What keeps me up at night
This. Is. It.
We have one life, and this is it. Right here, right now. All of this and a few dozen more years is all we will ever experience before becoming nothing more than mere particles to be spread across earth, returning to its rightful place in the universe. I would be so fucking content with life if I were just another person who lived to start a family and be happy with being in love, but no...
I'm too fucking curious.
I stay up most nights and sit outside my room, staring at the stars, well aware they are not what they appear; distant planets, galaxies, nebula's... all exploding and emitting the light we see, millions and some, billions of years ago, only reaching our eyes at that very night, and I can't help but weep silently, having to live with the fact that I will never experience the wonders of the galactic realm. I will never experience the magnificence of setting foot upon another planet, or even live to see the human race colonise a habitable one.
I'll never live to interact with other intelligent life forms from distant planets. Instead... it's just us here on this dull planet with our lack of knowledge and understanding of the intricacies of the universe. I want to know more. I want to see more. I don't want to die yet... not yet. It's not fair...
Some nights
The other night, you wouldn't believe the dream I just had about you and me. I called you up, but we both agreed it's for the best that you didn't listen. For it's best we get our distance...
You
You might subconsciously want to burden me with the pain you felt, so let me tell you now: It's working. And it hurts. It hurts to know that the best I can do is try to create a beautiful future for you... with you, knowing full well you'll never forgive or forget the past.
Judicial system
Just a little philosophical session because why not? My posts have kinda derailed into the whole ranting about my feelings deal, and to be honest, though it helps me release pent up emotions, I don't particularly want (nor do I enjoy) this type of content on the internet. So like I mentioned at the start, I’m going to get philosophical in this post because I want people to think really hard about the topic of crime. I tried getting you guys to think about the idea of eternal nothingness after death, but only a few people managed to fathom (and comprehend) the idea that similar to pre-birth, those billions of years of nothingness before you came into existence, our death will inevitably come and we will experience that nothingness for all eternity; that is, (rationally) assuming there is no potential for ‘life after death’.
I want to start off by asking you, the reader, what defines a crime? Take a moment to think about this. What is crime? Surely the simplest and most common answer would be an act of breaking the law, but then we’re required to ask many more questions. Why are these laws in place? Who makes these laws? Why do laws constantly change; why is it that the nature of these laws and crimes, and what we consider to be criminal constantly change? And why is what is considered a crime in some places considered acceptable in others?
These are the kind of questions that challenge humanity and society.
If you want to break it down to the most comprehensible level, you can rationalise that any individual’s actions that harm members of society, negatively affect said society or impact on the functioning of society can be deemed as a crime. When you think about it at this level, it’s the ideal definition. The way we constitute a crime is by looking at an individual’s action and intention. You’ll get that a lot: act and intent. What was the intention of that action? Why did they do that? It’s very simple to comprehend that every action has an intention (with a small exception of those mentally ill and therefore unaware of the action and/or intention), but this is challenged when we think about victimless crimes.
If we look at victimless crimes, the action and intention are still there, and I’ll provide an example. Marijuana users—they don’t hurt anybody, and most people know there are no short term side effects on the consumption of marijuana (though I don’t encourage it, I’m not exactly condoning it). It’s even prescribed by doctors in some cases; but otherwise it’s illegal. Only because it’s a drug that alters our state of mind—it affects our psychological state. You’ll find that most drugs that affect our psychological wellbeing are illegal. It’s against the law. It’s a crime. But it’s a victimless crime; but nevertheless, it is a crime. And then there is alcohol. Alcohol is not illegal, though it may as well be, seeing as the effects of alcohol and alcohol abuse is much more devastating than marijuana use, or abuse for that matter. Think about how many times you’ve heard of cases where a husband has just gone home from a night of intense drinking and decides to beat the shit out of his wife and kids. Do you think a stoner would come home from a night of smoking pot and beat up his wife? Probably not (mainly because stoners don’t even leave their homes or have wives for that matter; but this is a hypothetical scenario, damnit!). But obviously it’s a dumb idea to place a prohibition on alcohol; remember how well that worked out?
So is it really a crime to smoke marijuana? The judicial system says yes, but if you think about it, there’s no real harm.
Is it a crime to drink alcohol? No. But the number of alcohol related violence is staggeringly, astronomically higher than marijuana related violence. I don’t think such a thing even exists.
Crime is a funny thing, and not to say that criminal activity is one to be taken lightly, but the fact that some acts are classified as criminal and some are perfectly legal when they ought not to be, is quite amusing to me. Humans are weird. That’s all I have to say about the topic.
To conclude, I want you think about this. Why is it that certain crimes have less weighing in some societies than in others? When we look at religion, they’ve never had a problem with killing. In fact, some religions promoted it! (You know which religions I’m talking about…) Yet they’ve had to amend those sections in their ‘holy books’ to fit societies evolving standards of what we consider righteous and what we consider barbaric. But if the law is constantly changing, and what we considered legal and acceptable just 500 years ago (the sanction and encouraging of conviction (it was really just slaughter, crucifixions and burning of supposed ‘witches’; and keep in mind over 60,000 were killed) is now completely insane; do you think something we consider legal today will be illegal tomorrow? (not literally 24 hours later, of course)
19/02/12
I will always love her, and if she asked me if we could be friends again I'd say yes in a heartbeat. But until then...
Lack of posts
5 days...
I have a post scheduled to be posted on the 20th (reason being I'm still working on it). Thanks for being patient with me, everybody.
Really?
In the first paragraph I write that I didn't want to express my feelings over my blog, but I do so throughout the post. The title is "Everybody lies". I thought it'd be obvious what I was trying to do. It's also trying to convey that I can't keep my feelings bottled inside anymore, hence why I said I was "broken". The content itself is all true, though I can't objectively say I didn't over exaggerate or underplay the events. So yes, I like playing around with my posts and adding in subtle forms of humor; personally I see nothing wrong with it, and if someone manages to pick up on it and gets a good laugh out of the irony, great, I'm a happy guy.
I don't mean to sound condescending or anything... I just don't want to get any more messages about it. I have something to get off my chest right now as well, so you can expect a new post by tonight
Everybody lies
After a lot of thought, the title 'Everybody lies' seemed most suitable for this post. This is how I feel:
I feel broken. My childhood friend-- my best friend... no, former best friend, left me about a year and a half ago. It's actually hard to pinpoint exactly when because we've always had an on and off type of friendship since I was never exactly the most thoughtful and selfless person in the world. I did a lot of things I regret, but I don't understand why we stopped talking over something so stupid. Perhaps it's my fault for not trying hard enough to get her back, but when she told me she was through, I took it to heart, and I tried my best to accept it. She was too good for me anyway. She was amazing. An excellent artist, highly intelligent, funny as hell... oh and she was very beautiful. Meanwhile there was me-- bland. There's nothing I can say to describe my personality in a positive light. I'm narcissistic and apathetic, emotionally detached from the world and as so many have put it "heartless".
I knew her since birth. I have very fond memories of our time as children, how we were so carefree and didn't fully grasp the idea of friendship and its importance. There were also a lot of bad memories, but when I try to think back to those exact memories, all I see is a giant blur. I've despised and denied my past for so long that I've completely erased it from my memories. All I know now is that I was an outcast as a child; I was overweight, and kids didn't want to play with me as much as they did with her. I was left out of a lot of activities not only because I wasn't accepted, but because I was also physically incapable of having a normal childhood. I spent most of my time on the computer or playing video games because the real world was so cruel. I established friendships with people online and faked everything about myself for fear that if they knew who they were really talking to, they too would leave me.
I've grown up a lot since then. I didn't turn out the way I wanted to, but I've lied to myself for so long that I've accepted these lies as reality. I tell myself that the reason why people don't want to be friends with me is because they know I won't make time for them, but really, I think I'm too mysterious for their liking; the fact that I don't open up to them is suspicious. I'm hiding who I am and what I've become because I'm lonely enough as it is. If you go back to my earlier post in January (I think it's my third), I say that I really only have 4 friends who genuinely want to hang out with me. Now I have none. Except now it's different. Now I don't care. I don't want friends because with friendship comes trust, and with trust comes lies. And lies end up with someone getting hurt.
I don't want to hurt anymore. It's a very cliche thing to say, but after I lost my friendship with her, I started to drift away from everybody. I figured if somebody who cheered me at my best and comforted me at my worst; somebody who knew everything about me... couldn't even stand the sight of me anymore, there would be no more light at the end of the tunnel.
To this day I tell myself the reason she left me was because of that one incident where we made plans, but I forgot I already had to do something, so I told her "next time", and when my plans for that day were cancelled, I figured I'd take it as a day off to just relax, but when I told her, she wouldn't have it. I had betrayed her.
I tell myself that this is the reason she left me, but I know she's too good of a person to leave for such a simple reason. There's so much more to it, and though I haven't spoken to her in a long time, I will see her again in 18 days.
I just hope she still thinks about me as much as I've thought about her, because I'm terrified of closing this chapter of my life for good. As much as I want closure, I'd still like to lie to myself into believing that the reason for her departure was not entirely on me-- that she had some issues of her own. And hypothetically speaking, if she tells me it isn't completely my fault, I still might not believe it... Everybody lies.
But as long as she's with me, I'm willing to lie to myself for the rest of my life.
Respect
If you could pick up on the connotations and implications in the above paragraph, you can infer that those we respect influence and shape our outlook on life-- the people we surround ourselves with, the way we think and act, our beliefs and ideologies, our behavior, all influenced by those we look up to. This is what I like to call the CHOICE part of respect, the more modern view of the idea of respect. To elaborate, previous generations would argue that you don't have a choice in the matter, and especially when it comes to parents or elders, you must hold respect for those above you.
Personally, I think it's all a load of horse shit. People need to EARN your respect. It should not be mandatory. But if you put yourself in their shoes, there is only one factor that I think influenced why they believed respect should be mandatory: knowledge. Before mass communication, what would be your source of knowledge? There was no internet, and the only way you'd obtain new knowledge is if you go to a library, and even then you'd have to know what you're looking for; so we can conclude that they respected their elders and parents because they were knowledgeable-- wise. Advice came only from your closest circle, so if you didn't respect somebody, do you think they'd share their wisdom with you? Probably not.
Now that we have a gargantuan archive of knowledge and wisdom known as the world wide web, our elders become almost obsolete. Anything and everything can found on the web, so now we've 'evolved' to beings who can CHOOSE who we want to respect because there is a wider spectrum of people who agree with our opinions and ideas. No more are we forced to assimilate for the sake of fear of alienation. Our elders don't see eye to eye on the younger generations with this, and the way they were raised, their stubbornness will most likely never allow them to accept this idea.
Let me tell you a story, and this is 100% accurate, because I want you, the reader, to understand what I'm trying to say and understand how different we are from our elders.
My brothers and I were discussing the idea of teaching a child obedience; their idea was that the child should respect their parents from the get-go, and when they misbehave, they should be beaten until they apologise and promise not to do it again. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how we break our children. Think about how bad it'll affect their psychological state as they grow up, how much fear they will hold to authoritative figures or speaking up against those who are of much higher status then they are. I told them those very words, and they shook it off, saying that it doesn't affect them mentally; and again this is the older generation speaking. They don't know anything about the human brain or the impact of specific actions on a persons psychological state and mental well-being, all they know is that they're older than you, so they can do whatever they want.
A more modern and conventional method now doesn't involve harsh beatings; the last thing we need is a bunch of adults too scared to speak up against overbearing, power-hungry authoritative figures who pick on the 'little guy' because he's too afraid to stand up for what he believes in. We need to teach the future generations to understand the difference between right and wrong, the difference between voicing your opinion and talking back. In order to do this, we need to raise them on the premise that in order to be respected, you need to show respect.
Extinguished
I remember when we agreed that we wouldn't care if people called us homosexuals or insulted us for saying 'I love you' because there's nothing wrong with it. There's nothing wrong with it. Cause if you really care for a brother, you wouldn't care what other people have to say about it. Life is short, and you never know if they'll be there tomorrow. So tell them you appreciate the bromance-- your sacred bond. It may seem stupid at first, but if you lost your best friend and didn't tell them you loved them and value your friendship, then you'll live with so much regret... so much guilt; it'll eat you up inside, and you won't be able to do anything about it.
If I could do it all again, I wouldn't have even talked to her. I WOULDN'T HAVE EVEN FUCKING LOOKED AT HER IF THAT'S WHAT IT WOULD'VE TOOK TO KEEP YOU BY MY SIDE... but that means nothing now. I have to live with the decisions I've made; and I deeply regret it so.
Overthinking
It's that feeling of going to bed at night, closing your eyes, as if waking up again was a given... as if it was promised. But it isn't, and in this lifetime, it will never be. And like most nights, the lack of a dream goes unnoticed; opening your eyes reveals a new day-- a new dawn. The time in between completely lost. It felt like a second, but it wasn't. You'd been asleep for several hours, but it is only until you've thought about it that you realise the period between shut eye and rising was nothing. Not white, not black; describing that nothingness is almost impossible. It's a void of nothing. And it's what we'll experience after life... for all eternity. Nothing at all, for all the years and centuries and millenniums of the unfolding of the events of the universe, you will only have lived in a small portion of it-- a speck of dust in the ever grand design of our existence and the existence of other living creatures. But you will take to the grave only what you've experienced and learned in your life time and the knowledge you've obtained of your ancestors-- you will take it all to the void of nothing. And it is unrelenting. It does not care who you are; you are nothing. Everything will continue, and you will not.
And the nerve of some people to say not to fear death.