomnia induced introspection.
While reading a list of people's secrets on the Facebook profile that started Saturday June 7th at 8:45pm and already has probably two or three thousand secrets on it, I found the strength to post some of my own. Unfortunately, Facebook limits the length that a comment on a picture can be, and I ended up cutting quite a few of the things I wanted to say. Here is the comment I wrote (with some of the things more fully explained) and the things I wanted to say but didn't have the room for.
- I've read this entire thread in one sitting, and feel closer to people here than I do to some of my "friends"
- I feel out of place and alone with all but a handful of people. They keep me sane... but I haven't seen any of them in almost two months.
- I wish I didn't always feel the need to be the strong one, the reliable one, and the understanding one. I've only shown my full emotional weakness to one person, ever, and I don't think she even realizes it. I almost had a nervous breakdown that night, but talking to her, even for that few minutes, allowed me to make the drive home and sleep for the first time in almost a week.
- I didn't cry at my grandmother's funeral because my dad was too close to having a nervous breakdown, and someone had to take care of my disabled brother. I wanted nothing more than to throw my arms around my dad and ask why she was gone... but I couldn't because I knew he wouldn't be able to handle it.
- I want nothing more in this world than to move away from this tiny shithole and closer to my friends, but I don't know how my parents would cope without me around. I'm afraid to think how long I am going to stay here because I am scared of leaving my family without help.
- I am deathly afraid that I am constantly missing out on happiness because my heart won't let me let go of her... the one I never really had.
- I wish I could explain to my parents the reason I hate my adopted sisters so much, but I can't. They already blame themselves for all the shit the two of them put our family through, and if they knew the whole extent it would kill them. The scariest part is that I think my mom suspects the reason, but because she knows what it would do to my dad, avoids any mention of it.
- When you get down to it, I want nothing more in this world than to just own a little book store. I don't really want to be a psychologist, psychiatrist, professor, social worker, case manager, or therapist. I want to be the weirdo who owns a little bookshop and sits around reading behind the counter all day.
- I sit up till two or three every morning, not just because I have insomnia, but because I am sitting around thinking about all the people in my life I could have been closer to, the people I have drifted away from, and the people who, for reasons unknown to me, have distanced themselves from me.
- I'm not even close to being as happy in real life as I act around other people.
- I'm the nice guy who does everything he can for everyone, because I fear that if I don't, if I tell people no (ie. "No, sorry, I can't drop everything and help you for the fifth day in a row", "No, I don't want to hear you bitch and moan about how crappy your boyfriend is", "No, I won't work on my day off for the third straight week", "No, I won't cover your shift so you can go on a date", etc.), then I won't have any friends. I don't know any other way to connect to people. I give and give and give in the hopes that at some point in time someone will give back as much to me.
- For some reason, it seems that the women I love can't love me and the women who love me I can't love. I don't know why or how, but it just seems to be a recurring cycle.
- I write in this blog because I can't say things to people face to face. I'm too scared of the personal rejection that could come of it. I've been rejected so many times in life that I just am sick and tired of it. I'm not sure how I will react if it happens one more time, but I worry about the things I miss out on because I can't express myself in person.
- I hate to see people in pain. There is nothing more heart wrenching and agonizing to me than someone I care about in pain. I would rather be in constant pain than allow one person I love to feel discomfort.
- I read quotes because they let me know that somewhere, at some point in time, someone felt the same way I do. It give me a connection to someone in this lonely universe.
- I have one secret, alluded to in one of the above points, that was too horrible to admit to anyone, even myself, until recently. As it is, I still can't bring myself to share it with anyone. I can only think of seven people in the world that I trust enough to tell, but I can't and won't burden them with anything like this.
- After writing each one of these things down, I felt knots of tension in my shoulders and neck loosen. I am more relaxed than I have been in weeks, and it is all because I am letting myself admit to these things. Sure, I had thought them, but I think that by keeping them inside I had denied them even to myself.
If you read this, whether I know you or not, I hope that it prompts you to relieve yourself of your secrets. Be it to me (via comment, e-mail, or phone call), PostSecret, someone you trust, or something as simple as an anonymous note stuck in a book at a store, let them go. Let whatever secrets you are holding inside of you out to someone somewhere. The experience is uplifting and cathartic.
Why?
What is it about anonymously divulging one's secrets that is so cathartic? Why have millions of people read the secrets on the blog? Why are there over a million topics on the official PostSecret message boards (that's just the number of topics, not the number of responses)? Why have people begun sticking their postcards into copies of the four PostSecret books in bookstores across the country? And why have people decided to stop being anonymous and start divulging their secrets on the Facebook fan page for PostSecret?
Because we as a society hold too many secrets. Everyone grows up too afraid to be themselves. In reading every PostSecret online, all four books, and the postcard that I found stuck in one of those books, I have found myself moved to tears countless times over the past month or so. Humans are simultaneously immensely frail and immensely strong.
I've also learned quite a bit about myself. I've learned why I have been so focused on "being honest" and "expressing my feelings" in the past on this blog. . . I've been hiding things from myself and everyone I care about. I know why I act the ways that I do. I've learned more about myself while learning about thousands of people I've never met than I have in hours of insomnia induced introspection.
While reading a list of people's secrets on the Facebook profile that started Saturday June 7th at 8:45pm and already has probably two or three thousand secrets on it, I found the strength to post some of my own. Unfortunately, Facebook limits the length that a comment on a picture can be, and I ended up cutting quite a few of the things I wanted to say. Here is the comment I wrote (with some of the things more fully explained) and the things I wanted to say but didn't have the room for.
- I've read this entire thread in one sitting, and feel closer to people here than I do to some of my "friends"
- I feel out of place and alone with all but a handful of people. They keep me sane... but I haven't seen any of them in almost two months.
- I wish I didn't always feel the need to be the strong one, the reliable one, and the understanding one. I've only shown my full emotional weakness to one person, ever, and I don't think she even realizes it. I almost had a nervous breakdown that night, but talking to her, even for that few minutes, allowed me to make the drive home and sleep for the first time in almost a week.
- I didn't cry at my grandmother's funeral because my dad was too close to having a nervous breakdown, and someone had to take care of my disabled brother. I wanted nothing more than to throw my arms around my dad and ask why she was gone... but I couldn't because I knew he wouldn't be able to handle it.
- I want nothing more in this world than to move away from this tiny shithole and closer to my friends, but I don't know how my parents would cope without me around. I'm afraid to think how long I am going to stay here because I am scared of leaving my family without help.
- I am deathly afraid that I am constantly missing out on happiness because my heart won't let me let go of her... the one I never really had.
- I wish I could explain to my parents the reason I hate my adopted sisters so much, but I can't. They already blame themselves for all the shit the two of them put our family through, and if they knew the whole extent it would kill them. The scariest part is that I think my mom suspects the reason, but because she knows what it would do to my dad, avoids any mention of it.
- When you get down to it, I want nothing more in this world than to just own a little book store. I don't really want to be a psychologist, psychiatrist, professor, social worker, case manager, or therapist. I want to be the weirdo who owns a little bookshop and sits around reading behind the counter all day.
- I sit up till two or three every morning, not just because I have insomnia, but because I am sitting around thinking about all the people in my life I could have been closer to, the people I have drifted away from, and the people who, for reasons unknown to me, have distanced themselves from me.
- I'm not even close to being as happy in real life as I act around other people.
- I'm the nice guy who does everything he can for everyone, because I fear that if I don't, if I tell people no (ie. "No, sorry, I can't drop everything and help you for the fifth day in a row", "No, I don't want to hear you bitch and moan about how crappy your boyfriend is", "No, I won't work on my day off for the third straight week", "No, I won't cover your shift so you can go on a date", etc.), then I won't have any friends. I don't know any other way to connect to people. I give and give and give in the hopes that at some point in time someone will give back as much to me.
- For some reason, it seems that the women I love can't love me and the women who love me I can't love. I don't know why or how, but it just seems to be a recurring cycle.
- I write in this blog because I can't say things to people face to face. I'm too scared of the personal rejection that could come of it. I've been rejected so many times in life that I just am sick and tired of it. I'm not sure how I will react if it happens one more time, but I worry about the things I miss out on because I can't express myself in person.
- I hate to see people in pain. There is nothing more heart wrenching and agonizing to me than someone I care about in pain. I would rather be in constant pain than allow one person I love to feel discomfort.
- I read quotes because they let me know that somewhere, at some point in time, someone felt the same way I do. It give me a connection to someone in this lonely universe.
- I have one secret, alluded to in one of the above points, that was too horrible to admit to anyone, even myself, until recently. As it is, I still can't bring myself to share it with anyone. I can only think of seven people in the world that I trust enough to tell, but I can't and won't burden them with anything like this.
- After writing each one of these things down, I felt knots of tension in my shoulders and neck loosen. I am more relaxed than I have been in weeks, and it is all because I am letting myself admit to these things. Sure, I had thought them, but I think that by keeping them inside I had denied them even to myself.
If you read this, whether I know you or not, I hope that it prompts you to relieve yourself of your secrets. Be it to me (via comment, e-mail, or phone call), PostSecret, someone you trust, or something as simple as an anonymous note stuck in a book at a store, let them go. Let whatever secrets you are holding inside of you out to someone somewhere. The experience is uplifting and cathartic.
3/08/2008
Thoughts written down at 2am while slightly. . .well really. . . intoxicated.
Yeah, so as the title says, I am somewhat intoxicated. As past evidence has shown, this doesn't really effect my grasp of the English language, so I figure I am fine. It might take me around twice as long to write what I want to, but oh well.
So, over the past week I have come to several conclusions. Here are a few of them. . .
1. My dogs lose almost all control of their bodily functions when my parents leave.
2. I need to interact with someone somewhere other than work at least once a day, or I go crazy.
3. The guys at work tend to ask a lot of really simple questions, which tends to get on one's nerves when he hasn't had much sleep.
4. I love who I love, and though I can't change that (or the way they feel), I can pretend to ignore it and focus my energy on interests that might prove more . . . profitable, successful, fulfilling, etc. in the end.
5. I have to go to Las Vegas at some point soon. . . and I might be accompanied by a co-worker. . . and in this case, I wouldn't really mind.
6. I make far more crude jokes while drunk than while sober.
7. When I know that I don't have to drive myself home, I am far more willing to drink and accept drinks.
8. I miss my real friends while I am sitting at home or at a local bar. . .
Yeah, number 8 is the most relevant at the moment.
Quotes to fill space. . .
So, over the past week I have come to several conclusions. Here are a few of them. . .
1. My dogs lose almost all control of their bodily functions when my parents leave.
2. I need to interact with someone somewhere other than work at least once a day, or I go crazy.
3. The guys at work tend to ask a lot of really simple questions, which tends to get on one's nerves when he hasn't had much sleep.
4. I love who I love, and though I can't change that (or the way they feel), I can pretend to ignore it and focus my energy on interests that might prove more . . . profitable, successful, fulfilling, etc. in the end.
5. I have to go to Las Vegas at some point soon. . . and I might be accompanied by a co-worker. . . and in this case, I wouldn't really mind.
6. I make far more crude jokes while drunk than while sober.
7. When I know that I don't have to drive myself home, I am far more willing to drink and accept drinks.
8. I miss my real friends while I am sitting at home or at a local bar. . .
Yeah, number 8 is the most relevant at the moment.
Quotes to fill space. . .
If you had one phone call to make before you died, who would you call, what would you say, and why are you WAITING?To this I say that I know who I would call and what I would say, but then again, it has all been said before, so it isn't like I am really waiting.
Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they have the power to change the world - Buddha
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.” – Neil Gaiman
2/23/2008
Titles are superfluous
Here is a nice little paraphrasing of an inner dialogue I had earlier. (Note, most people have inner angels and demons. . . I have an inner Jekyll and Hyde because I am fully willing to admit that my less than 'nice' feelings are actually mine.)
[Jekyll is as always trying to cover Hyde's mouth and hold him down so he can't act.]
Jekyll: George, I know that you are stressed and conflicted, but you know I am right. Just sit back, take it all in, and wait it out.
George: Yeah, that's really worked in the past, Jekyll. Honestly, I don't know why I listen to you sometimes.
[Jekyll, startled by the comment, loses his grip on Hyde. Hyde takes full advantage of the situation and proceeds to put Jekyll in a sleeper hold.]
Hyde: Fuck yeah George! Screw this pansy and his "sit back and wait" philosophies. Lets go out there and grab what life offers. If he works, "Fuckin' sweet". If not, well hell, there are plenty of other ways to have fun out there.
[George and Hyde run off to have fun, leaving the unconscious Jekyll in a heap on the floor.]
[Jekyll is as always trying to cover Hyde's mouth and hold him down so he can't act.]
Jekyll: George, I know that you are stressed and conflicted, but you know I am right. Just sit back, take it all in, and wait it out.
George: Yeah, that's really worked in the past, Jekyll. Honestly, I don't know why I listen to you sometimes.
[Jekyll, startled by the comment, loses his grip on Hyde. Hyde takes full advantage of the situation and proceeds to put Jekyll in a sleeper hold.]
Hyde: Fuck yeah George! Screw this pansy and his "sit back and wait" philosophies. Lets go out there and grab what life offers. If he works, "Fuckin' sweet". If not, well hell, there are plenty of other ways to have fun out there.
[George and Hyde run off to have fun, leaving the unconscious Jekyll in a heap on the floor.]
2/15/2008
(Insert Witty Title Here)
Given all the shit that has been going on, I just felt a need to write. If you don't know the details of what has been going on, ask me. I will probably tell you if you REALLY feel like being depressed, but I don't want to just post it online. Alright, now to the actual body of this thing.
First, I want to thank the people I have talked to about the situation for their support, kind words, and aid in distracting myself (even those of you who didn't know you were doing so). I am doing alright; right now I am just worried about my parents. They are currently showing both their parental and therapeutic sides. While having revenge fantasies, they are simultaneously worrying about said fantasies and talking about getting the whole family into counseling about the situation . . . yeah, not happening.
Second, whilst suffering from a severe bout of my insomnia, I have been rereading a book. Sometimes in books we find the exact expressions we need or sayings that just fit perfectly into situations. Tonight, I was reading White Knight by Jim Butcher and I found two perfect passages.
Here is the first, on the topic of pain.
The second is a conversation (between a shadow of a fallen angel and a human wizard. . . it's complicated) about the nature of anger. I am just going to include some of the dialog.
So yeah, I'm hurt and angry, but I am using that pain and anger. I'm not wallowing in the pain anymore. I am using it. It has become the fire with which I am tempering who I am. For too long I have been focused on petty, meaningless "pains" in my life. I focus on things I can't control or change and whine and moan about the pain they cause. If I didn't want to feel it, I could move myself the fuck away from it. No, I was complaining because I wanted someone else to do something about it for me. That is stupid, selfish, childish thinking, and I am a moron for indulging in it. I was focusing on petty things when there is real pain going on around me all the time. That is what I need to focus on.
That of course brings me to the lesson that the second passage truly embodies. In about two weeks, my outlook on life has changed. At first when I found out about what happened, I was only concerned with what I could direct my anger at. I lashed out at things (that poor Stop sign never saw it coming) and flailed about impotently. Now I am looking more closely at myself, my family, and the people I work with (staff and guys) to help me do everything I can to help PREVENT anything like it from happening in the future. While my parents are indulging in meaningless, pointless revenge fantasies still, I am trying to think of ways to get word to the community about the danger in it without exposing myself to libel or slander suits. My anger has turned into a passion to make sure everyone can do what they can to protect those they love. Every day I go to work now, I see in the face of each guy there the chance to help them and everyone they interact with. I see that I can be instrumental in making sure others don't go through what my family has.
I don't know why it took such a painful and infuriating demonstration to pound these lessons into my skull, but now that they are there, they aren't leaving.
First, I want to thank the people I have talked to about the situation for their support, kind words, and aid in distracting myself (even those of you who didn't know you were doing so). I am doing alright; right now I am just worried about my parents. They are currently showing both their parental and therapeutic sides. While having revenge fantasies, they are simultaneously worrying about said fantasies and talking about getting the whole family into counseling about the situation . . . yeah, not happening.
Second, whilst suffering from a severe bout of my insomnia, I have been rereading a book. Sometimes in books we find the exact expressions we need or sayings that just fit perfectly into situations. Tonight, I was reading White Knight by Jim Butcher and I found two perfect passages.
Here is the first, on the topic of pain.
We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up was all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time you learn something.
Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - graduating, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expectations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that don't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life as they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens.
And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains that you feel when you realize that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.
Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.
Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it is a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way it is part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you are alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.
The second is a conversation (between a shadow of a fallen angel and a human wizard. . . it's complicated) about the nature of anger. I am just going to include some of the dialog.
Anger is just anger. It isn’t good. It isn’t bad. It just is. What you do with it is what matters. It’s just like anything else. You can use it to build or destroy. You just have to make the choice.
Constructive anger
Also known as passion. Passion has overthrown tyrants and freed prisoners and slaves. Passion has brought justice where there is savagery. Passion has created freedom where there was nothing but fear. Passion has helped souls rise from the ashes of their horrible lives and build something better, stronger, more beautiful. In point of fact, that kind of thing really doesn’t get done without passion. Anger is one of the things that can help build it – if it’s controlled.
So yeah, I'm hurt and angry, but I am using that pain and anger. I'm not wallowing in the pain anymore. I am using it. It has become the fire with which I am tempering who I am. For too long I have been focused on petty, meaningless "pains" in my life. I focus on things I can't control or change and whine and moan about the pain they cause. If I didn't want to feel it, I could move myself the fuck away from it. No, I was complaining because I wanted someone else to do something about it for me. That is stupid, selfish, childish thinking, and I am a moron for indulging in it. I was focusing on petty things when there is real pain going on around me all the time. That is what I need to focus on.
That of course brings me to the lesson that the second passage truly embodies. In about two weeks, my outlook on life has changed. At first when I found out about what happened, I was only concerned with what I could direct my anger at. I lashed out at things (that poor Stop sign never saw it coming) and flailed about impotently. Now I am looking more closely at myself, my family, and the people I work with (staff and guys) to help me do everything I can to help PREVENT anything like it from happening in the future. While my parents are indulging in meaningless, pointless revenge fantasies still, I am trying to think of ways to get word to the community about the danger in it without exposing myself to libel or slander suits. My anger has turned into a passion to make sure everyone can do what they can to protect those they love. Every day I go to work now, I see in the face of each guy there the chance to help them and everyone they interact with. I see that I can be instrumental in making sure others don't go through what my family has.
I don't know why it took such a painful and infuriating demonstration to pound these lessons into my skull, but now that they are there, they aren't leaving.
1/06/2008
Widowers, Teenage Pregnancy, Suicide, and Psychotic Breaks - Oh my!
You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies. - Steve Martin
That's right Steve, movies are one of the most prevalent medias in our culture today... And I am addicted to them. Upon a recent count spurred by curiosity as to how many movies I actually watched this past year, I came up with a startling number. I watched 62 new releases in 2007. That doesn't mean that I watched 62 movies I hadn't seen before, that means that I watched 62 movies that were released in theaters in 2007. That is more than one new movie a week.
Granted, I didn't watch them all in the theater, but many of them I did. Heck, I even drove long distances for some of them (some just so I could watch it with friends, others because I couldn't find them locally).
Here is an alphabetical list of the movies I watched:
"300"
"3:10 To Yuma"
"Across The Universe"
"Alvin And the Chipmunks Movie"
"August Rush"
"Balls Of Fury"
"Beowulf"
"Blades Of Glory"
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"Bridge To Terabithia"
"Dan In Real Life"
"Disturbia"
“Dragon Wars”
"Enchanted"
"Evan Almighty"
"The Ex"
"Fantastic Four 2"
"Fracture"
"Ghost Rider"
"The Golden Compass"
"Good Luck Chuck"
"Hairspray The Movie"
"Hannibal Rising"
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Movie"
"Hot Fuzz"
"I Am Legend"
"I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry"
"The Invasion"
"Juno"
"Knocked Up"
"Lars And The Real Girl"
“License to Wed”
"Live Free Or Die Hard"
“Meet the Robinsons”
"Mr. Brooks"
"National Treasure 2"
"The Number 23"
"Ocean's 13"
"Peaceful Warrior"
"Pirates Of The Caribbean 3"
"Premonition"
“Pride”
"Ratatouille"
"Rush Hour 3"
"The Seeker: Dark Is Rising"
"Shoot Em Up"
"Shrek 3"
"The Simpsons Movie"
“Spiderman 3"
"Stardust"
"Stomp The Yard"
"Superbad"
"Sweeney Todd Movie"
"TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)"
"Transformers The Movie "
"Wild Hogs"
"Wristcutters"
"Zodiac"
While 2007 was a year of sequels and huge blockbusters, my favorites of the year were neither. Three of my four favorite movies of the year I had to drive 80 miles to find because they were limited releases. The fourth I saw on my local theater's "Arthouse" screen (Yeah, I now watch Arthouse movies).
My top four movies of the year (Not really in any order because I can't pick an order) were Dan in Real Life, Juno, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and Lars and the Real Girl. Each and every one of these movies was incredibly character driven, which is a rarity in today's theaters.
Dan in Real Life - The touching story of a widower struggling to raise his three daughters. He thinks everything is going alright, right up until he meets the woman of his dreams... only to then learn that she is his brother's girlfriend. The characters are realistic and so easy to relate to that you care about them by the end of the movie, and not just in a silly "What's gonna happen" way like with most movies. While not normally a Dane Cook fan, he actually pulled off the role of the spoiled younger brother who is desperately trying to show he can change for a woman he loves, while the normally slapstick Steve Carell plays a man who is easy to empathize with, lovable, and believably confused as he tries to raise three girls as a lone man.
Juno - Between Ellen Page, J.K. Simmons, and Michael Cera, this movie has an amazing cast and the characters and funny, yet believable. A comedy that also tugs on the heartstrings. Ellen Page was rightfully nominated for a best actress award, and I hope to god she wins. Michael Cera is quickly becoming one of my favorite new actors with his honest and realistic humor and insecurity. With Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and J.K. Simmons as the supporting cast, Juno was a great movie that I will probably watch again in theaters now that it has expanded.
Wristcutters: A Love Story - How do you make a movie about people who have committed suicide living in the next world and searching for a meaning to their existence (whether that be an ex-girlfriend who killed herself too or the people in charge so you can tell them you didn't commit suicide, you just OD'ed), well someone managed to, and it is a great movie. The attention to detail shown in this movie is astounding. Nobody in this afterlife can smile, but they don't mention it until halfway through the movie, and by then you finally realize that nobody has smiled yet. The little things like that make all the difference in this kind of movie.
Lars and the Real Girl - Over the years, Ryan Gosling has shown himself as an incredibly versatile actor who can be anything from a cold-blooded killer to a young man in the throws of love. In Lars and the Real Girl, he does an incredible job of portraying a man with a serious psychological problem. A man who has problems relating to people and connecting with them buys a realistic sex doll and introduces her around as his girlfriend he met online. The entire town he lives in pulls together to make sure that "she" is made to feel at home. A heartfelt movie about what people will do for people they care about.
Well, that is a short blurb about my four favorite movies of the year, and now for a disclaimer:
If you care about your sanity, soul, mind, or eyes, don't - I repeat, DON'T - watch Dragon Wars. Between the horrible dialog, shoddy plot holes, ridiculous twists, and completely stupid Deus ex Machinas, Dragon Wars was an utter affront to my sensibilities.
That's right Steve, movies are one of the most prevalent medias in our culture today... And I am addicted to them. Upon a recent count spurred by curiosity as to how many movies I actually watched this past year, I came up with a startling number. I watched 62 new releases in 2007. That doesn't mean that I watched 62 movies I hadn't seen before, that means that I watched 62 movies that were released in theaters in 2007. That is more than one new movie a week.
Granted, I didn't watch them all in the theater, but many of them I did. Heck, I even drove long distances for some of them (some just so I could watch it with friends, others because I couldn't find them locally).
Here is an alphabetical list of the movies I watched:
"300"
"3:10 To Yuma"
"Across The Universe"
"Alvin And the Chipmunks Movie"
"August Rush"
"Balls Of Fury"
"Beowulf"
"Blades Of Glory"
"The Bourne Ultimatum"
"Bridge To Terabithia"
"Dan In Real Life"
"Disturbia"
“Dragon Wars”
"Enchanted"
"Evan Almighty"
"The Ex"
"Fantastic Four 2"
"Fracture"
"Ghost Rider"
"The Golden Compass"
"Good Luck Chuck"
"Hairspray The Movie"
"Hannibal Rising"
"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix Movie"
"Hot Fuzz"
"I Am Legend"
"I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry"
"The Invasion"
"Juno"
"Knocked Up"
"Lars And The Real Girl"
“License to Wed”
"Live Free Or Die Hard"
“Meet the Robinsons”
"Mr. Brooks"
"National Treasure 2"
"The Number 23"
"Ocean's 13"
"Peaceful Warrior"
"Pirates Of The Caribbean 3"
"Premonition"
“Pride”
"Ratatouille"
"Rush Hour 3"
"The Seeker: Dark Is Rising"
"Shoot Em Up"
"Shrek 3"
"The Simpsons Movie"
“Spiderman 3"
"Stardust"
"Stomp The Yard"
"Superbad"
"Sweeney Todd Movie"
"TMNT (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)"
"Transformers The Movie "
"Wild Hogs"
"Wristcutters"
"Zodiac"
While 2007 was a year of sequels and huge blockbusters, my favorites of the year were neither. Three of my four favorite movies of the year I had to drive 80 miles to find because they were limited releases. The fourth I saw on my local theater's "Arthouse" screen (Yeah, I now watch Arthouse movies).
My top four movies of the year (Not really in any order because I can't pick an order) were Dan in Real Life, Juno, Wristcutters: A Love Story, and Lars and the Real Girl. Each and every one of these movies was incredibly character driven, which is a rarity in today's theaters.
Dan in Real Life - The touching story of a widower struggling to raise his three daughters. He thinks everything is going alright, right up until he meets the woman of his dreams... only to then learn that she is his brother's girlfriend. The characters are realistic and so easy to relate to that you care about them by the end of the movie, and not just in a silly "What's gonna happen" way like with most movies. While not normally a Dane Cook fan, he actually pulled off the role of the spoiled younger brother who is desperately trying to show he can change for a woman he loves, while the normally slapstick Steve Carell plays a man who is easy to empathize with, lovable, and believably confused as he tries to raise three girls as a lone man.
Juno - Between Ellen Page, J.K. Simmons, and Michael Cera, this movie has an amazing cast and the characters and funny, yet believable. A comedy that also tugs on the heartstrings. Ellen Page was rightfully nominated for a best actress award, and I hope to god she wins. Michael Cera is quickly becoming one of my favorite new actors with his honest and realistic humor and insecurity. With Jennifer Garner, Jason Bateman, and J.K. Simmons as the supporting cast, Juno was a great movie that I will probably watch again in theaters now that it has expanded.
Wristcutters: A Love Story - How do you make a movie about people who have committed suicide living in the next world and searching for a meaning to their existence (whether that be an ex-girlfriend who killed herself too or the people in charge so you can tell them you didn't commit suicide, you just OD'ed), well someone managed to, and it is a great movie. The attention to detail shown in this movie is astounding. Nobody in this afterlife can smile, but they don't mention it until halfway through the movie, and by then you finally realize that nobody has smiled yet. The little things like that make all the difference in this kind of movie.
Lars and the Real Girl - Over the years, Ryan Gosling has shown himself as an incredibly versatile actor who can be anything from a cold-blooded killer to a young man in the throws of love. In Lars and the Real Girl, he does an incredible job of portraying a man with a serious psychological problem. A man who has problems relating to people and connecting with them buys a realistic sex doll and introduces her around as his girlfriend he met online. The entire town he lives in pulls together to make sure that "she" is made to feel at home. A heartfelt movie about what people will do for people they care about.
Well, that is a short blurb about my four favorite movies of the year, and now for a disclaimer:
If you care about your sanity, soul, mind, or eyes, don't - I repeat, DON'T - watch Dragon Wars. Between the horrible dialog, shoddy plot holes, ridiculous twists, and completely stupid Deus ex Machinas, Dragon Wars was an utter affront to my sensibilities.
12/01/2007
A Long Overdue Ramble
So, over the past couple of months I have written up a few blog posts, but after writing each one I would read it and scrap it. Some were too whiny (even for me), some were a little too revealing (don't think my family would appreciate some of the personal health problems I would have been posting), and a few were just too personal. Over the past couple years I have put up plenty of stuff that is VERY personal on my blog, but these were a little much even for me.
So here is this post. I am just going to ramble on about whatever comes to mind; I'll probably throw in some song lyrics and/or quotes too. We shall see.
Work: Work is hell. Ok, not hell, but it is stressful. I could leave it at that, but I won't. The past few weeks at work have been too hectic. Between holidays, deaths, and many outings, things are just running at 1oo miles a second and I can't seem to keep caught up. Now, not everything is bad. I mean, some of the outings are great. I mean, I got paid to drive up to Chicago, watch Phantom of the Opera, and eat at a Chinese buffet - awesome. Last week I got paid to go Christmas shopping and then got a $30 meal at Red Lobster. When you couple these fun things with the emotional boosts you get when you realize how much you are actually helping some of these guys, and the job is great. It can be REALLY stressful though.
Family: Hey regular readers, I have a shock for you! My family members are sick! Ok, if you know anything about my family or have read about half of my blog posts, you know that my family is always sick. If it isn't my mom's knee or shoulder, it is my brother's gastro-intestinal system, or my dad's neck, back, diabetes, arthritis, heart, or whatever his newest unknown malady is. This time it is Dad, Tom, and my aunt all at once. Oh, and my ankle has been acting up lately too. Luckily my family's doctor is great. I mean, the man refuses to let us call him anything but his first name, and has a habit of theatrically joking with us. Take this example:
In addition to the health problems in my family, I am also suffering from another problem regarding them. I am feeling weird when I'm around most of my cousins of a like age. Currently there are five of us who have graduated from high school, and I am the only one who isn't married. Ok, sure, all of the others got married because they either got pregnant or got someone pregnant, but still. It feels weird to look around at a family gathering and realize that I am the only legal adult in my generation without a significant other. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to have any kids yet, and I am glad I am not on the fast track to whitetrashdom like some of my cousins (nothing like leaving the Navy because you got pregnant and spending the rest of your life working at McDonalds).
Edumacation: In two weeks I am taking my GRE so I can finish my applications to various Grad schools. I'm torn though. I want to go to grad school and get my Master's, but at the same time I want to be home to help my parents. I want to get a higher paying job that I can consider a career, but I want to pay off my student loans as soon as possible. I want to get out of my hometown, but I want to be able to visit friends. It is an interesting conundrum. I'm going to go ahead and apply though, and see what my options are after that.
Women/Love/Romance/Relationship Status: Uhhh. . . . not sure at the moment. I think there is one person who fully knows what is going on with me right now (and that is because I had another case of "George has no internal filter when intoxicated" syndrome... Yeah sorry about that again, even if you refuse to allow me to say sorry). If you want to know what is going on with me, ask and depending on my mood I might tell you.
Random Thoughts: Hmmm, what random thoughts should I include here? Should I talk about how much I dislike going to any of the bars in this area because the three times I have been in one over the past six months at least 10% of my high school class has been inside?
Maybe I should talk about how this past Tuesday REALLY reminded me of some of the things I miss the most about college? Sitting in Cup o' Joe, just talking, laughing, joking, and hanging out really made me nostalgic. I miss being able to just take a one minute walk to find a place I can sit and be with friends. I miss having a group of people readily available to just relax with. I can't do that with my family because any time my parents and I are all off work they end up finding something around the house that needs fixing, or cleaning, or remodeling, or some other inane thing.
Perhaps I should talk about how I have lately been one of the things I hate the most. . . a hypocrite. I continually talk about how we should be honest with people and just say how we feel, but I think I do it mainly because it is something I wish I could do. Instead, I skirt around issues. I drop stupid little hints and joke about things in an attempt to convey what I am thinking without having to actually say it. I hate myself for it, but every time I do express how I feel things seem to explode in my face. *Sigh* Oh well.
Quotes/Songs:
So here is this post. I am just going to ramble on about whatever comes to mind; I'll probably throw in some song lyrics and/or quotes too. We shall see.
Work: Work is hell. Ok, not hell, but it is stressful. I could leave it at that, but I won't. The past few weeks at work have been too hectic. Between holidays, deaths, and many outings, things are just running at 1oo miles a second and I can't seem to keep caught up. Now, not everything is bad. I mean, some of the outings are great. I mean, I got paid to drive up to Chicago, watch Phantom of the Opera, and eat at a Chinese buffet - awesome. Last week I got paid to go Christmas shopping and then got a $30 meal at Red Lobster. When you couple these fun things with the emotional boosts you get when you realize how much you are actually helping some of these guys, and the job is great. It can be REALLY stressful though.
Family: Hey regular readers, I have a shock for you! My family members are sick! Ok, if you know anything about my family or have read about half of my blog posts, you know that my family is always sick. If it isn't my mom's knee or shoulder, it is my brother's gastro-intestinal system, or my dad's neck, back, diabetes, arthritis, heart, or whatever his newest unknown malady is. This time it is Dad, Tom, and my aunt all at once. Oh, and my ankle has been acting up lately too. Luckily my family's doctor is great. I mean, the man refuses to let us call him anything but his first name, and has a habit of theatrically joking with us. Take this example:
The setting is a hospital room. My father has been admitted for testing because his blood pressure has been spiking dangerously. After 12 hours of testing and a night in the hospital my family is sitting in the room waiting for our doctor. The nurses know us, so they have been joking with us about how the doctor is just avoiding us because he doesn't know what is wrong.And yes, that actually happened. The nurses weren't happy he was putting words in their mouths, so one of them kicked him in the butt as he was walking away from the room.
A few minutes later our doctor saunters in. He says his hello's to all of us and sits down on the radiator. He looks over at my dad and smiles as he puts his feet on the hospital bed.
"Well, Tim," he says with an exaggerated sigh. "The nurses tell me that you have been whiny and bitchy. But we'll deal with that later. First the results of your tests. As usual we have know idea what the fuck is going on with you."
In addition to the health problems in my family, I am also suffering from another problem regarding them. I am feeling weird when I'm around most of my cousins of a like age. Currently there are five of us who have graduated from high school, and I am the only one who isn't married. Ok, sure, all of the others got married because they either got pregnant or got someone pregnant, but still. It feels weird to look around at a family gathering and realize that I am the only legal adult in my generation without a significant other. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want to have any kids yet, and I am glad I am not on the fast track to whitetrashdom like some of my cousins (nothing like leaving the Navy because you got pregnant and spending the rest of your life working at McDonalds).
Edumacation: In two weeks I am taking my GRE so I can finish my applications to various Grad schools. I'm torn though. I want to go to grad school and get my Master's, but at the same time I want to be home to help my parents. I want to get a higher paying job that I can consider a career, but I want to pay off my student loans as soon as possible. I want to get out of my hometown, but I want to be able to visit friends. It is an interesting conundrum. I'm going to go ahead and apply though, and see what my options are after that.
Women/Love/Romance/Relationship Status: Uhhh. . . . not sure at the moment. I think there is one person who fully knows what is going on with me right now (and that is because I had another case of "George has no internal filter when intoxicated" syndrome... Yeah sorry about that again, even if you refuse to allow me to say sorry). If you want to know what is going on with me, ask and depending on my mood I might tell you.
Random Thoughts: Hmmm, what random thoughts should I include here? Should I talk about how much I dislike going to any of the bars in this area because the three times I have been in one over the past six months at least 10% of my high school class has been inside?
Maybe I should talk about how this past Tuesday REALLY reminded me of some of the things I miss the most about college? Sitting in Cup o' Joe, just talking, laughing, joking, and hanging out really made me nostalgic. I miss being able to just take a one minute walk to find a place I can sit and be with friends. I miss having a group of people readily available to just relax with. I can't do that with my family because any time my parents and I are all off work they end up finding something around the house that needs fixing, or cleaning, or remodeling, or some other inane thing.
Perhaps I should talk about how I have lately been one of the things I hate the most. . . a hypocrite. I continually talk about how we should be honest with people and just say how we feel, but I think I do it mainly because it is something I wish I could do. Instead, I skirt around issues. I drop stupid little hints and joke about things in an attempt to convey what I am thinking without having to actually say it. I hate myself for it, but every time I do express how I feel things seem to explode in my face. *Sigh* Oh well.
Quotes/Songs:
"If I could spend every minute of every day with you I would. I think about you all the time. I think of you when I go to bed, and you're the first thing I think about when I wake up. I can't go through one day without wanting to see you, needing to see you. You're addictive, I don't get it ... what is it about you?"
I thought that by telling myself and everyone else that I hated you. That sooner or later I would come to believe it. But I now realize that by lying, it makes me want you even more.
"You know, I used to think it was awful that life was so unfair. Then I thought, wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair, and all the terrible things that happen to us come because we actually deserve them? So, now I take great comfort in the general hostility and unfairness of the universe." - Marcus Cole from Babylon 5
Nuzen felani enaliz medrawn
“I like fruit baskets because it gives you the ability to mail someone a piece of fruit without appearing insane. Like, if someone just mailed you an apple you'd be like "Huh?", but if it's in a basket you're like "Nice."” - Demetri Martin
"If You're Not the One" by Daniel Bedingfield
If you're not the one then why does my soul feel glad today?
If you're not the one then why does my hand fit yours this way?
If you are not mine then why does your heart return my call?
If you are not mine would I have the strength to stand at all?
I never know what the future brings
But I know you are here with me now
We'll make it through
And I hope you are the one I share my life with
I don't wanna run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am?
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
If I don't need you then why am I crying on my bed?
If I don't need you then why does your name resound in my head?
If you're not for me then why does this distance maim my life?
If you're not for me then why do I dream of you as my wife?
I don't know why you're so far away
But I know that this much is true
We'll make it through
And I hope you are the one I share my life with
And I wish that you could be the one I die with
And I'm praying you're the one I build my home with
I hope I love you all my life
I don't wanna run away but I can't take it, I don't understand
If I'm not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
'Cause I miss you, body and soul so strong that it takes my breath away
And I breathe you into my heart and pray for the strength to stand today
'Cause I love you, whether it's wrong or right
And though I can't be with you tonight
You know my heart is by your side
I don’t wanna run away but I can’t take it, I don’t understand
If I’m not made for you then why does my heart tell me that I am
Is there any way that I can stay in your arms?
9/20/2007
Is this how addicts feel?
Is this the feelings that addicts feel? This want, that borders on need. This yearning for one thing to the exclusion of others. This hunger that consumes all other thoughts and wants. I know I shouldn't want it. I mean sure, giving in to this desire and fulfilling it will lead to happiness, but I know that it will only lead to more pain and suffering in the long run. Granted, it is a near-blissful moment in which everything seems right with the world. Colors seem more vibrant, sounds more melodious, smells more intoxicating, and touches electrifying. Therein lies the problem though. . . it is just a moment. So far every time I have indulged this want, it has been a singular moment. A few solitary moments of the dizzying high, each of which inevitably spiraled into a painful crash.
One would think that these crashes might be enough incentive to not want to risk them again. Then something happens. Some isolated event that means nothing reminds me of the highs. They make me think of the joy that fulfilling this want made me feel. The sheer unadulterated happiness that I felt. When I think about that, I forget the lows. I forget the pain and grief I felt when it was over. I want that happiness. I want that high, but I want it to last, I want to continue indulging in that want over and over to keep the low from coming.
Is this what addicts feel? It sure sounds like it.
Am I addicted? It is possible.
Should I give in? . . . I'm not sure.
Ah, what the hell.
*Eats a piece of cake.*
Ah, that's nice.
Ok, so this actually had nothing to do with cake. *Walks off muttering something about being an idiot and brick walls.*
One would think that these crashes might be enough incentive to not want to risk them again. Then something happens. Some isolated event that means nothing reminds me of the highs. They make me think of the joy that fulfilling this want made me feel. The sheer unadulterated happiness that I felt. When I think about that, I forget the lows. I forget the pain and grief I felt when it was over. I want that happiness. I want that high, but I want it to last, I want to continue indulging in that want over and over to keep the low from coming.
Is this what addicts feel? It sure sounds like it.
Am I addicted? It is possible.
Should I give in? . . . I'm not sure.
Ah, what the hell.
*Eats a piece of cake.*
Ah, that's nice.
Ok, so this actually had nothing to do with cake. *Walks off muttering something about being an idiot and brick walls.*
9/12/2007
High School called. . .
It said it wants its drama back.
Oi! I mean really people, the sheer magnitude of drama in the past year or so at Saint Joe is staggering. I think I have been through more drama in the past year and a half than my entire high school career and 2/3 of my college career. . . and those earlier years included both September 11th, the beginning of the Iraq war, and the 2004 election.
Now, some of this drama involves friends, while other apparently involves me (some warranted, some confusing, some as a result of relativity). Apparently some things have been said about me that don't jibe with the way I remember things. I think that this discrepancy between versions of the story might have led to some of the awkwardness between me and some other people, so I am just going to say the following (and this doesn't just apply to this situation or just to me): If you have heard something about me (or someone else) ask me to hear my side of the story (or ask them to hear theirs). Drawing assumptions from one side of the story leads to some false assumptions. Sure, my version of events might not be what other people remember, but every person's views are tinted by their own emotions and perceptions. If they say A and I say C, well maybe B is right and we are both wrong, but at least you know where each of us is coming from. If you are friends with someone, you owe them at least the courtesy of hearing their side of the story before you decide what you think about a situation.
My rant is finished, now for a few random quotes and a poem that has no relevant connection to anything other than the fact that I was listening to a radio program that was talking about the sun on my way home:
Oi! I mean really people, the sheer magnitude of drama in the past year or so at Saint Joe is staggering. I think I have been through more drama in the past year and a half than my entire high school career and 2/3 of my college career. . . and those earlier years included both September 11th, the beginning of the Iraq war, and the 2004 election.
Now, some of this drama involves friends, while other apparently involves me (some warranted, some confusing, some as a result of relativity). Apparently some things have been said about me that don't jibe with the way I remember things. I think that this discrepancy between versions of the story might have led to some of the awkwardness between me and some other people, so I am just going to say the following (and this doesn't just apply to this situation or just to me): If you have heard something about me (or someone else) ask me to hear my side of the story (or ask them to hear theirs). Drawing assumptions from one side of the story leads to some false assumptions. Sure, my version of events might not be what other people remember, but every person's views are tinted by their own emotions and perceptions. If they say A and I say C, well maybe B is right and we are both wrong, but at least you know where each of us is coming from. If you are friends with someone, you owe them at least the courtesy of hearing their side of the story before you decide what you think about a situation.
My rant is finished, now for a few random quotes and a poem that has no relevant connection to anything other than the fact that I was listening to a radio program that was talking about the sun on my way home:
Could you imagine how horrible things would be if we always told others how we felt? Life would be intolerably bearable. – Randy K. Milholland
Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly every one who tries his power touches the walls of his being. - Charles Dudley Warner
All it takes to fly is to hurl yourself at the ground... and miss. - Douglass Adams
I ran into someone the other day and we started to talk. Somehow the conversation mentioned your name, and they asked me if I knew you. Looking away I thought of all the times we had together and then how, without an explanation, you were gone. I looked to where they were waiting for an answer and said, "Once ... or I thought I did..." - ????
Five billion years from now - maybe to the day, the sun burns 90% of its hydrogen.
The balance is destroyed.
More energy is created than released.
Quickly - a few million years - the sun radiates all of its potential power.
The star swells...
Mercury - Venus - the Earth - Disappear... swallowed.
The sun truly, finally touches the sky.
Life vanishes beneath the glow.
Eventually the sun shrinks, decreasing to the size of the Earth, which reappears from the red dwarf's grasp.
With no gravity to hold it, the Earth slowly floats away.
Elsewhere, stars are born.
Other solar systems, older, larger, continue to breathe.
The solar system dies a cold death.
If that's what it takes, then ok.
If I must wait that long, then all right.
Because when I think of this, nothing is more desirable than the hope of watching that last day
When the sun flickers out
With you beside me. - Poem by ?? (Found in JP's away messages)
8/24/2007
Why society makes people unhappy
This post will be a look at happiness, or more precisely the lack thereof, in the majority of society and some of the reason I believe we are headed for a depressed society. One of these days I will do a more thorough study in this and probably write up an actual paper regarding it. Hell, this could evolve into my thesis when I eventually get back to school. As it is, this will be based upon personal thoughts, examples, and beliefs along with some ideas introduced in the amazing book “A General Theory on Love” which is about so much more than love.
Humans are social creatures. That is a given. At some level, everyone knows that we are social animals who could not long survive without others. Sure, there is the occasional hermit who can live alone, but they are an aberration and not the norm. No, humans are about as social as you can get.
Look at babies. At no time more than infancy is our reliance on others more pronounced. I am not talking about our needs for food, shelter, and hygiene. Rather, I am talking about the basic human need for social contact. Our limbic brains NEED social interaction – human touch, the sound of a human voice, the sight of a human face – to function. Studies have shown that without social interaction babies will die. An infant can be raised in the most hygienic of environments, but without an actual human touching, holding, etc. them, they will die.
Oh, and before I forget, I should probably talk some about the limbic system of our brain. The limbic system is the part of the brain that controls our emotions. It is the limbic system that sets mammals apart from amphibians and reptiles. The limbic system allows us to relate to other limbic animals. Through our limbic system, we can tell when a dog is happy or frightened, we can tell what a person we are talking to is feeling, and we can even know the reasoning behind the cries of a newborn baby. It is a mother’s limbic connection to her child that allows her to differentiate between a hungry cry and a hold me cry.
____
“But George,” you ask, “what the devil does this all have to do with happiness or unhappiness?”
And to that I say, “Hold your gorram horses. I’m getting to it.”
____
Our society is obsessed with Hollywood. Between the movies and the celebrity culture, you can’t spend a day in America and not hear something about a given celebrity’s latest escapades or the latest hot movie. Hollywood movies have given rise to a very strange view of relationships. Everyone is searching for the stereotypical Hollywood movie romance. They want to have the kind of experience where the wind picks up and tosses their hair as the music swells to a crescendo as they kiss someone for the first time. It is a romantic view of things, but exceedingly distorted in the probabilities that it will happen unless staged to happen so.
Celebrities are no different from anyone else in this respect. They want to have the kind of amazing scripted beautiful relationships that they portray in their movies and TV shows. They get caught up in a whirlwind romance with their latest fling, and the paparazzi go wild. Every tabloid, women’s and teen’s magazine, and half of the “news” magazines are about nothing but the latest “who’s dating whom” stories. Our society thrives on it. We have even come up with a method of referring to the relationships by making a conglomeration of the names of those involved.
Of course, everyone wants to be like their favorite celebrity, but therein lays the problem. Celebrities are as (if not more) fallible than the average person. They get caught up in their newest fling and rush straight into marriage, thinking that this is finally the one . . . unfortunately, life catches up to them and they aren’t as deliriously happy six months later and they get a divorce.
Seeing their favorite celebs do this, the average person gets into a relationship, and when it isn’t as picture perfect as their favorite movie romance, or they aren’t as cute a couple as Couple AB, they end it and break up. The majority of the time, they also cut off most if not all ties with their former partner.
And now we have come to the crux of the issue. As humans, our day to day functioning is as much based on external forces as internal. Our interactions with friends and family determine our moods and feelings. Our limbic system works with the cues (both conscious and unconscious) given off by those around us to regulate our bodies and minds. Much like my star analogy a month or so back, how much a given person affects our mood is based upon how influential they are and how close to them we are. We are connected to every person we interact with on a regular basis. Our memories, bodily regulations, thoughts, beliefs, and actions are influenced by this connectivity.
By creating extremely intimate relationships with our “significant others” we bring into our lives a star that is extremely close. These people warm our days and nights, and we thrive with them around us. Then we sever these connections because the relationship isn’t living up to the Hollywood Romantic-Comedy ideal. Of course it isn’t, because only in a scripted interaction could something as silly as this happen:
That’s right, the guy screws up, and all he has to do is show up, make a long winded, horribly canned speech, and BAM! Everything is fine again. It is sweet, it is corny, and it is utter horse shit. It doesn’t work that way in real life. In real life we get into an argument and break up. Then, because we are so used to the deep limbic connections between ourselves and the person we just broke up with, things get uncomfortable. So, we remove these people from our lives to remove the discomfort. But this person was the one who we currently had the deepest limbic connections with, so things are thrown off balance. To use my earlier analogy, we are just removing the sun from our sky. What would happen to the earth without the sun? Chaos would ensue. The earth would be engulfed in almost utter darkness after perpetual sunlight. We would drift aimlessly through the cosmos. In much the same way, our moods are thrown completely out of whack when we cut someone thoroughly out of our lives.
Why would we be so affected by the loss of one relationship though? It is actually a simple explanation. In much the same way that a baby looks to its mother to learn how to react to the environment (although to a much lesser degree), humans look to each other for emotional cues during our daily life.
Don’t believe it? Well, consider the following scenarios.
It is likely that those two nearly identical scenarios would elicit completely different responses. The first would cause most people to become irritated if not outright angry. The second is more likely to cause little or no emotional reaction because the other driver is expressing regret and remorse for what they did.
Thus, when we remove the most influential limbic relationship we have, our brains need time to adapt. It is like the average person losing one of their senses. We would need time to adapt to the lack of sensory information coming to our brain by relying more heavily on our other senses. The loss of an important limbic relationship is a direct parallel to this. When we lose a major source of limbic input, we turn to secondary sources and draw more upon them, but we aren’t used to drawing on these sources for some of this information.
In our society these gains and losses of limbic relationships are omnipresent. We are a culture of serial daters. When partner A doesn’t fit our ideal, we drop them and move on to partner B, C, D, E, and F. If it isn’t us doing it, it is one of our friends, and even if one of our direct peers hasn’t recently broken up with someone, the proof is as close as the nearest newsstand. You can’t pick up a newspaper or magazine without reading something about a famous couple breaking up. Our society encourages us to “shop around” while looking for a mate.
Look at our ancestors. When marriages were arranged and divorce was highly discouraged, the prevalence of depression was much lower. Now, I am not advocating arranged marriages, I am just saying that there appears to be a correlation (this is all hypothetical at the moment of course). The introduction of serial relationships to our society may be partly responsible for the apparent depression epidemic.
____
“But George, what about people who have been single for long periods of time? Why aren’t they happy?”
“I’m getting there”
____
Unfortunately, single people in our society aren’t spared from this whirlpool. No, they are as susceptible as the daters are. As I said earlier, we are inundated with Hollywood Romance and Hollywood couples. On TV, in movies, in books and magazines, everywhere you look you see happy couple after happy couple (followed a few months later by a story about their break up, but I digress). Any single person looking at this yearns for this apparent happiness. They see the smiling faces of couples, who haven’t yet decided that their relationship isn’t Hollywood perfect and should be scrapped, and wish that it was them. The longer they remain alone, the more they get sucked into the idea that a relationship is blissful happiness.
Of course, this leads to problems when they do get into a relationship. When the lonely single person finally finds someone and gets into a relationship, they are expecting things to be as immediately perfect as the latest Romantic Comedy showed that they should be. These people are even more likely to fall victim to this kind of thinking and terminate their relationships early . . . which of course leads to them being emotionally disoriented when these new and deep limbic connections are closed off.
In our society, it appears that you are damned if you date and damned if you don’t.
Humans are social creatures. That is a given. At some level, everyone knows that we are social animals who could not long survive without others. Sure, there is the occasional hermit who can live alone, but they are an aberration and not the norm. No, humans are about as social as you can get.
Look at babies. At no time more than infancy is our reliance on others more pronounced. I am not talking about our needs for food, shelter, and hygiene. Rather, I am talking about the basic human need for social contact. Our limbic brains NEED social interaction – human touch, the sound of a human voice, the sight of a human face – to function. Studies have shown that without social interaction babies will die. An infant can be raised in the most hygienic of environments, but without an actual human touching, holding, etc. them, they will die.
Oh, and before I forget, I should probably talk some about the limbic system of our brain. The limbic system is the part of the brain that controls our emotions. It is the limbic system that sets mammals apart from amphibians and reptiles. The limbic system allows us to relate to other limbic animals. Through our limbic system, we can tell when a dog is happy or frightened, we can tell what a person we are talking to is feeling, and we can even know the reasoning behind the cries of a newborn baby. It is a mother’s limbic connection to her child that allows her to differentiate between a hungry cry and a hold me cry.
____
“But George,” you ask, “what the devil does this all have to do with happiness or unhappiness?”
And to that I say, “Hold your gorram horses. I’m getting to it.”
____
Our society is obsessed with Hollywood. Between the movies and the celebrity culture, you can’t spend a day in America and not hear something about a given celebrity’s latest escapades or the latest hot movie. Hollywood movies have given rise to a very strange view of relationships. Everyone is searching for the stereotypical Hollywood movie romance. They want to have the kind of experience where the wind picks up and tosses their hair as the music swells to a crescendo as they kiss someone for the first time. It is a romantic view of things, but exceedingly distorted in the probabilities that it will happen unless staged to happen so.
Celebrities are no different from anyone else in this respect. They want to have the kind of amazing scripted beautiful relationships that they portray in their movies and TV shows. They get caught up in a whirlwind romance with their latest fling, and the paparazzi go wild. Every tabloid, women’s and teen’s magazine, and half of the “news” magazines are about nothing but the latest “who’s dating whom” stories. Our society thrives on it. We have even come up with a method of referring to the relationships by making a conglomeration of the names of those involved.
Of course, everyone wants to be like their favorite celebrity, but therein lays the problem. Celebrities are as (if not more) fallible than the average person. They get caught up in their newest fling and rush straight into marriage, thinking that this is finally the one . . . unfortunately, life catches up to them and they aren’t as deliriously happy six months later and they get a divorce.
Seeing their favorite celebs do this, the average person gets into a relationship, and when it isn’t as picture perfect as their favorite movie romance, or they aren’t as cute a couple as Couple AB, they end it and break up. The majority of the time, they also cut off most if not all ties with their former partner.
And now we have come to the crux of the issue. As humans, our day to day functioning is as much based on external forces as internal. Our interactions with friends and family determine our moods and feelings. Our limbic system works with the cues (both conscious and unconscious) given off by those around us to regulate our bodies and minds. Much like my star analogy a month or so back, how much a given person affects our mood is based upon how influential they are and how close to them we are. We are connected to every person we interact with on a regular basis. Our memories, bodily regulations, thoughts, beliefs, and actions are influenced by this connectivity.
By creating extremely intimate relationships with our “significant others” we bring into our lives a star that is extremely close. These people warm our days and nights, and we thrive with them around us. Then we sever these connections because the relationship isn’t living up to the Hollywood Romantic-Comedy ideal. Of course it isn’t, because only in a scripted interaction could something as silly as this happen:
Jerry: Hello? Hello.
I'm lookin' for my wife.
Wait. Okay...okay...okay.
If this is where it has to happen, then this is where it has to happen.
I'm not letting you get rid of me. How about that?
This used to be my specialty. You know, I was good in a living room. They'd send me in there, and I'd do it alone. And now I just...
But tonight, our little project, our company had a very big night -- a very, very big night.
But it wasn't complete, wasn't nearly close to being in the same vicinity as complete, because I couldn't share it with you. I couldn't hear your voice or laugh about it with you. I miss my -- I miss my wife.
We live in a cynical world, a cynical world, and we work in a business of tough competitors.
I love you. You -- complete me.
And I just had --
Dorothy: Shut up. Just shut up.
You had me at hello.
You had me at hello.
That’s right, the guy screws up, and all he has to do is show up, make a long winded, horribly canned speech, and BAM! Everything is fine again. It is sweet, it is corny, and it is utter horse shit. It doesn’t work that way in real life. In real life we get into an argument and break up. Then, because we are so used to the deep limbic connections between ourselves and the person we just broke up with, things get uncomfortable. So, we remove these people from our lives to remove the discomfort. But this person was the one who we currently had the deepest limbic connections with, so things are thrown off balance. To use my earlier analogy, we are just removing the sun from our sky. What would happen to the earth without the sun? Chaos would ensue. The earth would be engulfed in almost utter darkness after perpetual sunlight. We would drift aimlessly through the cosmos. In much the same way, our moods are thrown completely out of whack when we cut someone thoroughly out of our lives.
Why would we be so affected by the loss of one relationship though? It is actually a simple explanation. In much the same way that a baby looks to its mother to learn how to react to the environment (although to a much lesser degree), humans look to each other for emotional cues during our daily life.
Don’t believe it? Well, consider the following scenarios.
A. You are cut off in traffic, and a few seconds later you come alongside the car that cut you off. The driver is singing and dancing to thumping rock music and is completely oblivious to what they just did.
B. You are cut off in traffic, and a few seconds later you come alongside the car that cut you off. The driver mouths, “Sorry” and sheepishly looks away.
It is likely that those two nearly identical scenarios would elicit completely different responses. The first would cause most people to become irritated if not outright angry. The second is more likely to cause little or no emotional reaction because the other driver is expressing regret and remorse for what they did.
Thus, when we remove the most influential limbic relationship we have, our brains need time to adapt. It is like the average person losing one of their senses. We would need time to adapt to the lack of sensory information coming to our brain by relying more heavily on our other senses. The loss of an important limbic relationship is a direct parallel to this. When we lose a major source of limbic input, we turn to secondary sources and draw more upon them, but we aren’t used to drawing on these sources for some of this information.
In our society these gains and losses of limbic relationships are omnipresent. We are a culture of serial daters. When partner A doesn’t fit our ideal, we drop them and move on to partner B, C, D, E, and F. If it isn’t us doing it, it is one of our friends, and even if one of our direct peers hasn’t recently broken up with someone, the proof is as close as the nearest newsstand. You can’t pick up a newspaper or magazine without reading something about a famous couple breaking up. Our society encourages us to “shop around” while looking for a mate.
Look at our ancestors. When marriages were arranged and divorce was highly discouraged, the prevalence of depression was much lower. Now, I am not advocating arranged marriages, I am just saying that there appears to be a correlation (this is all hypothetical at the moment of course). The introduction of serial relationships to our society may be partly responsible for the apparent depression epidemic.
____
“But George, what about people who have been single for long periods of time? Why aren’t they happy?”
“I’m getting there”
____
Unfortunately, single people in our society aren’t spared from this whirlpool. No, they are as susceptible as the daters are. As I said earlier, we are inundated with Hollywood Romance and Hollywood couples. On TV, in movies, in books and magazines, everywhere you look you see happy couple after happy couple (followed a few months later by a story about their break up, but I digress). Any single person looking at this yearns for this apparent happiness. They see the smiling faces of couples, who haven’t yet decided that their relationship isn’t Hollywood perfect and should be scrapped, and wish that it was them. The longer they remain alone, the more they get sucked into the idea that a relationship is blissful happiness.
Of course, this leads to problems when they do get into a relationship. When the lonely single person finally finds someone and gets into a relationship, they are expecting things to be as immediately perfect as the latest Romantic Comedy showed that they should be. These people are even more likely to fall victim to this kind of thinking and terminate their relationships early . . . which of course leads to them being emotionally disoriented when these new and deep limbic connections are closed off.
In our society, it appears that you are damned if you date and damned if you don’t.
8/22/2007
Oy
First off, to my friends who have been trying to support me over the past few days - Thank you all.
Second, if I get told by anyone "I never liked her" or "You deserve better" one more time, I might stab that person. I know you guys think you are being supportive, but look at it from my perspective. When I hear "I never liked her", I think "So you were just pretending to like her because I did. Any nice thing you said about her was bullshit... well great, who else do you only pretend to like because friends like them?" When I hear "You deserve better", I think "Well, if I deserve better but can't get this, how am I ever going to get better. And where the hell is better anyway? I apparently have shitty tastes in your opinion, so maybe you should point out who would be right for me."
For those of you who have actually sat down and talked to me (be it in person or over IM) thank you, but for those of you just offering canned platitudes, please stop.
Now for some song lyrics that just fit the situation - Light as the Breeze by Billy Joel (my mother would tell me that I am too damned cynical about love for my age)
Second, if I get told by anyone "I never liked her" or "You deserve better" one more time, I might stab that person. I know you guys think you are being supportive, but look at it from my perspective. When I hear "I never liked her", I think "So you were just pretending to like her because I did. Any nice thing you said about her was bullshit... well great, who else do you only pretend to like because friends like them?" When I hear "You deserve better", I think "Well, if I deserve better but can't get this, how am I ever going to get better. And where the hell is better anyway? I apparently have shitty tastes in your opinion, so maybe you should point out who would be right for me."
For those of you who have actually sat down and talked to me (be it in person or over IM) thank you, but for those of you just offering canned platitudes, please stop.
Now for some song lyrics that just fit the situation - Light as the Breeze by Billy Joel (my mother would tell me that I am too damned cynical about love for my age)
She stands before you naked
You can see it, you can taste it
But she comes to you
Light as the breeze
You can drink or you can nurse it
It don't matter how you worship
As long as you're
Down on your knees
So I knelt there at the delta
At the alpha and the omega
At the cradle of the river
And the seas
And like a blessing come from heaven,
For something like a second,
I was healed, and my heart
Was at ease
O baby I waited
So long for your kiss
For something to happen
Oh - something like this
And you're weak and you're harmless
And you're sleeping in your harness
And the wind going wild
In the trees
And it's not exactly prison
But you'll never be forgiven
For whatever you've done
With the keys
O baby I waited
So long for your kiss
For something to happen
Oh - something like this
It's dark and it's snowing
Oh my love I must be going
The river is starting to freeze
And I'm sick of pretending
I'm broken from bending
I've lived too long
On my knees
And she dances so graceful
And your heart's hard and hateful
And she's naked
But that's just a tease
And you turn in disgust
From your hatred and from your love
And she comes to you
Light as the breeze
O baby I waited
So long for your kiss
For something to happen
Oh - something like this
There's blood on every bracelet
You can see it, you can taste it
And it's please baby
Please baby please
And she says, drink deeply, pilgrim
But don't forget there's still a woman
Beneath this
Resplendent chemise
So I knelt at the delta
At the alpha and the omega
I knelt there
Like one who believes
And like a blessing come from heaven
For something like a second
I was cured, and my heart
Was at ease
O baby I waited
So long for your kiss
For something to happen
Oh - something like this
8/19/2007
Uhhhh
I know I have a tendency to be overly verbose and loquacious when typing up blogs, but today I only have three letters to explain my mood. . .
WTF?
Edit - Well, I thought three letters would be enough, but my new Jason LeVasseur CD keeps singing songs to me that are fitting as well, so I will use my earlier three letters, and here are three songs from Jason.
Edit2 - I normally don't edit my posts once, and this one is getting edited twice. Oh well. As to my earlier three letters, "Ah, ok then. Cool." And as such, two of the Jason songs go bye bye because this post is way too long.
WTF?
Edit - Well, I thought three letters would be enough, but my new Jason LeVasseur CD keeps singing songs to me that are fitting as well, so I will use my earlier three letters, and here are three songs from Jason.
Edit2 - I normally don't edit my posts once, and this one is getting edited twice. Oh well. As to my earlier three letters, "Ah, ok then. Cool." And as such, two of the Jason songs go bye bye because this post is way too long.
The World Spins Around Again
So you climbed up that hill
Just when you thought you had your fill
Took a good look at the big lights
Took a good look at the bright sights
But you never saw the warning sign you thought that you would be alright hanging out doing fine singing sweet songs in the sunshine
So can you make it home tonight
Do you think you’ll cry yourself to sleep
Will you have a dream about
Nothing ever working out
Of being that lucky one
Like that one time
you danced with the sun
And you woke up in a bed of four leaf clovers
And you picked every one
And the world spins around again
And you laugh at the way you’re feeling
And it all goes around again
And you laugh at the pretty girl singing
Aren’t you tired of getting pushed around just when you thought you’d broken out you climbed the hill and laughed at love and that’s about the time that you got pushed down
But you never saw the warning sign you thought that you would be alright hanging out doing fine singing sweet songs in the sunshine
But it’s not your time
And the world spins around again
And you laugh at the way you’re feeling
And it all goes around again
And you laugh at the pretty girl singing
Lalala lalala
Lalala lalala
Lalala lalala
La La La La La La
8/04/2007
I think too much. . .
I think it is about time for me to post something.
Work is going great, not too much to talk about there. Family, well, my family is the same as it always is (in other words, medical problems abound). They are currently on their way back home from Nashville where they vacationed this week.
My family being on vacation meant that I was home alone this week, so I did a lot of driving around to visit people. While driving, I got a chance to do one of my favorite things - ponder. I thought about a lot of things this week - life, the universe, friendship, love, and communication.
Life - Life is funny sometimes. I am currently living with my parents to save up some money before moving out on my own. I want to move out, but at the same time, I know that my parents really need my help around the house nowadays, especially with my father’s current health problems (a long and sordid story I don‘t feel like getting into at the moment. If you are reading this and don‘t already know, give me a call or drop me an e-mail and I might explain it). Because of this, I am torn. Do I move out, or do I stay and help my parents? Oi. . .
The Universe - I love having a convertible sometimes. Driving through the country at night is a beautiful experience (so is sitting out at a drive-in in a convertible). Looking at the stars always gets me to thinking. As always, it reminds me how small our little ball of dirt and water is. At the same time, looking at the stars makes me question the rationality and sanity of anyone who believes that there is no higher power. I truly don’t understand how an atheist can look at the wonder that is the universe and not believe that something sentient had a hand in its creation. Looking at the stars also inspired my next thought -
Friendship - I think that our relationships with people are much like the relationship between stars and the Earth. Every person gives off a different amount of influence on others, and every star gives off a different level of light and energy. When we are closer to a star, we see its light more brightly. It doesn’t matter that a star is naturally dimmer than another, because we are closer to the dim star it appears brighter. Friendship is like this; we find our friends to be more influential and important than other people in our lives because of our proximity to them. This of course, brings us to. . .
Love - Drawing on the exact same example, I thought about how people we truly love influence us. Someone we are truly and deeply in love with is like Sol (that is our sun if you didn’t know). When someone we love is around us we can’t see anything or anyone else. The intensity of our feelings for them wash out everything. That is why we can’t see any other stars during the day, we are too close to our sun. Sol is far from a large or bright star. Hell, it is a puny and feeble star when compared to some of the giants out there, but to us, oh to us it is different. To us, Sol is the biggest, brightest, and most important star there is, and nothing anyone can say or do can prove otherwise. Loving someone effects us in the same way. It doesn’t matter how anyone else sees the person we love, to us, they are the sun. It doesn’t matter that to everyone else they appear to be a sickly star barely flickering in the darkest of nights, we love them and that is what counts to us.
A curious thought just came to me as I was writing this. Even when the sun isn’t in the sky it tends to shed more light on us than the other stars combined. We see its luminosity reflected off of the moon, and even our darkest nights are brightened by Sol. Once again, this is like the relationship we have with those we love. Even when they aren’t around, we see them in other things and they effect our lives.
Communication - For all the talking we humans do, communicating is still one of the most difficult things we can do. How do you tell your father that the one thing you fear right now is losing him? How do you tell your parents that you are willing to sacrifice your social life, comfort, and independence to stay home and help them when the one thing they want most is for you to be able to stand on your own and see you happy? How do you tell someone that you truly love them when every other attempt to do so has been met with laughter or shocked silence? What do you do when your heart is of two minds and your mind doesn’t have the heart to force your heart to make up its mind? When is the point when you stop trying with verbal communication and move on to physical?
When? When do you stop thinking about the right things to say, and speaking, and hinting, and cajoling, and stumbling over your tongue when you want to say something important? When do you stop worrying about what might be and start thinking about what is and should be? When do you stop thinking about possible negative consequences and focus on the amazingly positive possible outcomes? When do you stop trying to express yourself with words, and you instead take her in your arms and kiss her?
. . . And what happens if I did that? What if I did just stop over thinking things and just grabbed her and kissed her the next time I saw her? What then? Would I get slapped? Would she hate me? Would I lose a friend? Would she kiss me back? Would she finally actually believe what I have been saying all along?
And now I am thinking. . . If she reads this, will she realize it is her I am talking about? How many of the people reading this know who I am actually talking about? Oh sure, most of you have guesses, but how many of you are right?
I’m just rambling on now. I guess the conclusion of the above section would be “Yes or no?” Hmm. . . Quotes:
Work is going great, not too much to talk about there. Family, well, my family is the same as it always is (in other words, medical problems abound). They are currently on their way back home from Nashville where they vacationed this week.
My family being on vacation meant that I was home alone this week, so I did a lot of driving around to visit people. While driving, I got a chance to do one of my favorite things - ponder. I thought about a lot of things this week - life, the universe, friendship, love, and communication.
Life - Life is funny sometimes. I am currently living with my parents to save up some money before moving out on my own. I want to move out, but at the same time, I know that my parents really need my help around the house nowadays, especially with my father’s current health problems (a long and sordid story I don‘t feel like getting into at the moment. If you are reading this and don‘t already know, give me a call or drop me an e-mail and I might explain it). Because of this, I am torn. Do I move out, or do I stay and help my parents? Oi. . .
The Universe - I love having a convertible sometimes. Driving through the country at night is a beautiful experience (so is sitting out at a drive-in in a convertible). Looking at the stars always gets me to thinking. As always, it reminds me how small our little ball of dirt and water is. At the same time, looking at the stars makes me question the rationality and sanity of anyone who believes that there is no higher power. I truly don’t understand how an atheist can look at the wonder that is the universe and not believe that something sentient had a hand in its creation. Looking at the stars also inspired my next thought -
Friendship - I think that our relationships with people are much like the relationship between stars and the Earth. Every person gives off a different amount of influence on others, and every star gives off a different level of light and energy. When we are closer to a star, we see its light more brightly. It doesn’t matter that a star is naturally dimmer than another, because we are closer to the dim star it appears brighter. Friendship is like this; we find our friends to be more influential and important than other people in our lives because of our proximity to them. This of course, brings us to. . .
Love - Drawing on the exact same example, I thought about how people we truly love influence us. Someone we are truly and deeply in love with is like Sol (that is our sun if you didn’t know). When someone we love is around us we can’t see anything or anyone else. The intensity of our feelings for them wash out everything. That is why we can’t see any other stars during the day, we are too close to our sun. Sol is far from a large or bright star. Hell, it is a puny and feeble star when compared to some of the giants out there, but to us, oh to us it is different. To us, Sol is the biggest, brightest, and most important star there is, and nothing anyone can say or do can prove otherwise. Loving someone effects us in the same way. It doesn’t matter how anyone else sees the person we love, to us, they are the sun. It doesn’t matter that to everyone else they appear to be a sickly star barely flickering in the darkest of nights, we love them and that is what counts to us.
A curious thought just came to me as I was writing this. Even when the sun isn’t in the sky it tends to shed more light on us than the other stars combined. We see its luminosity reflected off of the moon, and even our darkest nights are brightened by Sol. Once again, this is like the relationship we have with those we love. Even when they aren’t around, we see them in other things and they effect our lives.
Communication - For all the talking we humans do, communicating is still one of the most difficult things we can do. How do you tell your father that the one thing you fear right now is losing him? How do you tell your parents that you are willing to sacrifice your social life, comfort, and independence to stay home and help them when the one thing they want most is for you to be able to stand on your own and see you happy? How do you tell someone that you truly love them when every other attempt to do so has been met with laughter or shocked silence? What do you do when your heart is of two minds and your mind doesn’t have the heart to force your heart to make up its mind? When is the point when you stop trying with verbal communication and move on to physical?
When? When do you stop thinking about the right things to say, and speaking, and hinting, and cajoling, and stumbling over your tongue when you want to say something important? When do you stop worrying about what might be and start thinking about what is and should be? When do you stop thinking about possible negative consequences and focus on the amazingly positive possible outcomes? When do you stop trying to express yourself with words, and you instead take her in your arms and kiss her?
. . . And what happens if I did that? What if I did just stop over thinking things and just grabbed her and kissed her the next time I saw her? What then? Would I get slapped? Would she hate me? Would I lose a friend? Would she kiss me back? Would she finally actually believe what I have been saying all along?
And now I am thinking. . . If she reads this, will she realize it is her I am talking about? How many of the people reading this know who I am actually talking about? Oh sure, most of you have guesses, but how many of you are right?
I’m just rambling on now. I guess the conclusion of the above section would be “Yes or no?” Hmm. . . Quotes:
What do you do when your heart is of two minds and your mind doesn’t have the heart to force your heart to make up its mind? - George White
Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you were pleading
Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive and wayward,
Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps of decorum?
Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying
What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it;
For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion,
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,
Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some people move our souls to dance. They awaken us to a new understanding with the passing whisper of their wisdom. Some people make the sky more beautiful to gaze upon. They stay in our lives for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never ever the same."
Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows. - Pope Paul VI
She was the one to hold me
The night the sky fell down
And what was I thinking when
The world didn’t end
Why didn’t I know
What I know now
Would you look at her
She looks at me
She’s got me thinking about her constantly
But she don’t know how I feel
And she carries on without a doubt
I wonder if she’s figured it out
I’m crazy for this girl - Evan and Jared “Crazy for this Girl”
7/12/2007
I don't know why I even bother with these...
Disclaimer: This post is going to be random and rambling.
Life is a bitch. Life throws shit at you and you never know what is going to hit next. One day, everything seems hunky-dory. . . The next everything is FUBAR. Funnily enough, for once, I’m not going to talk about all the shit. I worked out my need to vent earlier, and I just don’t feel the need to anymore.
Add to talking to someone earlier the fact that I took a nice long walk tonight after I got off work, and I am in a serene mood right now. I absolutely love living in a small town. There is no light pollution like you get in the city. I spent the majority of my walk just looking at the stars. The sky was gorgeous tonight, and it made me remember how incredibly small and insignificant we each are in the grand scheme of the cosmos.
Now, we are insignificant in the scheme of the cosmos, but on the universally small scale, we are incredibly important to everyone around us. Each action you make, effects everyone connected to you, and in turn, the effect on them effects everyone connected to them, etc. It is an infinitely expanding loop. The butterfly effect so to speak.
========
Which brings me to my next point. In life we lean on people, and they in turn lean on us. Sometimes funny things happen. Sometimes we go to lean on someone and they aren’t there. Other times, they are so busy leaning on us that they don’t realize that we need to lean on them. Every once and a while though, when we can’t find someone to lean on we start to lose our balance. We have nothing to support us, and we start falling. Then life surprises us, and there is someone there we aren’t expecting. They support us and let us lean on them when we would otherwise fall. Finding these unexpected supporters when all others have disappeared is one of the best experiences in life. Sometimes someone is there for us and they can help us in a way that nobody else could have. I would like to send a thank you to the person who was there for me this week (you know who you are).
========
Nerd Rant Alert!
I don’t know why I even bother watching movies based on books, old TV shows, or comic books anymore. I am almost always disappointed by them. The only one recently that hasn’t wholly enraged me was Transformers. Between the gorgeous Megan Fox, the always entertaining Shia LaBeouf, amazing special effects, and a very nice job of translating the Transformers characters to a live action movie, Transformers was a fun time and I found it well worth my time and money.
Spiderman 3 - So not worth the wait. Between Emo Spiderman when he was supposed to be super-aggressive evil Spiderman, Venom being almost an afterthought, and the heartless Sandman being turned into a sympathetic character, this movie was sad.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. . . Wow. . . Just wow. I don’t know any other way to describe it. I mean, the powers of the characters (with the exception of Dr. Doom) were true to the comic, but the storyline and the personalities were horrible. Mediocre at best.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. . . I am sickened by this movie. Absolutely sickened. After watching the movie, I asked myself, “Is this movie based on the book I read? Because it wasn’t even close to the same.” The book was good, but the movie was frighteningly bad.
I am worried about the upcoming movie Stardust. The book by Neil Gaiman was amazing, but I am afraid that the movie will be a butchery of it. Only time will tell.
=======
Work is going great. I love helping these guys. The majority of them are just confused kids who made stupid mistakes. Sure a few of them can be jackasses at times, but for the most part they want our help. Unfortunately, I know I can’t do this forever. I like helping these guys, but counseling psychology isn’t really my cup of tea. Honestly I am already starting to look for decent grad schools where I can focus on biopsychology and/or forensic psychology. Hopefully I can find somewhere nearby and go to school while still working at the same place. Here’s hoping.
=======
It is funny how there are some things in life that, no matter how hard you try, you can't change. Sometimes these things are good. Other times they are bad. And every once and a while, they are just there. Sometimes it is a feeling. How you feel about someone (or multiple someones) that you can't change. Maybe you have done something that should have changed your feelings for them, or maybe they have. It doesn't matter what should have changed. No, should's are not a concern of this kind of thing. Should is a word that our brains laugh at and push to the side.
I shouldn't care about this person, but I do, and I can't stop myself from caring. I mean, this person has done pretty much everything imaginable show that they don't care the same way, but for some reason I still care, and I don't know why. Maybe I am a masochist. Maybe it is just that I like the constant struggle to even get this person to have a conversation me.
I don't know why though. I have plenty of people who are perfectly willing to talk to me. Hell, I spend my workdays with 13 guys who want nothing more than positive attention from a male role model. Why don't I just pay attention to them instead of worrying about this person?
Bah, this is just a circular rant in which I will just keep going round and round the idea that I should stop caring, but for some reason I can't. . . Oh well. C'est mon vie.
QUOTES!!!
Life is a bitch. Life throws shit at you and you never know what is going to hit next. One day, everything seems hunky-dory. . . The next everything is FUBAR. Funnily enough, for once, I’m not going to talk about all the shit. I worked out my need to vent earlier, and I just don’t feel the need to anymore.
Add to talking to someone earlier the fact that I took a nice long walk tonight after I got off work, and I am in a serene mood right now. I absolutely love living in a small town. There is no light pollution like you get in the city. I spent the majority of my walk just looking at the stars. The sky was gorgeous tonight, and it made me remember how incredibly small and insignificant we each are in the grand scheme of the cosmos.
Now, we are insignificant in the scheme of the cosmos, but on the universally small scale, we are incredibly important to everyone around us. Each action you make, effects everyone connected to you, and in turn, the effect on them effects everyone connected to them, etc. It is an infinitely expanding loop. The butterfly effect so to speak.
========
Which brings me to my next point. In life we lean on people, and they in turn lean on us. Sometimes funny things happen. Sometimes we go to lean on someone and they aren’t there. Other times, they are so busy leaning on us that they don’t realize that we need to lean on them. Every once and a while though, when we can’t find someone to lean on we start to lose our balance. We have nothing to support us, and we start falling. Then life surprises us, and there is someone there we aren’t expecting. They support us and let us lean on them when we would otherwise fall. Finding these unexpected supporters when all others have disappeared is one of the best experiences in life. Sometimes someone is there for us and they can help us in a way that nobody else could have. I would like to send a thank you to the person who was there for me this week (you know who you are).
========
Nerd Rant Alert!
I don’t know why I even bother watching movies based on books, old TV shows, or comic books anymore. I am almost always disappointed by them. The only one recently that hasn’t wholly enraged me was Transformers. Between the gorgeous Megan Fox, the always entertaining Shia LaBeouf, amazing special effects, and a very nice job of translating the Transformers characters to a live action movie, Transformers was a fun time and I found it well worth my time and money.
Spiderman 3 - So not worth the wait. Between Emo Spiderman when he was supposed to be super-aggressive evil Spiderman, Venom being almost an afterthought, and the heartless Sandman being turned into a sympathetic character, this movie was sad.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. . . Wow. . . Just wow. I don’t know any other way to describe it. I mean, the powers of the characters (with the exception of Dr. Doom) were true to the comic, but the storyline and the personalities were horrible. Mediocre at best.
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. . . I am sickened by this movie. Absolutely sickened. After watching the movie, I asked myself, “Is this movie based on the book I read? Because it wasn’t even close to the same.” The book was good, but the movie was frighteningly bad.
I am worried about the upcoming movie Stardust. The book by Neil Gaiman was amazing, but I am afraid that the movie will be a butchery of it. Only time will tell.
=======
Work is going great. I love helping these guys. The majority of them are just confused kids who made stupid mistakes. Sure a few of them can be jackasses at times, but for the most part they want our help. Unfortunately, I know I can’t do this forever. I like helping these guys, but counseling psychology isn’t really my cup of tea. Honestly I am already starting to look for decent grad schools where I can focus on biopsychology and/or forensic psychology. Hopefully I can find somewhere nearby and go to school while still working at the same place. Here’s hoping.
=======
It is funny how there are some things in life that, no matter how hard you try, you can't change. Sometimes these things are good. Other times they are bad. And every once and a while, they are just there. Sometimes it is a feeling. How you feel about someone (or multiple someones) that you can't change. Maybe you have done something that should have changed your feelings for them, or maybe they have. It doesn't matter what should have changed. No, should's are not a concern of this kind of thing. Should is a word that our brains laugh at and push to the side.
I shouldn't care about this person, but I do, and I can't stop myself from caring. I mean, this person has done pretty much everything imaginable show that they don't care the same way, but for some reason I still care, and I don't know why. Maybe I am a masochist. Maybe it is just that I like the constant struggle to even get this person to have a conversation me.
I don't know why though. I have plenty of people who are perfectly willing to talk to me. Hell, I spend my workdays with 13 guys who want nothing more than positive attention from a male role model. Why don't I just pay attention to them instead of worrying about this person?
Bah, this is just a circular rant in which I will just keep going round and round the idea that I should stop caring, but for some reason I can't. . . Oh well. C'est mon vie.
QUOTES!!!
“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of the players, (ie everybody), to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.” - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
“Sometimes it seems the harder you try to hold on to something or someone the more it wants to get away. You feel like some kind of criminal for having felt, for having wanted. For having wanted to be wanted. It confuses you, because you think that your feelings were wrong, and it makes you feel so small because it's so hard to keep it inside when you let it out and it doesn't come back. You're left so alone that you can't explain.” - Henry Rollins
“You want to think and say that you have everytning you need, but then you realize that something is missing, someone is missing... and once you think you've found it, it goes and disappears on you and you don't understand what to do or even where to start looking for that missing piece of the puzzle. You sit at home in lonely frustration and you just wait...wait...and wait. No where to look, no one to look for...”
“Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.” - Pope Paul VI
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” - Reinhold Niebuhr
“My mind tells me to give up, but my heart won't let me.”
“I don't wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone.” - Javan
6/11/2007
Who comes to Claim? Who dares the Dream, and daring ---
Strangely, even though things are going swimmingly with me currently, I haven’t been finding things to write about. I’m working a lot, occasionally finding time to visit Elizabeth, and working on things around the house. Nothing all that exciting that I need to write about. . .
I was reading a book the other day and came across a very interesting story and moral. The story is told near the climax of the book as a test to determine which of two claimants is the rightful king to a throne. At the end of the story he asks a question.
Here it is:
---
Listen to me. Listen to the sadness I must relate. Live it.
Listen to me. Live it.
Once there was a woman married to a blacksmith in Ruen. As wives are wont to do, she waxed great with child, and one afternoon her time came. Her husband sent for the local midwife, but she was busy elsewhere, and the midwife from the neighborhood next to theirs answered the call. She was a short woman, stout, and she had a hunched shoulder, a twisted arm, and wall eyes that stared at deviant angles. When she entered the birthing chamber, the wife cried out in shock and terror, and the midwife took affront.
In spite the midwife sat back when the woman bled, and let her life’s blood drain into useless pools in the bed. And from these cooling pools she lifted a baby girl even as the mother took one last shuddering breath and died. “I curse you,” the midwife cried to the infant, “to a sad life!” Then she picked up her instruments, laid the infant down by her dead mother, and left the room.
The blacksmith mourned his wife, for she had been useful, and blamed his infant daughter for his loss. He put her out to a wet nurse, begrudging her every coin he had to pay to let his daughter suck at the woman’s breast, and only reluctantly took her back into his house when she was four. The blacksmith already had three older sons, and he did not want this daughter, but he was obliged to take her.
She grew, but following the midwife’s curse she grew only into sadness. Her father and brothers treated her with cold indifference that too often bordered on hostility. The girl spent her days attending their needs, never leaving the house or the forge that abutted it, keeping her head bowed, never smiling. She had no reason to smile.
She grew into young womanhood, yet her days were as gray and featureless as they had been as a child. Her only comfort was her mother’s small collection of books which she kept under her bed and only pulled out to read once everyone else in the house was asleep. These books were her only friends. Until . . . until one day a young man came to the forge, bringing his horse which had cast a shoe. He spied the woman as she sought to hide in the shadows, and managed a quiet word to her. Over the next few weeks, with increasing courage, she met him for snatched minutes in the alley behind the house, exchanging words, hopes, dreams. For the first time in her life she learned to smile.
Alas!
Alas! One night she determined to run away with the young man, run to an inn nearby where they planned to consummate their love and from there move into a world of hope. But she was careless, and in her eagerness left her father’s house before she had dried the dishes washed from the evening meal. Her brothers followed her, furious at her slovenliness, and found her even as her lover’s lips were for the first time lowering to hers.
They seized him, crowing with fury, and bore him to the ground. They were strong men, and could have killed him quickly, but they chose to take their time, and they drew out his death until his screams shattered the night. And yet no one threw open their shuttered windows to investigate. No one. When he was dead they turned to their sister, and one took his knife and, as the others held her down, he put out her eyes so that she would never be tempted again.
Now even her treasured books were denied her. Long hours she would sit on her bed, late at night, feeling their taunting shapes beneath her hands, her tearless sorrow ravaging her face. There was nothing for her now. Her father grew old and died, and her brothers took wives, bringing them home to live in their house. She continued as the household drudge, creeping blindly about the house, sometimes but not always evading the sharp corners of furniture deliberately moved into her path and the stabbing fingers of her sisters-in-law. Nieces and nephews were born, and they soon learned the sharp ways of their parents. The woman learned to accept pinches and punches, and she bowed her head to fate.
After some years, she became aware of a comforting presence that lingered in the back alleyway. It was a great shaggy dog, a stray, that someone had discarded. Gradually he became used to her, and accepted careful scraps from her fingers, licking them gratefully when he had finished. He was her only friend, and somehow she conceived the idea that the dog was her lover’s soul come back to aid her. The thought comforted her. One day, the dog went a-roaming, as dogs are wont to do, and he caught a squirrel, wandering madly through the back streets of Ruen. As the dog caught the squirrel the rodent bit him, and the dog yelped in surprise and let the creature go. Two days later he felt a madness building in his mind.
The woman was relieved when she heard the dog scratching at the door, and she hurried to give it a pat and a hug. But as she leaned down the dog snarled and bit her hand, and she screamed and tore loose, and the brothers and their wives and their numerous children came a-running through the house and dragged her inside, slapping her for her foolishness, and stomped the dog to death.
But it was too late. She grew feverish, her body wracked with convulsing agony. Her sisters-in-law tended her only enough to keep her alive, but they wished they had not bothered when the woman finally struggled up from her sickbed. The fever had crippled her back and twisted one leg shorter than the other. Even as a drudge, she was useless.
There is not much left to tell. They threw her out to wander the streets, where she begged what food she could and slept in doorways when she was able. She accepted the abuse meted out by those who prey on the week and helpless, and knew her time was short. Winter approached, and winter is never kind to those lacking both home and comfort.
So she curled up about her rags and sought the only answer to her pain. I ask you now to venture the ordeal. What was her answer? What answer could she find to her pain and her sorrow?
---
Well. . . what was her answer? What did she do? What would you do? I am glad to say that I answered correctly. I will post up the answer given in a few days, but I would like to see what other people think. What answer would you give?
---
The answer given was “She laughed. She laughed. It was the only thing left for her to do.”
The short stanza I used as a title for these posts was used repeatedly in the books, and after that story was fully finished the end was revealed.
Who comes to Claim?
Who dares to dream
and daring - laughs.
To which the test giver responds - “Yes. Laughs. To laugh is to dare, because laughter dares fate and sorrow and the weight of all injustices.”
So people, laugh. Laugh at life. Don't take it too serious.
Remember “A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.” - Gustave Flaubert
I was reading a book the other day and came across a very interesting story and moral. The story is told near the climax of the book as a test to determine which of two claimants is the rightful king to a throne. At the end of the story he asks a question.
Here it is:
---
Listen to me. Listen to the sadness I must relate. Live it.
Listen to me. Live it.
Once there was a woman married to a blacksmith in Ruen. As wives are wont to do, she waxed great with child, and one afternoon her time came. Her husband sent for the local midwife, but she was busy elsewhere, and the midwife from the neighborhood next to theirs answered the call. She was a short woman, stout, and she had a hunched shoulder, a twisted arm, and wall eyes that stared at deviant angles. When she entered the birthing chamber, the wife cried out in shock and terror, and the midwife took affront.
In spite the midwife sat back when the woman bled, and let her life’s blood drain into useless pools in the bed. And from these cooling pools she lifted a baby girl even as the mother took one last shuddering breath and died. “I curse you,” the midwife cried to the infant, “to a sad life!” Then she picked up her instruments, laid the infant down by her dead mother, and left the room.
The blacksmith mourned his wife, for she had been useful, and blamed his infant daughter for his loss. He put her out to a wet nurse, begrudging her every coin he had to pay to let his daughter suck at the woman’s breast, and only reluctantly took her back into his house when she was four. The blacksmith already had three older sons, and he did not want this daughter, but he was obliged to take her.
She grew, but following the midwife’s curse she grew only into sadness. Her father and brothers treated her with cold indifference that too often bordered on hostility. The girl spent her days attending their needs, never leaving the house or the forge that abutted it, keeping her head bowed, never smiling. She had no reason to smile.
She grew into young womanhood, yet her days were as gray and featureless as they had been as a child. Her only comfort was her mother’s small collection of books which she kept under her bed and only pulled out to read once everyone else in the house was asleep. These books were her only friends. Until . . . until one day a young man came to the forge, bringing his horse which had cast a shoe. He spied the woman as she sought to hide in the shadows, and managed a quiet word to her. Over the next few weeks, with increasing courage, she met him for snatched minutes in the alley behind the house, exchanging words, hopes, dreams. For the first time in her life she learned to smile.
Alas!
Alas! One night she determined to run away with the young man, run to an inn nearby where they planned to consummate their love and from there move into a world of hope. But she was careless, and in her eagerness left her father’s house before she had dried the dishes washed from the evening meal. Her brothers followed her, furious at her slovenliness, and found her even as her lover’s lips were for the first time lowering to hers.
They seized him, crowing with fury, and bore him to the ground. They were strong men, and could have killed him quickly, but they chose to take their time, and they drew out his death until his screams shattered the night. And yet no one threw open their shuttered windows to investigate. No one. When he was dead they turned to their sister, and one took his knife and, as the others held her down, he put out her eyes so that she would never be tempted again.
Now even her treasured books were denied her. Long hours she would sit on her bed, late at night, feeling their taunting shapes beneath her hands, her tearless sorrow ravaging her face. There was nothing for her now. Her father grew old and died, and her brothers took wives, bringing them home to live in their house. She continued as the household drudge, creeping blindly about the house, sometimes but not always evading the sharp corners of furniture deliberately moved into her path and the stabbing fingers of her sisters-in-law. Nieces and nephews were born, and they soon learned the sharp ways of their parents. The woman learned to accept pinches and punches, and she bowed her head to fate.
After some years, she became aware of a comforting presence that lingered in the back alleyway. It was a great shaggy dog, a stray, that someone had discarded. Gradually he became used to her, and accepted careful scraps from her fingers, licking them gratefully when he had finished. He was her only friend, and somehow she conceived the idea that the dog was her lover’s soul come back to aid her. The thought comforted her. One day, the dog went a-roaming, as dogs are wont to do, and he caught a squirrel, wandering madly through the back streets of Ruen. As the dog caught the squirrel the rodent bit him, and the dog yelped in surprise and let the creature go. Two days later he felt a madness building in his mind.
The woman was relieved when she heard the dog scratching at the door, and she hurried to give it a pat and a hug. But as she leaned down the dog snarled and bit her hand, and she screamed and tore loose, and the brothers and their wives and their numerous children came a-running through the house and dragged her inside, slapping her for her foolishness, and stomped the dog to death.
But it was too late. She grew feverish, her body wracked with convulsing agony. Her sisters-in-law tended her only enough to keep her alive, but they wished they had not bothered when the woman finally struggled up from her sickbed. The fever had crippled her back and twisted one leg shorter than the other. Even as a drudge, she was useless.
There is not much left to tell. They threw her out to wander the streets, where she begged what food she could and slept in doorways when she was able. She accepted the abuse meted out by those who prey on the week and helpless, and knew her time was short. Winter approached, and winter is never kind to those lacking both home and comfort.
So she curled up about her rags and sought the only answer to her pain. I ask you now to venture the ordeal. What was her answer? What answer could she find to her pain and her sorrow?
---
Well. . . what was her answer? What did she do? What would you do? I am glad to say that I answered correctly. I will post up the answer given in a few days, but I would like to see what other people think. What answer would you give?
---
The answer given was “She laughed. She laughed. It was the only thing left for her to do.”
The short stanza I used as a title for these posts was used repeatedly in the books, and after that story was fully finished the end was revealed.
Who comes to Claim?
Who dares to dream
and daring - laughs.
To which the test giver responds - “Yes. Laughs. To laugh is to dare, because laughter dares fate and sorrow and the weight of all injustices.”
So people, laugh. Laugh at life. Don't take it too serious.
Remember “A thing derided is a thing dead; a laughing man is stronger than a suffering man.” - Gustave Flaubert
5/10/2007
The Reports of My Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Sorry everyone. I realize that it has been almost a month since I last updated this baby, and the three or four of you who actually read it were probably getting antsy (I know Trips was. . . He said he needed my emotions “injected into his life”).
I guess there were two main reasons I didn’t post up anything in the past month. The first was because I was nearing my graduation, and I knew that anything I posted would end up being a sappy, teary-eyed, emotional goodbye to everyone (which this post will end up turning into anyway). I didn’t think I could handle that kind of goodbye or even really admit to myself that my college career was ending. I had a hard enough time saying goodbye to people, and I think I came off as a little cold and detached, but that was only because I was attempting to keep myself from breaking down. Last week was rough (and I’ll get into that more later).
The second reason I didn’t write a post recently has to do with my relationship status. Four days after my last blog post I started a relationship with an amazing woman (even as I write this I wonder what mental illness she is suffering from that makes her think I am in any way worthy of her affection) . . . and I think that I was afraid that if I wrote a post saying how happy I was, I would wake up and find that it had all been some elaborate dream. Or maybe I thought that if I wrote a post, the Almighty would let the other shoe drop and suckerpunch me in some new and creative way. As I once said to BJ, I am a romantic hypochondriac. I may put forward a happy and brave face, but for some reason I am always thinking things like - “Have I done something wrong? Is it going to end? What if I screw up?” . . . I hope for the best, but envision the worst, and I don’t know why. . .
Anyway, as I was cleaning my room so I would have space to unpack my junk, I found an old CD that a friend made when we were in a barbershop quartet back in high school. Not knowing what songs were on it or their order, I laughed, said “In Bob I trust”, and hit random. I was regaled with the following song:
I hadn’t thought about that song since we sang it back in high school, but it fits my current mood perfectly. I know that I will probably see almost all of my friends again, but how many of my acquaintances are now things of the past? How many of the people that I met in college but didn’t get too close to are now just people I once knew? How many of my friends will move on to distant jobs never to be seen again? It is disheartening to think that Saturday May 5th was the last time I may see some of them, and I am not sure how I really feel about the idea. It is still sinking in right now.
As always, some quotes:
I guess there were two main reasons I didn’t post up anything in the past month. The first was because I was nearing my graduation, and I knew that anything I posted would end up being a sappy, teary-eyed, emotional goodbye to everyone (which this post will end up turning into anyway). I didn’t think I could handle that kind of goodbye or even really admit to myself that my college career was ending. I had a hard enough time saying goodbye to people, and I think I came off as a little cold and detached, but that was only because I was attempting to keep myself from breaking down. Last week was rough (and I’ll get into that more later).
The second reason I didn’t write a post recently has to do with my relationship status. Four days after my last blog post I started a relationship with an amazing woman (even as I write this I wonder what mental illness she is suffering from that makes her think I am in any way worthy of her affection) . . . and I think that I was afraid that if I wrote a post saying how happy I was, I would wake up and find that it had all been some elaborate dream. Or maybe I thought that if I wrote a post, the Almighty would let the other shoe drop and suckerpunch me in some new and creative way. As I once said to BJ, I am a romantic hypochondriac. I may put forward a happy and brave face, but for some reason I am always thinking things like - “Have I done something wrong? Is it going to end? What if I screw up?” . . . I hope for the best, but envision the worst, and I don’t know why. . .
Anyway, as I was cleaning my room so I would have space to unpack my junk, I found an old CD that a friend made when we were in a barbershop quartet back in high school. Not knowing what songs were on it or their order, I laughed, said “In Bob I trust”, and hit random. I was regaled with the following song:
Our song was a song of tomorrow
Our hearts were as high as the sky
But songs are forgotten and skies often grey
Nevertheless there is this I can say
From the first hello
To the last goodbye
It’s been awfully nice to know you
So excuse the parting sigh
And I’ll watch you go
With my head held high
You’ve been dear and sweet
A pleasure to meet
A special treat
Say I...
From the first hello
To the last goodbye
I hadn’t thought about that song since we sang it back in high school, but it fits my current mood perfectly. I know that I will probably see almost all of my friends again, but how many of my acquaintances are now things of the past? How many of the people that I met in college but didn’t get too close to are now just people I once knew? How many of my friends will move on to distant jobs never to be seen again? It is disheartening to think that Saturday May 5th was the last time I may see some of them, and I am not sure how I really feel about the idea. It is still sinking in right now.
As always, some quotes:
“It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.” – Henry Rollins
"Love is when the woman of your dreams becomes a reality and sleep stops being a priority."
"If I could spend every minute of every day with you I would. I think about you all the time. I think of you when I go to bed, and you're the first thing I think about when I wake up. I can't go through one day without wanting to see you, needing to see you. You're addictive, I don't get it ... what is it about you?"
4/11/2007
*Sigh*
You know, for one day - just one short day - I would love to be able to have nobody ask me about my post graduation plans. I don't really want to think about it any more than I have to. Right now I just want to spend as much time with my friends as possible (and get all my stuff done... I hate all of my professors right now).
Hopefully today will be that day.
---------
I had a semi-philosophical moment earlier and wrote down a weird paragraph:
There are some things in life you can’t change. You can’t stop the weather or the inexorable change of tides. You can’t turn lead into gold or buy yourself more time in life. Try as you might, you can’t change your past choices or choose how others feel about you. But there are things you can do. You can weather any storms that come and plan your arrivals and departures based upon the tides. You can use lead in countless more ways than you could gold and use the time you are given well. And you can learn from your past choices and you can choose how you feel about others. Embrace the choices you have and accept those you don’t. It doesn’t help anyone to dwell on the things they can’t change.
--------
I confuse the shit out of myself, but I would like to think that certain others contribute significantly to this confusion. Sort it out Crazy Fool. Sort it out.
---------
Quotes:
Hopefully today will be that day.
---------
I had a semi-philosophical moment earlier and wrote down a weird paragraph:
There are some things in life you can’t change. You can’t stop the weather or the inexorable change of tides. You can’t turn lead into gold or buy yourself more time in life. Try as you might, you can’t change your past choices or choose how others feel about you. But there are things you can do. You can weather any storms that come and plan your arrivals and departures based upon the tides. You can use lead in countless more ways than you could gold and use the time you are given well. And you can learn from your past choices and you can choose how you feel about others. Embrace the choices you have and accept those you don’t. It doesn’t help anyone to dwell on the things they can’t change.
--------
I confuse the shit out of myself, but I would like to think that certain others contribute significantly to this confusion. Sort it out Crazy Fool. Sort it out.
---------
Quotes:
When a man is thinking about matters of the heart, the most common expression on his face will be one of confusion. - Me
I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own except for the fact that you happen to be insane. - O'Brien, 1984
To me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. And number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special. – Jim Valvano
Don’t cry because it is over. Smile because it happened. – Dr. Seuss
Am I so much to blame, that yesterday, when you were pleading
Warmly the cause of another, my heart, impulsive and wayward,
Pleaded your own, and spake out, forgetful perhaps of decorum?
Certainly you can forgive me for speaking so frankly, for saying
What I ought not to have said, yet now I can never unsay it;
For there are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion,
That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble
Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret,
Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
3/28/2007
Insomnia Sucks
Ok, those of you who are reading this should be warned that I am running on empty at the moment and I will probably say some things that either don’t make sense or that I shouldn’t say. At the moment, I just don’t care.
---
This first section is something I have been thinking about a lot lately – my spirituality. I can’t call it my religiosity, because I don’t follow any specific religion. I mean, if I absolutely had to subscribe to any one religion, I would have to choose to be a non-denominational Christian (ok, I know that even that isn’t truly choosing a religion, but it is as close as I can get).
I am not sure why I have been thinking about my spirituality lately. Maybe it is because I have actually sat in on a few religious ceremonies lately. Maybe it is because I have been hanging out with several highly religious people recently. Maybe it is just because once again I have reached a point in my life where I just don’t know what I should do.
Whatever the reason, I feel like I should explain my views on religion somewhere that people can read them. I will try to be as non-judgmental and honest as I can in this explanation.
1. I believe there is a God. I believe that this God is a benevolent being.
2. I believe that this God has revealed itself throughout the ages to any number of people in any number of ways. I believe that miracles described in Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian mythologies probably actually have some foundation in truth. I believe that the Jewish/Christian/Muslim holy texts have at least some basis in fact. I believe Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and every other major religion in the world has some kind of connection to this same God. Miracles happen, and the only way to explain them is a God.
3. I believe that the idea of being religious and to worship God is a respectable and necessary thing in life.
4. I believe that the basic tenets of every major religion in the world are basically good. From the Ten Commandments to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, every major religion has some kind of foundation that is easily followed or understood by most people. Very few of these tenets conflict with the other religions. Heck, even “You shall have no other gods before Me” isn’t contradicted if you believe that all religions are just different ways to worship the same God.
I think those four basic beliefs are commonplace and respectable. Here is where I step away from most people. I don’t go as far as some people (Jesse Ventura) and claim that religion is a crutch for people. Far from it, religion has throughout history brought people together in ways nothing else has. No, I don’t believe that, but I do believe that religion is not universally good.
Established religion has been the basis for wars, discrimination, homicide, genocide, feuds, and hatred throughout the centuries. Arguments and conflicts between religious groups have caused more problems through the centuries than anything else I can think of. Blind faith leads people to do exceedingly foolish things.
It isn’t only disagreements between religions that cause problems. Misinterpretation of religious doctrines has lead to almost as many problems as the conflicts. It leads to irrational hatred of people who are different, terrorists blowing themselves up in order to kill “infidels”, witch hunts, inquisitions, and civil wars.
For these reasons, I, while being extremely spiritual, cannot bring myself to claim any specific religion as my own.
---
Wow, I am proud of myself. I stayed on topic for much longer than I expected to.
This next section though. . . I am going to do a lot of rambling. I am not good at typing about my personal life really.
Looking back on the past year or so, I find that I haven’t changed at all. When I say I haven’t changed, I mean that I am finding myself in situations like I was last year at about this point.
I am like a man in quicksand. I feel myself sink down, and my hand finds itself on a branch, so I grab onto the branch and begin pulling with all my might. Unfortunately, the branch seems to always break and I find myself sinking right back into the quicksand.
Maybe I should just stop struggling against the quicksand. Maybe I should just let myself sink into the quicksand and accept my fate. I tried it once, but my timing was atrocious. Maybe I was supposed to grab the branch then and let myself and the quicksand adjust for a while until the branch broke. Well, the branch has broken. Should I surrender?
Looking at things from the perspective of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, I can say to myself, “What is the worst that can happen?” Honestly, the worst thing that could happen is getting shot down again. The thing is, I am used to that. It would just be another “Suckerpunch” from the big man upstairs. I’ve lost track of how many times that has happened over the years. It isn’t that bad really. I can laugh it off nowadays.
What else am I scared of? I can’t put it in words. I don’t really think there is anything holding me back. Maybe it is because I know I won’t be believed. I mean, I have said point blank how I feel countless times, but I don’t think it has ever really sunk in. Then again, disregarding one time, every time I have said how I feel, I have used my signature sarcastic tone or said it flippantly. Maybe I just need to be dead serious the next time I say it. It isn’t a joke, but I feel I sometimes have to joke about it to keep from exposing my feelings to people honestly. I need to stop doing it.
Alright, I am just going to let go. I am going to surrender myself to the quicksand. It is all in the hands of God now. I am going to trust that things will work out as they should.
. . . Oh, sleepless nights give one a lot to think about. As always, comments are welcome and encouraged. I like to know when friends are actually reading this and what they think about what I write. Now, as I like to do, here are some quotes:
---
This first section is something I have been thinking about a lot lately – my spirituality. I can’t call it my religiosity, because I don’t follow any specific religion. I mean, if I absolutely had to subscribe to any one religion, I would have to choose to be a non-denominational Christian (ok, I know that even that isn’t truly choosing a religion, but it is as close as I can get).
I am not sure why I have been thinking about my spirituality lately. Maybe it is because I have actually sat in on a few religious ceremonies lately. Maybe it is because I have been hanging out with several highly religious people recently. Maybe it is just because once again I have reached a point in my life where I just don’t know what I should do.
Whatever the reason, I feel like I should explain my views on religion somewhere that people can read them. I will try to be as non-judgmental and honest as I can in this explanation.
1. I believe there is a God. I believe that this God is a benevolent being.
2. I believe that this God has revealed itself throughout the ages to any number of people in any number of ways. I believe that miracles described in Greek, Roman, Norse, and Egyptian mythologies probably actually have some foundation in truth. I believe that the Jewish/Christian/Muslim holy texts have at least some basis in fact. I believe Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and every other major religion in the world has some kind of connection to this same God. Miracles happen, and the only way to explain them is a God.
3. I believe that the idea of being religious and to worship God is a respectable and necessary thing in life.
4. I believe that the basic tenets of every major religion in the world are basically good. From the Ten Commandments to the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, every major religion has some kind of foundation that is easily followed or understood by most people. Very few of these tenets conflict with the other religions. Heck, even “You shall have no other gods before Me” isn’t contradicted if you believe that all religions are just different ways to worship the same God.
I think those four basic beliefs are commonplace and respectable. Here is where I step away from most people. I don’t go as far as some people (Jesse Ventura) and claim that religion is a crutch for people. Far from it, religion has throughout history brought people together in ways nothing else has. No, I don’t believe that, but I do believe that religion is not universally good.
Established religion has been the basis for wars, discrimination, homicide, genocide, feuds, and hatred throughout the centuries. Arguments and conflicts between religious groups have caused more problems through the centuries than anything else I can think of. Blind faith leads people to do exceedingly foolish things.
It isn’t only disagreements between religions that cause problems. Misinterpretation of religious doctrines has lead to almost as many problems as the conflicts. It leads to irrational hatred of people who are different, terrorists blowing themselves up in order to kill “infidels”, witch hunts, inquisitions, and civil wars.
For these reasons, I, while being extremely spiritual, cannot bring myself to claim any specific religion as my own.
---
Wow, I am proud of myself. I stayed on topic for much longer than I expected to.
This next section though. . . I am going to do a lot of rambling. I am not good at typing about my personal life really.
Looking back on the past year or so, I find that I haven’t changed at all. When I say I haven’t changed, I mean that I am finding myself in situations like I was last year at about this point.
I am like a man in quicksand. I feel myself sink down, and my hand finds itself on a branch, so I grab onto the branch and begin pulling with all my might. Unfortunately, the branch seems to always break and I find myself sinking right back into the quicksand.
Maybe I should just stop struggling against the quicksand. Maybe I should just let myself sink into the quicksand and accept my fate. I tried it once, but my timing was atrocious. Maybe I was supposed to grab the branch then and let myself and the quicksand adjust for a while until the branch broke. Well, the branch has broken. Should I surrender?
Looking at things from the perspective of Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, I can say to myself, “What is the worst that can happen?” Honestly, the worst thing that could happen is getting shot down again. The thing is, I am used to that. It would just be another “Suckerpunch” from the big man upstairs. I’ve lost track of how many times that has happened over the years. It isn’t that bad really. I can laugh it off nowadays.
What else am I scared of? I can’t put it in words. I don’t really think there is anything holding me back. Maybe it is because I know I won’t be believed. I mean, I have said point blank how I feel countless times, but I don’t think it has ever really sunk in. Then again, disregarding one time, every time I have said how I feel, I have used my signature sarcastic tone or said it flippantly. Maybe I just need to be dead serious the next time I say it. It isn’t a joke, but I feel I sometimes have to joke about it to keep from exposing my feelings to people honestly. I need to stop doing it.
Alright, I am just going to let go. I am going to surrender myself to the quicksand. It is all in the hands of God now. I am going to trust that things will work out as they should.
. . . Oh, sleepless nights give one a lot to think about. As always, comments are welcome and encouraged. I like to know when friends are actually reading this and what they think about what I write. Now, as I like to do, here are some quotes:
The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief -
But the pain of grief
Is only a shadow
When compared with the pain
Of never risking love.
- Hilary Stanton Zunin
“Love is a special word, and I use it only when I mean it. You say the word too much and it becomes cheap.” – Ray Charles
“The most human thing we have to do in life is is to learn to speak our honest convictions and feelings and live with the consequences. This is the first requirement of love, and it makes us vulnerable to other people who may ridicule us. But our vulnerability is the only thing we can give to other people.” – Leo F. Buscaglia
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