ianua

it seems that confusion and deception are the names of the game, with the game being life.

sometimes it looks as if hope is all lost and certain scenarios just don't exist in our reality. it is a sure thing that something will NOT happen. you've resigned your heart to give up all hope and try to start moving on.

but then one single event contradicts everything you tell yourself and then you are sent back to square 1, starting the whole damn cycle over again.

is this just a product of dreaming too much? spending far too many hours thinking about the endless possibilities that the future holds? maybe it's because of the passive response one takes as an approach to life. if we are not the captains of our lives, steering it on course then any strong wind will blow us where it may.

but i don't know whether i want to be the one that closes the door. i like to keep every door of opportunity open just in case. maybe that's a bad thing because it will feed into my delusions about life. i feel like there have been doors that i've accidentally let go of and they can never be opened again. maybe other doors are just temporarily closed, but after awhile you tend to lose track of them and you can't tell the difference between the locked doors and them.

this all sounds so convoluted and ambiguous. i guess that's just how my mind has been operating lately. i have all these questions to ask and no one to ask them to. sometimes i feel like a prisoner amongst my own thoughts.

consilium

every year starts with the good-intentioned "new year's resolution". every year ends with thoughts of how one could have done a better job of accomplishing said resolution, what went wrong, and how to proceed for next year in order to avoid repeating utter failure once more. such a vicious cycle needs a break.

what if, instead, we throw down this malicious game of inevitable lost conquests and actually try instead for some resolve within our selves and our lives? it would seem that most times, this is essentially what our laundry lists of self-alterations are missing. we make resolutions without actually having any resolve to see them finished to the end of days. ironic, hmm?

i guess i am just thinking about this because of all the changes happening around me. with a coinciding new year rolling along at the same time, this could be a way to start over, start fresh. i so want this. i don't want to be stuck in the same old rut that i've been in for the past few months. it's been a cage for my soul, trapping all creativity or passion/drive for living life. i used to hope for a great many things. now i'm just tired of everything.

or maybe i should remember to live the life that was so graciously given to me. i should open my eyes and see the beauty of the world before me. what's so bad about my life? nothing that really matters. why can't i see that? why can't i move past my own insignificance and work towards something that could really matter in the world? it's possible that my own vanity and pride stand in the way, but i really don't think that they are strong enough to sustain any long-lived obstacle in my path towards spiritual enlightenment. who am i to judge this though? all i am is a meager human being looking for her place in the world.

creating resolutions? no. building resolve? yes, but how to do it successfully?

creatio

i went to a physics colloquium a couple of weeks ago and it was entitled, "is the world out of tune?" nothing but this statement has stuck with me from that colloquium. it was a cosmology talk so most of it was probably over my head anyway. but back to the world being out of tune. is it? wouldn't this mere suggestion of the world being tuned demand that there is a great tuner out there? a tuner of such severe brilliance to allow creation itself to exist? no one except God could take this title.

this begs to ask the question: are cosmologists actually theists?

i watched this interesting debate a few nights ago that took place at king's college (nyc) and was broadcasted on book tv. d`souza brought some interesting opinions/thoughts to the table. he tells us that the compassion in this world only exists because of the compassion that Jesus showed us while he was here on earth. the instinctual desire to help a neighbor in need isn't ingrained on our dna, but was ingrained on our souls by the good of Jesus. it makes me wonder how the world existed before Jesus came to repair it. how did the good samaritan survive in a world lacking basic human compassion?

[interrupted thought]

vide caelum

sometimes i find myself looking to the sky. whenever i am wondering about life or concentrating very hard on a thought, i look up.

yes, the observable sky above us is pretty fantastical, but i don't have to be an astronomer (which i am not) nor do i have to know anything about astrophysics (which i don't) to come up with that conclusion. we could look at it from a scientific point of view and analyze all the things happening in the sky, past that, in space, and possibly further beyond. what would be the point in that kind of depth when the sky we look towards isn't one that you can readily visualize? it isn't obtainable like some mere fact. the sky represents much more to us than what we might expect at first glance. in all its vastness, the sky could draw us in much like the ocean draws us in. that "oceanic feeling" freud describes could also be said for the sky. clouds floating by, the smooth transitions between shades of blue, and other observations, beg us to slow our lives down a little and to enjoy our surroundings a bit before everything changes. the metaphysical benefits that the sky holds for us can be endless.

and i am not talking about looking at the sky, seeing a bunny shaped cloud, and then recalling that you lost a bunny as a child therefore the universe must be telling you that you need to reconnect with your child-like innocence once lost so very long ago. that's all nice and prettily packaged, but unfortunately it's not the way i was taking this examination.

there is just something unexplainable about gazing at the sky above that makes us journey back to the past, forwards to the future, and anywhere else that doesn't seem to be the present.

if you gaze too long at the sky, when you look back to the earth, everything is hazy and blurry. your eyes need a few seconds to refocus from what was above to what stands before you.

[interrupted thought]

verba

if we constantly give everything of ourselves in all that we do,
we will never have to face regret.
we must give with no expectations of receiving anything in return.
we must never lose hope, never worry about things we can't control.
we have to learn that letting go doesn't necessarily mean giving up.
we live in today, not yesterday. things happen,
then we move on to the new tomorrow.

above all, we make mistakes, we learn, we grow, we change.

palpebrae

i was just thinking about this phrase, "close your eyes." it really makes no sense. when we close our "eyelids", we are still looking or seeing. we are just focused on the backside of the eyelids.

what if we had no eyelids? we would be constantly watching the world around us. we would never be able to take a break from the pull of life. we would be able to see everything beautiful in life and everything awful in life. we wouldn't be able to turn away from things of which we are afraid or things that we find to be horrific. there would be no curtain pulled over our vision to the atrocities of daily life. we would have to face them head on.

volo

sometimes i wonder why things happen in life. maybe it's a part of our destiny and the truth of its purpose is just hidden from us. maybe there is no "fated" reason for certain events in our lives but the justification comes from some previous action that we did and now we are either punished or pleasured by its outcome.

my life must be under the influence of the latter interpretation but with one minor adjustment: my actions, no matter what they are, seem to always end adversely. maybe it's a curse. maybe it's.....nope nothing else can explain it. i'm definitely cursed.

maybe that's it. it's not a fact of whether some event has a reason or not, but whether the person, whose life is affected by the event, is cursed. it's no fun to be cursed by life, to find no joy in anything that you do, even when there is plenty of things going on that you should be ecstatic about. and why should you be ecstatic, since sooner or later, whatever joy derived from that one occasion will only mean utter misery in the next one.

and yet there is still one thing, one single contrivance that allows someone so cursed in life to push forward. the obvious choice would be hope. hope in the future for a time when one action doesn't cause misfortune later on. hope in the possibility that something so unrealistic may actually come true.

but hope just gives us the false notion that at some predetermined time, everything in our lives will be okay and better than they are now. but it never happens. our lives never get better. they may change and appear different than what they used to look like, but underneath it all, we are still cursed. once we realize that hope has failed us, we tend to die a little more on the inside.

we can pretend as much as we want that life is better and happy and satisfying. but it never truly is. it is always missing something. that one thing that would fix it, that would change it for the better and would make hope not a liar anymore. my mom believes (as do others) that this missing piece is god and religion. doctors who like to over medicate the american population tend to believe that there is some kind of chemical imbalance that medication (primarily anti-depressants) can fix.

i don't know what i want to believe. maybe this missing piece in our lives is fixed when we fall in love. some random person, with whom we fall in love, brings it with them and shares the missing piece with us, making us whole again. but what does this leave for the loveless? that they will constantly feel less than whole and remain cursed in life until love finds them or until they find love? what if we have written love out of our story, let love go? does that mean that we will never gain fulfillment? somehow this seems all too likely.

what if this missing piece is broken or doesn't even exist. maybe we are meant to wander through life, searching for that missing piece in every aspect of what we do...

or the missing piece may not be missing at all. we may only perceive it to be gone but it's really there. the best way i can think of describing it is a quote from the character tohru honda of "fruits basket":

"the part of a person that's remarkable is like the umeboshi on the back of a rice ball. all around the world, there are different colors, shapes, and flavors, but because it's stuck to the back, they might not be able to see their precious umeboshi. 'i'm not special,' each one would think, 'just plain ole rice.' even though that's not true, and there is an umeboshi on the back. the reason people get jealous of one another is because they can see the umeboshi on other people's backs. even now, someone might be feeling envious of something you don't recognize in yourself."