Appreciation

          Appreciation is that rare emotion—growing rarer by the day—experienced by the few who actually look down at the ground beneath their feet instead of across the river to see that yes, the grass beneath them is also a very lush shade of green. It is the ability to understand that though there is always more in the world—more to be had, more to be seen, more to be found—that which is already at hand is also a gift because even when more may be better less is not necessarily worse. It is a wondrous thing to be content, for that is where the key to success lies, after all, who can call themselves successful if he is always looking at his neighbor and asking why he is not said neighbor? Sadly, most of the world prefers to have binoculars for eyes because there is something in them that feels the illogical urge to look up and across for something bigger, brighter, and more tantalizing.

The Mystery of the Greedy Justice Seeker

     It has recently come to my attention that a small, Chinese restaurant in the market near my house that has been around since I moved in has suddenly been forced to close. Surprised, I questioned further into the matter and have discovered a rather shocking story. Apparently, the owner of the restaurant hired an illegal immigrant several years ago, and while this is an illegal act the owner did it out of compassion to give the immigrant a place to work and earn money. Now, I do not currently which to delve into the lengthy topic of illegal immigration, so let us take that part of the story as is and move on. Several years after the hiring—otherwise known as the near and recent—the immigrant completed the application for citizenship and became an American citizen. Now, what would be the most logical thing for the assumed to be generally decent human race? Personally, I felt it would be to thank the store owners for their compassion in one’s time of need. I mean, they broke the law for you! But what did this immigrant do? He—I do not actually know the gender of this person but let us assume it is a he though it could just as easily be a she—turned around and sued the restaurant for hiring an illegal immigrant all those years ago, forcing them to lose so much money that they were forced to shut down. Never mind that he was the illegal immigrant in question and it was him they had broken the law to help. Now, the restaurant owners clearly have no defense because law is law and without it no country can survive, but can this human being who so easily turned around and bit his benefactors’ tails honestly claim to have acted in the name of justice? Personally, and this is just my opinion, the thought that he may consider himself ‘just’ sickens me. What is humanity coming to if they can so easily burn the ones who so kindly put food on their tables and roofs over their heads? Are we to become a race of traitors?

     Justice is a beautiful and wondrous thing which is currently in great shortage on our world, but it is those who use its banner for their own selfish desires that tarnish what little of it is left when it could have been pure. Laws are not to be broken, true, but neither is that bond of human kindness that is struggling to survive in our man eat man existence. And a sad day it would be when such petty acts by the few destroys one of the few pure qualities left to humanity.

Conversation

            A conversation is a series of reactions all spawned from a single phrase, word, image, idea, or some other incitement to speech between two or more parties. It is the fundamental form of communication through which living beings of all shapes and sizes grow to understand each individual’s quirks and habits along with their ways of thought and attitude. However, within the human race, there is a certain phenomenon that occurs in many conversations which render them all but useless for the purpose for which they were created. As humans have grown more and more complicated, making their lives more and more difficult with layers upon layers of values both moral and material, the factor of one’s ‘image’ has taken on an all important roll. And with that people have taken to using conversations not as a key to greater understanding but as a stepping stone towards promoting one’s own prowess and fame. As was stated in an article a friend of mine read recently, most people spend the majority of the time while someone else is speaking thinking not about what is being said but about what they themselves are going to say in return. In this manner they manage to completely overlook the fact that in order to actually converse one has to respond to what was previously said. Thus the act of speaking suddenly loses almost all of its previously glorious meaning for speech that is not heard might as well by wind blowing by the ears. It is, after all, the art of listening that really grants humanity the ability to grow.

Footsteps in the Wind

Through the world on silent feet

A feather on the wind

Ageless stars, flickering flames

We give the light what we can give

Clearer than the watered glass

The path ahead does shine

Winding roads and moonlit glades

A hope, a dream, a time

Out across the open fields

Down by pulsing ocean waves

Sung in rising winged song

Treasure of the passing days

Dusk comes in tides across the skies

Where light and shadows meld

Hidden eyes search the hills

For diamonds once they held

Lifted to the endless heights

From earth to sky to star

Journey that will never cease

One in a million gleaming shards

Only shadows will reveal

To end is not an end to know

Let not the passing eye forget

To see is more than sight alone

The wind is but a silent call

To reaches heretofore unseen

Another step, another hour
Another piece of an endless dream

Notes: Anyone want to guess what it means?

Romance

    Romance, the ideal of millions for which they search with all their hearts and souls, drawn on by their as yet still delusional belief that there is such a thing as perfection in the world, is a thing that calls to many but is solid and true for few. Embedded in its letters amidst velvet drapes and soft candlelight is the strange, human desire for something that will bind another to them, that will lead to eternal devotion and happiness for all time. From this is spawned the millions of books, movies, songs, plays, and more all circling around the one concept of romance—all drawing hordes of thirsty admirers to the storefronts and theaters, gluing their eyes to TV screens and turning simple human beings into rising, immortal stars. And yet…this ideal—this dream—is, for most at least, nothing but that.

          Look for example upon the story of Romeo and Juliet, the story that myriads have proclaimed a classic work of romance. The characters in this play have been used to describe those who are supposedly madly in love, and yet this thing they call love is nothing more than the love of how another looks—a standard that is sadly superior in most modern minds. Like those of our darkening world, these two met only briefly—a day, in their case—and decide in that vastly limited span of hours that they are so deeply in love that they must marry and will die if the other is not there to carry the burden of life with them for the rest of eternity. And yet Romeo, the supposed romantic, was pining similarly for another woman but earlier that day. This sudden morph of interests is the mark of the insincere who believe wholeheartedly in themselves. It is what has been taken to be love but is only a love for beauty, something that has been adopted without question by almost all who dwell in our own time.

          The need to create happiness through the eternal loyalty of another never considered the loyalty of the self, and thus this need is a sign of one’s own weakness and selfish desire because to leave one’s own happiness in the hands of another’s fate is to give up one’s own control of life and long that way for happiness. It is perhaps not true in all case, but there is always something more than the simple element of romance that is all most consider before leaping into these chaotic waters. It is folly to seek only for the flowers and the letters because candlelit dinners cannot last a lifetime.

          Those who promise it either do not understand the true rigors of dedicated life or are lying through their teeth.

Sarcasm

Sarcasm—the water that keeps our spirits alive and free of the droll chains of society. It is the remedy to that greatest enemy called boredom—or so it has become.

For example, if you had just had a terrible day and you sit down with your best friend and he or she asks you "How was your day?". You could be plain and save yourself some time by just replying with "It was terrible", in which case you will receive a sympathetic pat on the back and the world can leave you alone for some peace for a change. The only problem there of course is that you know said friend will probably give you a sympathetic pat then, being human and thus cursed with the human desire to hear of all the grizzly details, ask you why it was such a terrible day.

Thus a more elaborate answer is usually in order. Something along the lines of "It was grotesque. I missed my train then the next one was delayed so I was late for work for the umpteenth time and my boss got mad at me and I just might be fired. I didn't have breakfast, lunch was rushed, and dinner looks like a bowl of cold soup". Thus you have satisfied your friend's—nosy and sometimes irritating but endearing all the same—curiosity and everything is well. Only now you have reminded yourself of exactly why it was such a terrible day, making it all the worse.

Therefore, one can only turn to the delightful term of which we have all grown so fond of—sarcasm. All we really want to say is "Oh, it was absolutely wonderful", with so much insincerity packed into the word that even a deaf man couldn't possibly believe a single word of it. Then you can go on to tell them everything you have kept pent up inside your head all day.  "My alarm clock decided to die on me at the most convenient of times, as usual, and the train pulled out just as I was stepping onto the platform. Then some giant rat or something equally mundane made its way onto the tracks and the next train ran right over it, somehow managing to lose that one wheel that has been loose for only the last year and a half. Then of course they had to fix it and it would just have to be the only train going my way. By the time I reached the office my boss had a face like a ripe tomato and I could have sworn there was steam pouring from his ears. He told me it was the nineteenth time I had been late these last wo weeks, which of course is more than is humanly possible, not to mention polite, thus if 'you don't pull yourself together, you could lose something you really need at the moment', a.k.a. a job. Then of course you run off to work because duh that's not happening anytime soon. The papers just had to have piled up three feet high by then and I had maybe half a second to breathe before they swallowed me whole. I could only manage to extract myself from their strangling hold long enough to swallow that disgusting, pitch black brew they call office coffee and something hard and chunky I might have heard was a biscuit but really couldn't have been anything quite so civilized before I was drowning all over again. By the time I could decently leave without endangering my career—when my boss had finally left the building and was no longer breathing down my neck in anticipation—the last train had already gone and, what do you know, I have to walk the two and a half miles back home, only to discover now that the electricity is out and all I have that's edible is this beautiful bowl of cold, slimy, two-day old noodles that'll probably make me sick before the night is out, meaning it'll just be a repeat process tomorrow only with an upset stomach for a crowning touch."

And that, of course, is a far more satisfying rant and will leave you feeling far more accomplished than you have in years.

Credit Hunters

            The instinct of survival is perhaps the single, overriding instinct shared by all living creatures. However, in the so-called ‘advanced’ world in which we now live this instinct has been provided with a life so complex that finding the ‘path to survival’ is all but indistinguishable. Thus, for one reason or another, the general outlet chosen by most has become that of the search for status for—as stated by Existence—one can only truly be defined by the perception of others and, in effect, one’s self. In this manner we charge to work or school every morning, seeking to be the best and the most outstanding—the one who is recognized, the one who is admired, and, above all else, the one who is better.

            This mad dash for recognition often leads to ripples of discontent as people look around and wonder why someone may have something they do not. If one was, per say, to take a job one morning, promised ten dollars for the day’s work, one may go happily to work with the prospect of earning. However, if another worker was to arrive at noon, accept the same job for the day, and still be rewarded with the same ten dollars for the half day’s work the one who had been working all day would feel an immediate surge of discontent. “Why am I working more and yet we’re being paid the same?” will run through said first worker’s mind, and the thought will coil up inside his stomach and gnaw away at him until he is a seething mass of envy who can think of naught but how ‘unfair’ the whole affair was. And yet, if the first worker were to stop and think, what business is it of his if this other worker was getting paid the same amount for less time? He himself is still being paid is he not? And perhaps both workers had been unemployed earlier that day. The first man had the benefit of knowing the whole day that he had ten dollars to look forward to at the end while the second, who arrived half the day later, spent his entire morning suffering the agonies of uncertainty as to whether or not he would be able to fill his belly that night. In the end, who is truly more fortunate? Personally, a whole day of good, solid work without anxieties over the possible lack of later nourishment is far more worthwhile than hours of agonized concerns.

            But of course that is a case of living necessities, and surely of little relation to the everyday office and classroom battle for recognition is it not? Perhaps, perhaps not.

            Let us say that here you are, assigned a new and highly important project. You know you are a good worker and it is only natural that every person want this fact to be seen and acknowledged by one’s superiors—yet there is only one lead role. Many—and this is a rather large portion of the human population—would seek to take that post so as to be able to gain the credit, otherwise known as bragging rights. However, humanity being what it is, many of one’s teammates may be inclined towards laziness—if they don’t finish the work, you will, so why do they have to worry? Thus, even if you had not taken that lead role and were not recognized for it, you may find yourself carrying most of a very large burden only to watch as your fellow—not so helpful—teammate is given a clap on the back and hearty congratulations. “How is this fair?” you would wonder, and—in reality—it isn’t. And yet…what is recognition anyway? True, it is always nice to know that you are appreciated, but is it worth fighting over it? After all, the pursuing of it may very well cause that unavoidable hatred between rivals—or ‘friends’ who feel betrayed by one’s insistence on pointing out to superiors their lack of efficiency. Instead it would perhaps be more prudent to note that these people—desperate as they are to garner favor—are the very epitome of lacking confidence. All one really needs after all is one’s own capabilities, for that is the only time when one can be truly content.

            Thus, instead of wondering why it’s someone else who keeps getting the big jobs and the applause, one should be confident in one’s own abilities and watch those who are not with a margin of sympathy. On the one hand one would not have to bear the full brunt of the pressure, and on the other one can be certain in the knowledge that—if the chosen truly cannot hold up his or her end of the work—one is completely able to compensate for it. And, if one is inclined, one can even take a bit of pleasure from the knowledge that, while these others scramble in frantic circles trying to figure out how a thing should be done, one already knows how and is thus a step ahead. There is no need to feel slighted or angered by those so insecure as to be desperate for credit. It is, after all, only human.

Existence

            Existence is an ambiguous term, for what does it mean to exist? It is said that it is simply so—you exist, it is a fact—but how can one truly deem one’s self as existing? Could we not each be but a figment of imagination? A illusion in some whimsical mind?

            Thus it is that humanity as a whole relies upon the presence of other forces—such as their fellow men—in order to define themselves, for it is only through the presence of an influence and a subject upon which the influence can act that existence can become defined, as without it there is no measure by which to decide where one thing might end or begin. The perception of those around us give us a shape, a purpose, a place, and—to a certain degree—a fate as well. After all, one may call another ‘friend’ but there would be no ‘friendship’ without that reciprocating label placed upon the giver—and yet to give the view of friendship is in itself a mark by which one defines another or is defined by another (“Oh he is my friend” is in effect “Oh so he is your friend” for every mind to which the thought is presented). This intricate web is something that cannot be escaped, and thus in every human being there can be found a desire, varying in degree depending upon the soul in question, to seek the higher opinion of one’s self through the eyes of another. It is, after all, the only way most people can find to give themselves that sense of accomplishment and higher standing—it is a thing that must be given.

            And yet we still have those who believe firmly in judging one’s self only according to one’s own standards, codes, and goals—personally, I am more inclined to be of this ilk—but is this truly a separation of one’s being from the influence of others? After some contemplation I have come to find that this must not be so. After all, is not the very wish to not define one’s self through others a mark of the influence of others?

            In the end, there is no such thing as a separation of one’s being from that of others, for even the absence of a presence in one’s immediate vicinity is an effect enacted by said presence. Existence is, after all, only a collection of perceptions, and without the presence of more than one force there can be no such perception as there is no measurement. We are only what the world makes of us, and the world is only what we make of it—like how existence is only as real as we make it out to be and we are only as real as those who exist around us see us as being. Thus we have created fate, a web of expectations, beliefs, labels, duties, and desires all given to us by the world and that we too give back to that very world in an impossible yet undeniable balance.

Tripwire of Entertainment

Spawned by my mortification upon discovering that—with the crash of my computer—I was reduced completely to a purposeless zombie who spent an entire afternoon in front of a TV screen.

            There is something about humanity that craves entertainment, or so I have come to believe, for it is really the only plausible reason for the way society seems to have centered itself around said department. People talk about celebrities, debate the personal lives of celebrities—something one would think was rather lacking in the worthiness of interest, and even dream about celebrities! Just imagine—or perhaps look, since it’s not really imagination anymore, the majority of the human population are far more likely to know who the newest pop star is than who their own president is! Now tell me, is this not a sorry fact indeed? To think that to most who walk this earth the life and faring of some random human being who has managed to gain greatness through the providing of time-consumption for those who cannot entertain themselves is more important and ‘impacting’ than the leaders of their countries…

            Absolutely amazing.

            Thus, though there are indeed many in the entertainment department whose dedication and talent are worthy of acknowledgment and admiration, I must still stand for the belief that humanity on a whole needs to get a life. Entertainment is a thing to help pass the time and enrich one’s life when one is tired of work—not a thing to cultivate one’s daily schedule and life around. It is, after all, only in active pursuit that one can truly enrich one’s own life and gain personal fulfillment [the stars had to pursue their dreams too], and sitting clued to a couch or a radio is not in any way the first step to action.

College Fever

            Through my observations of the society around me, I have discovered that there is one particular year of the student’s life that is fraught with an irrepressible and often highly stressful anxiety known as college. Coming on the heels of the purportedly busiest year of a student’s life, it is a concern that cannot be avoided, for despite the resolutions made by many not to worry about it there is always that part deep down that is worrying—and everyone knows it. One has to wonder really at the strength of this one, little event of life, for in the end it really is one that—one event—and if one is truly determined to learn it does not really matter which school one ends up in. A good student will be good in any school.

            Or so the philosophy goes…

            But somewhere deep down everyone believes it does matter—it makes all the difference! And don’t anyone dare say otherwise!

            What, I must ask, is the world coming to?

            I see students panicking over the thought of not being accepted to a ‘name brand’ school. I see students comparing the number of schools they are accepted to. I see students in depression upon the receiving of rejection letters—a whole month of depression! It all just seems so…redundant somehow.

            In short, anxiety over college is a disease—students catch it from high school seniors near the end of their junior year, sometimes earlier, and it gets worse and worse until the letter comes, in which case it is either cured or converted to an even worse state known as depression.

            What is the world coming to?