Life and Death

Life is so fragile, so precious.  We take for granted the time we have with the ones we love and it is not until they are gone that we truly realize how much time we have wasted.  We live, we die.  Such a strange life it is.

Why do we live? What is the purpose of this thing?  Are we just self-replicating life forms whose only reason for being alive is a random coincidence?  Can we really accept that all we are is just the luck of the draw in a universe filled with random acts?  Or is there a purpose to it?  Is there a reason we exist?   I have a hard time believing and I hope you do as well that this all random and coincidental. 

I think to some the idea that we go to our rest and there is no debt or reward after this life can be comforting.  To others this notion can be terrifying.  The thought of just blinking out of existence can be horrifying.  I must confess that in a point in my life the thought of just ceasing to exist was not a thought I could bear to have enter my mind.

We all experience our own mortality at some point in our life, whether it is in childhood or adulthood at some point we have the epiphany that we are going to die and there is no avoiding it, this realization affects the remainder of our life and helps shape the person we are and the person we will become.  Many times it is not until we are confronted directly with death by the passing of a dear relative, a husband or wife, a sister or brother, that we truly understand the finality of the thing that is death.

Recently my sister lost her husband.  I cannot imagine the grief and powerlessness she must be feeling right now.  It is an experience we all my face at some point.  It is the human condition in life that we must experience loss. Whether it come early or late it is an experience that none of us wants but one we all must endure.  When it is my turn I only hope I have enough courage and strength to make it through.

Sony

I have to say the disappointment I feel at Sony backing down to terroristic threats is a sad day to be an American, I thought the admittance of the CIA torture program was low enough but we seem as a nation to continue to bow to threats from foreign influences.  Scraping the bottom of the barrel seems to be the new practice of the American people.  If it is not the increasing aggression of the police state, the erosion of our god given rights, or the greed of corporate entities our nation is tearing itself apart with self-censorship.  When did we become a nation controlled by fear and cowardice?  When did we stop believing in the rights we were granted by the creator and instead give them up for some sense of false security?

                We as a nation have lost our way, we have lost the rebel mentality that led this nation to be the most accomplished nation in the history of the world.  Our spirit and ingenuity led the world and inspired millions to succeed in advancing the human race by thousands of years in a few short decades.  Now we seem to lead the pack in fear mongering and apologies.  We bow to any foreign threat and treat our own citizens as the enemy.  Is this where we have elevated ourselves to?  We allow the rich and powerful to dictate to the poorest and weakest of our citizens.  Power in this country is in the hands of those least deserving of that power.

                I would like to see a world where judgment is brought to bear on those that would use their power to take advantage of those less fortunate than themselves.  I feel we are standing at the precipice of a new golden age where humanity will advance beyond the lust for greed and power and embrace the desire for knowledge.  We will evolve one day, I hope that day will come while I still walk this earth.

Thought

               We live and we breathe, the life we are given is a gift by the universe itself, yet we have become so jaded that life itself means almost nothing to us.  I sometimes wonder if people really believe this is the only life we live, then why are they so careless with life itself.  Religion is also a question, because if you truly believe in your religion then how can you commit sin.  I submit a third alternative that may explain peoples mindset,  I think that unconsciously we know that none of these things are true and that we understand that life is just a state of mind.  I think that in the end we know there will be consequences and rewards for our actions on earth.  We instinctively know and comprehend that life is not the finality of existence and death is merely the transition between two lives.  We have spent so much time as a species attempting to prove what happens after death that we seem to have forgotten to ask the question of why we live.  Are we just random acts of meaningless life in the wide expanse of the universe? Or are we something more wondrous? 

                There comes a time in a person’s life when they begin to ask these questions, it may be when you are a child and full of wonder, or as an adult contemplating your future, or as an elder in fear of your own mortality in the rapid onset of frailty.  At some point we all ask these questions, questions I think we instinctively know the answers to.

                In Egyptian mythology when one dies the deceased’s heart is weighed on a great scale to determine their actions if their heart was heavy with misdeeds Ammit the Gobbler would eat their hearts.  I feel instinctively we know we will be held accountable for our actions but we also know there is no eternal pit of fire or heavenly chorus awaiting us.  I would like to think we all prescribe to the philosophy that what we do in life follows us to death and it is that mindset that will determine what happens after that.  I think if our heart is heavy with misdeed we will be made to learn from those misdeeds by experiencing the sorrow we inflicted on other, as with good deeds we will experience the joy we made others feel.  I do not think some all-powerful force or god is what deals out these punishment or rewards.  I think it is ourselves who met this out.  Inside we instinctively know right from wrong, with this we know if we are committing sins or kindness.  With this knowledge we decide our own fates when we pass beyond this realm.

                It is on us to make the most of this life and do the most good for what we do to others will be visited back upon us.  Or better said, what we do to others we do to ourselves.

Hope

                Do I have hope for this world?  I do not know.  It is a sad suggestion that we are a hopeless species.  I find us so young, we are just emerging from the pool and looking to the heavens for answers.  Should we instead be looking within?  I am haunted by the images I am forced to see, brother killing brother, husband killing wife and so on until the line of misdeeds disappears over the horizon.  What is this world and how have we come to be the dominant species that destroys everything in its wake.  Like a virus.  

                We have such beauty within us, if we could only grasp it.  We have the power of the universe at our fingertips yet we allow greed and anger to rule us.  We make justifications for our evil, we try to convince ourselves it is necessary.  There is no such thing as a necessary evil, it is all evil.  I wonder, will we grow out of our infancy?

                I want to see a world where the driving force isn’t money or power, but curiosity and innovation.  I want to see a world where scientific breakthroughs are heralded not buried.  Where genius is celebrated not violence.  A world where we solve our problems through discussion not fists.  Is this world a fools dream?  Is hope a fools dream?

                My hope is that this is just a phase.  The birth pains of an emerging society on the road to peace.  All I see in history is repetition, we can read the history but we do not learn from it.  Why?  I hope that one day we look back on this time with disgust, that in this distant future we care for our fellow man.  We feed the poor not exploit them.

                These thoughts are a jumbled mess, but is that not the world we live in?  A quagmire of nonsense strung together by our justifications?  I have to ask myself each day, what are my justification for the things I do?  We have to justify everything so we do not go insane with guilt.  If we stop for just one moment and think about the things we have done without justifying it I think we would understand how truly ugly we can be.  There is no justification for an ugly deed, once we can comprehend that, learn from that, we can move on to the next step in our evolution.

Sleep My Child

Sleep my child, dream of a world refined by wisdom.  Sleep and dream, dream.

I wish you all the love and joy that can be wished upon one whom you love.  I love you.  You are the fruit of my loins, the miracle of your mother’s womb.  I am forever indebted to you for the happiness that you have brought.  I have been disarmed by your beauty.  My masculinity decimated by your smile, I replicate your happy sounds and I am a babe again.

I am your father, I am your protector, your teacher, your friend.  I have dedicated my life to your development, your happiness.  I am there when you cry, I hug you.  I tell you are safe.  I tell you this sadness is but a momentary thing, a passing emotion before joy returns.

What you become depends on the example your mother and I set, if you know only wisdom, joy and thoughtfulness, it is our hope you will follow these things and become the examples we have set.  We will be there for you always, your ups and downs, trials and tribulations, joys and sadness, anger and misery are ours to share with you.  You will never be alone.

As you dream, dream of happiness.  Dream of the world you want.

Responsibility

What is this world I have found myself in?  Every day I foolishly read the news knowing I will lose faith by what I read, yet I read anyway. Why?  I have to ask myself why I allow this into my life, but then I wonder.  To ignore the problems of the world, would I just be burying my head in the sand?  Would I be hiding from a world in need?  Or would I be telling the world, I will not let you in.  I will not allow you to diminish my hope, my faith in humanities future.

I regret.  Why?  Because there is so much I should have done early on, so much wasted time, so many lazy days.  I regret because I buried my head in the sand and did not act as I should have.  I did not stand up and join the chorus of other voice seeking to end the insanity they are presented with every day.  If a person ignores the truth of the world then they are smart enough to see and understand that truth, if they do nothing, they have squandered their gift.  If you see the world as it truly is, it is then your responsibility to try and add some sanity to the world you see.  Every day we all have a choice, whether to go left or right, whether to do good or evil.  Every day we are presented with choices and each choice we make affect the world we live in.  We have to decide whether or not we want to make a positive choice or a negative one.

I often wonder about the effects a single individual can have on the world as a whole, one individual person seems so small when compared to the vast ocean of humans that are out there.  But then I think of people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. And yes even Hitler, I think how these individual people influenced the masses in such a way as to spark a flurry of change in the world.  Then I think of the more ethereal men and women such as Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Satan, Athena, and Venus.  These are figures that have been cast into a supernatural and deity spectrum, but I think they must have been based on something more worldly.  The true stories must have had such an impact as to thrust these people into a more elevated mythos.  These beings influenced millions of individual minds over the millennia.  I wonder what these people would think of how their words have been twisted and diluted to serve the interests of a few.  There are good and evil people in history but they all have left a profound mark o the development and evolution of our species.  It is our responsibility as each successive generation to remember these words and not distort them for our own personal gain, it is the responsibility of the people who comprehend these words to bring about a positive change for future generations.

Each of us has a choice and a responsibility, we have a choice to do right or wrong, we have a responsibility to do right.  For only through our deeds and our thoughts can we affect real change throughout the world.  Let us begin anew, let us strive for more, let us love, let us live, let us hold those responsible who seek to undermine the progress and truth of humanity.  Feed the poor, love the rich, they are people too.  We each have a choice to escape the role that has been set for us and acknowledge there is another path we each can take.  Let us take the more difficult path, let us become better human, let us progress our species.