Profound Thoughts
Welcome to my reality. Please, come in and play...
It is our lot in life to suffer. From the dawn of time man has felt the pain of life and considered it a torture that none should have to bear. He has blamed various others, gods, neighbors, himself and the earth upon which he lives for the hardships of this life. As we progressed into this age of technology we thought ourselves dominant, superior, above the petty whining of our prior selves. We were wrong. We still suffer, even in much the same ways as before. It is the bane of progress that as we reach ever higher planes of thought and existence, we should encounter even greater pitfalls and failings in ourselves. There is no great answer that tells us how to live our lives, nor is there any better way to live it than to try. There can be no guarantee of success or happiness, but if you shy away from the quest and leave it to someone else, you'll never know if it could have been you. That chance for greatest success is always also the greatest risk of failure. This is life. There are no second chances, you must take it as it comes and choose the path that you will take. There is no safe road or easier way. It comes at you as a tiger whom you must struggle to control. You may try to skirt around him but he is ever there, between you and your goal, waiting where he knows you will appear. You must look inside yourself, for only there will you find the strength to challange this reflection of yourself, for really that is all that holds you back from what you can become. You must accept the chance of failure and know that this is the course you choose to take, then take it, secure in the knowledge that the treasure will be that much sweeter for the trial and that, even if you don't succeed, the mere possiblity of success and the glory of the prize made the attempt worthwhile. However, when you fail, for I assure you we all do, at one point or another, you must also know that you yourself are worthy, of that goal or any other. And that despite the fact that you could not attain this goal, an even greater one awaits you further on. You must look inside yourself and see your inner worth and know that nothing outside of you can make you different than you are if you do not wish it to be so. Conversely, you can learn from your mistakes, and that is the one defining skill of man, that, knowing we have failed, we can evaluate that failure and understand what went wrong, thereby to never make that same mistake again. How great a gift is that? To know, without a doubt, that you never again fail this way.. Take assurance in yourself and your abilities and skills, for the most important thing that you can know is that you are wonderful as you are, and can only get better. You have to choose to improve, but you can do it. All there is left is to try...
You can't fool me. I see you there, hovering with your foot in the door.. It's making sense to you, sucking you in....
~Dance like no one's watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like no one's listening,
Live like it's heaven on earth.~ -William Pukey
How better to voice belief in yourself and your abilities than as this man has done? I find it difficult to conjure a better representation, you? I am fond of poetry myself, but I find that the words themselves are what speak to me in this. The scant four lines barely contrive a poem, but they speak volumes on how one should live his life. (~his~ being used in the encompassing-all-of-humanity sense of course..) If you do not perform to the best of your abilities, unaffected by what you think others may decide you can or cannot do well before you do it, you will never be able to realize who you truely are and can be. Life is full of chances. People can warn you off from them, but ultimately, you must accept the possibility of failure and commit yourself to something before you can succeed. If you submit to the judgements others bring to bear on you and accept that as truth before you test it yourself you will never be able to know who you truely are. There are reasonable limits to everything, as in it's fairly likely you won't become CEO of Blizzard(tm) tomorrow. However, it is reasonable to assume that if you really wanted to, you could get a Computer Science degree and go work for them. You have to be flexible though, know your resources and roll with the punches. Start with what you know and pursue that which you wish to acquire. Nothing is truely beyond your reach if you're willing to do what it takes to get where you want to go.
Repeat after me, It's all making sense now...
Reality bites. Well, close...
Actually, life really is a box of chocolates, it's just that half of them are laced with cyanide.
Just kidding.
Sorry, it's that dang Scandinavian morbid humor jumping in again... wouldn't that be interesting though? You know, you have a major decision to make and so you go to City hall and they schedule you for a Chocolate-Box Assessment. You appear for your CBA and enter a room in which you are presented with a box of chocolates from which you must select one of which to partake. If you live, it's a good decision. (eg. You win.) If you don't it's a moot point. Kind of a really bad combination of the original lottery (Black spot, not big bucks...) and the sleazy guy who sold you those tarot cards... well, never mind. Just trust me, it would be a bad thing. That can be the end of the subject, okay? [I mean, come on, can you imagine what kind of scams would arise?] Wait.. I said I was done... [But think of the population control...] no, bad.. bad Leandra, bad... ... .. Okay. Now I'm done.
You know that had to come out though... didn't you? After all of this philosophy I've been spouting? The ability of man to succeed in life, the need to believe in yourself, that only you can change yourself for the better? They're wonderful messages, don't get me wrong... I just needed a little sarcasm to clear my head, that's all.... you understand.
Whew. I'm glad I got that out of my system. That almost got wierd for a second there.. (c:
Back to more serious ideas... A friend of mine got me to thinking yesterday on a subject I usually ignore in thought, at least unless I'm in a relationship. He didn't really mean to actually, it was just something he said as part of a story he was telling. A simple statement really, ~Everyone has a metaphor for dating.~ That's all, but I realized, I didn't have one. Needless to say I felt rather left out, even if I was both taken aback and amused by one that was related. But I digress.. this is my page after all, I am perfectly free to exploit my own thoughts and feelings here, but those of others shall remain out of harms way... Any way, I was thinking today and I came up with one, although I'm not sure I would call it a metaphor, more the story of my liffe as it regards to dating.. That sounds good. So..
The Story Of My Life As It Applies To Dating
(In a metaphorical sense..)
I find myself amidst a swarm of people, unorganized and raucous, loud. They scatter and then swirl about me as I seek among them. Many of them I dismiss on sight, cocky, mean-spirited, inconsistent, wrong. I catch a glimpse of what I seek, a spark in him I'm sure. Independence, assurance, solace, warmth.. and anger, no, not him. The spark has died, I quashed it, ruthlessly. Wrong. He was wrong. I move off, desolate. There is no one, not for me, they're all wrong, I make them wrong. No fault but mine. I seclude myself, thinking, here alone. I am fine here by myself, complete and in control. I am confident in myself, secure, life does go on. I pack all my emotions into other things, I survive. There is no one for me. I skirt the populous, the massive swarm and continue with my life. I forget what it can be with another. Quietly I go my way and then I catch a glimpse.. That spark. I can't ignore it, I try and still I fail. Something in him calls to me, connects to me. I hesitate. I dislike failure and I fear it, but surely the mere hope of this is worth any risk I make. I think still and convince myself that this cannot be wrong. Tentative I approach him... can he accept me [must start small] can he see just who I am? Can he enjoy my heart and mind? [must grow] Can he see this, does he know? I fret, I worry, I am my own torment. I'm sure I'm insufficient, that this man's worth more than me. I want to be near him but still I fear to come too close. Emotions make me frailer than ever I wish to be. And yet I must give in to them, sacrifice my solitude and simple sanctuary, open myself to him and wait while he judges me. I am apprehensive of my judgement, for it's possible to win. But if I fail I walk away, destined to start again.
The End.
Well not really, not yet anyhow. But endings are another subject...
I never said it was an easy road. The path of love is paved in tears and heartache...
Endings.
I told you endings were another subject, didn't I?
Endings are funny things. They're inextricably tied to beginnings even as they're opposites of one another. In fact, they can almost be substituted around without change. Kind of like with water, where you can get it so hot that it feels cold. (At least until the flesh starts melting, that's generally a good sign that it's not actually cold...) Doors would be the same way if the wall wasn't in the way. If it was just a doorway and a door and you could swing the door around the hinges in a circle then you could open and close the door all in one movement. You just open it and once you pass the half-way point you're now closing the door. You're not doing anything different, just the meaning of your movement changes. I find that fascinating. I'm not sure how closely that relates, but I thought I'd just throw it out on the table for you. Now then. Endings and beginnings.. I think I'll prove they don't exist, just for fun. [I mean, come on.. I got that nice big heading and everything... I gotta put it to use.]
So..
Why Endings and Beginnings Don't Exist.
Endings and beginnings are concepts that man has generated to give order and meaning to our lives. They're like time. Time is simply a convention of man. A convenience. So are endings and beginnings. At best their specifications are foggy... When did you start opening the door? Was is when you first pulled on the door knob? Was it when you first turned the doorknob? How about when you first touched the doorknob, since that would be entailed in turning the doorknob which, in turn, is entailed in the opening of the door? Specific beginnings are difficult to establish. Especially given the inherent ambiguity of the english language and it's interpretations. First you have to decide what specifically constitutes opening the door, and then what is specified as beginning of the action and then what that might be. Perhaps you began to open the door when you reached out to touch the doorknob? Or perhaps when your brain sent the impulse to your arm to move? Maybe when you though ~Perhaps I'll open that door..~? The course of events in life lends itself toward an ultimately continual blending and re-coalescing of actions and events so that one does not ever really begin or end but simply leads into another... Hence, no beginnings and no ends.
Ta da. However [me being the person that I am] I am loathe to leave things at that, so...
From that last point of logic one is lead to surmise that it is possible that there is no actual beginning or end at all. Period end of story, or rather, no end to it. For if there are no endings or beginnings in daily life then it stands to reason that there are no endings or beginnings in life period. How's that for a theory? What if the ~Big Bang~ wasn't the beginning of life but, like our door, the point at which the Universe was no longer expanding, but contracting? Or how about if it simply got so huge that it was small again? [I kind of had a neat idea of how that might work (ignoring well, just about all of the laws of physics) but I can't come up with anyway to explain it, so.. use your imagination...(c:] Barring that we can always revert to a more elementary question.. How big is the universe? Is it a set size? Or range maybe, they keep saying it's expanding, so it would make sense that the universe is not infinite, because infinite things cannot get bigger, but then what's beyond the universe? Surely it's expanding into something? It makes sense to me, I don't know..
Lemme know if you figure it out, okay?
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