Tuesday, May 03, 2005
my computer is dead. i am sitting in matt's room like a bum using his computer. i am not going to fix it yet.
when i was in elementary school, i was idealistic and unafraid. in school, there are examples of great men and women everywhere. every lesson in history, english, science, whatever provided another role model, another shining beacon of humanity. when you are young, you still believe that everyone is good and their intentions are pure. i was convinced that someday i could do great things as well. As you grow older and the lies you were taught as a child to shield you from the cold truth of reality are stripped away, you start to question whether your dreams for the future are possible, or even desirable. Everyday that passes seems to reveal another bit of reality that everyone else is trying to hide from you. The politicians who run your lives are corrupt and self-serving. Your teachers are drunks or pedophiles. Even the athletes you look up to are criminals and cheats. Every passing day fills you with more confusion, as you realize that the best example of morality you know is yourself, forcing you into contradictary roles as both teacher and student.
So where do you turn? Who can you trust when every word you hear rings hollow? How can you live with yourself when the path laid before you was blazed by forces you perceive to be evil and will turn you into one of the things you hate? How can you engage in conversation when you don't believe the other person is telling the truth, and you KNOW that you aren't telling the truth?
I am embarassed every day because of the lies I have told, and moreso because of the lies I won't be able to stop myself from telling in the future. Every day that I live trying to shield myself from the rotten truth surrounding me makes me feel evil and wrong. I can't live every day feeling like that. I shut it all away in the interest of self-preservation. I retreat from the world I distrust, silently hoping that someday it will collapse.
In this world, there is still something I trust. There is hope inside of me. There are the memories of that child who believed that the world was right and good, and that everyone lived together happily and harmoniously. That child still drives my starry-eyed optomism for the future. Not the future of the world, or anyone else, but my future, and the future of those like me who will find away to survive the chaos unscathed. Somehow this child has managed to survive in me, through all the bitterness and inner turmoil. I know I will survive it because my ideals have survived inside of me. I know there is hope because it still glows in me. That child has survived its journey from the comfortable shelter of complete and total ignorance into the world of reality, a journey that has transformed this pure being into me. Despite the systematic destruction of everything I thought I knew, that feeling of hope and blind optomism has survived in me, and I am afraid it will be snuffed out if I allow it back out into the world without protection. Instead of suppressing the feelings of imagination, joy and discovery, I suppress my need to be around those things I fear and do not trust.
Because despite all my critizisms of myself, no matter how many times I questions my motives or my feelings, I still am the best example of morality I have. I can't trust anyone else with something so important, especially when everything they say rings false in my ears. As long as I am continuing down my own path, I hold hope for myself and anyone else who might be struggling like me. Some day the giants of this world will return to the forefront. The fakes and the crooks will be exposed by the true greatness of man. In the end, A = A. What is, is. There can be no half truths, no conditions placed reality. Those who think otherwise will eventually destroy themselves and those around them. The madness will end in death, if nothing else. What I know, I have learned for myself. To claim that I know things I do not is destructive, and will lead to my demise. I am not the pure being that lived inside that child's head. I do not know when things are going to explode in my face, and my world is going to come crashing around my head as my lies (some even I am unaware of) unravel around me. I shield myself from the world yes, but I also shield the world from me as a constant acknowledgement to the fact that I am not infalliable, and that I still will be proven wrong, not without consequence. I fear the unwitting destruction of someone else at my hands as much as I fear my own destruction at the hands another.
But there is hope. In my mind, I still can see the world through the eyes of that child, the world as it should be. A world oversimplified yes, but a world filled good, and light, and deeds of reknown without peer. A time and place where things are done how they should be with pride, instead of begrudgingly against one's will and better judgement because, and I quote "that is just the way things are". To do one thing and believe another is madness. If a better way to accomplish a task is found, it should be a cause for celebration and congratulation, instead of causing people to scramble for excuses so they won't be blamed for the previous inadequacies. We live in fear, me more than others. Me to the point that I have locked myself in my house, accepting no visitors and taking no calls, working towards a singleminded purpose of self-improvement so there is at least one person i can trust to not compound the world's problems. Despite all of our efforts to destroy ourselves, there is someone who will survive it all unscathed. In the infinite spectrum of human actions and emotions, someone will make it through blind luck, if nothing else. Good will survive and expose the falsehood that drives the destructive forces. Right now, I can only trust it will be me. I am my hope for the humanity I know, the humanity that is currently confined inside my head.
I believe that there are many people out there I can someday trust to do the same thing, to survive the lies, just as soon as I can fully trust myself. I don't want to hold other people to my vision of morality. I just want other people to try to hold themselves to their own, like I do. I can't expect people to be right all the time, because I know that despite my best intentions, I am not always right, and will never always be right. My vision of the the world as it is and the world as it should be is inevitably an internal beast. There is no way to apply what I think and do to someone else. I am not a saint. I have done things that are considered evil, and I am sure I am seen to a great many people as a bad person, but despite our differences and despite our wide and varying beliefs and opinions, there is still an underlying sense of respect and decency towards other people that most of us can at least acknowledge, if not adhere to, an agreement that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that the world is not all viscious and brutal chaos. I just wish people would try a little harder sometimes, and remember why they struggle to keep moving forward in the first place: Hope of something better. Without hope, there is only the long slow wait for death.
when i was in elementary school, i was idealistic and unafraid. in school, there are examples of great men and women everywhere. every lesson in history, english, science, whatever provided another role model, another shining beacon of humanity. when you are young, you still believe that everyone is good and their intentions are pure. i was convinced that someday i could do great things as well. As you grow older and the lies you were taught as a child to shield you from the cold truth of reality are stripped away, you start to question whether your dreams for the future are possible, or even desirable. Everyday that passes seems to reveal another bit of reality that everyone else is trying to hide from you. The politicians who run your lives are corrupt and self-serving. Your teachers are drunks or pedophiles. Even the athletes you look up to are criminals and cheats. Every passing day fills you with more confusion, as you realize that the best example of morality you know is yourself, forcing you into contradictary roles as both teacher and student.
So where do you turn? Who can you trust when every word you hear rings hollow? How can you live with yourself when the path laid before you was blazed by forces you perceive to be evil and will turn you into one of the things you hate? How can you engage in conversation when you don't believe the other person is telling the truth, and you KNOW that you aren't telling the truth?
I am embarassed every day because of the lies I have told, and moreso because of the lies I won't be able to stop myself from telling in the future. Every day that I live trying to shield myself from the rotten truth surrounding me makes me feel evil and wrong. I can't live every day feeling like that. I shut it all away in the interest of self-preservation. I retreat from the world I distrust, silently hoping that someday it will collapse.
In this world, there is still something I trust. There is hope inside of me. There are the memories of that child who believed that the world was right and good, and that everyone lived together happily and harmoniously. That child still drives my starry-eyed optomism for the future. Not the future of the world, or anyone else, but my future, and the future of those like me who will find away to survive the chaos unscathed. Somehow this child has managed to survive in me, through all the bitterness and inner turmoil. I know I will survive it because my ideals have survived inside of me. I know there is hope because it still glows in me. That child has survived its journey from the comfortable shelter of complete and total ignorance into the world of reality, a journey that has transformed this pure being into me. Despite the systematic destruction of everything I thought I knew, that feeling of hope and blind optomism has survived in me, and I am afraid it will be snuffed out if I allow it back out into the world without protection. Instead of suppressing the feelings of imagination, joy and discovery, I suppress my need to be around those things I fear and do not trust.
Because despite all my critizisms of myself, no matter how many times I questions my motives or my feelings, I still am the best example of morality I have. I can't trust anyone else with something so important, especially when everything they say rings false in my ears. As long as I am continuing down my own path, I hold hope for myself and anyone else who might be struggling like me. Some day the giants of this world will return to the forefront. The fakes and the crooks will be exposed by the true greatness of man. In the end, A = A. What is, is. There can be no half truths, no conditions placed reality. Those who think otherwise will eventually destroy themselves and those around them. The madness will end in death, if nothing else. What I know, I have learned for myself. To claim that I know things I do not is destructive, and will lead to my demise. I am not the pure being that lived inside that child's head. I do not know when things are going to explode in my face, and my world is going to come crashing around my head as my lies (some even I am unaware of) unravel around me. I shield myself from the world yes, but I also shield the world from me as a constant acknowledgement to the fact that I am not infalliable, and that I still will be proven wrong, not without consequence. I fear the unwitting destruction of someone else at my hands as much as I fear my own destruction at the hands another.
But there is hope. In my mind, I still can see the world through the eyes of that child, the world as it should be. A world oversimplified yes, but a world filled good, and light, and deeds of reknown without peer. A time and place where things are done how they should be with pride, instead of begrudgingly against one's will and better judgement because, and I quote "that is just the way things are". To do one thing and believe another is madness. If a better way to accomplish a task is found, it should be a cause for celebration and congratulation, instead of causing people to scramble for excuses so they won't be blamed for the previous inadequacies. We live in fear, me more than others. Me to the point that I have locked myself in my house, accepting no visitors and taking no calls, working towards a singleminded purpose of self-improvement so there is at least one person i can trust to not compound the world's problems. Despite all of our efforts to destroy ourselves, there is someone who will survive it all unscathed. In the infinite spectrum of human actions and emotions, someone will make it through blind luck, if nothing else. Good will survive and expose the falsehood that drives the destructive forces. Right now, I can only trust it will be me. I am my hope for the humanity I know, the humanity that is currently confined inside my head.
I believe that there are many people out there I can someday trust to do the same thing, to survive the lies, just as soon as I can fully trust myself. I don't want to hold other people to my vision of morality. I just want other people to try to hold themselves to their own, like I do. I can't expect people to be right all the time, because I know that despite my best intentions, I am not always right, and will never always be right. My vision of the the world as it is and the world as it should be is inevitably an internal beast. There is no way to apply what I think and do to someone else. I am not a saint. I have done things that are considered evil, and I am sure I am seen to a great many people as a bad person, but despite our differences and despite our wide and varying beliefs and opinions, there is still an underlying sense of respect and decency towards other people that most of us can at least acknowledge, if not adhere to, an agreement that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that the world is not all viscious and brutal chaos. I just wish people would try a little harder sometimes, and remember why they struggle to keep moving forward in the first place: Hope of something better. Without hope, there is only the long slow wait for death.
