The Man at the Door

I got called a philosopher yesterday from someone who reads my blogs. They said that I seem to look at all of the smallest details in life that seem to get overlooked. I feel that philosopher is a little much. More or less, just someone who wants to learn more about life. A journey, if you will, to find what life means, to get more of a clear understanding. I told them I'd be more of a Buddhist than a philosopher.

I've been exploring other's blogs this week. I found that a lot of people who blog dedicate everything to their religion, more specifically Christianity. I read blog after blog, bible verse after bible verse, and it honestly started to irritate me. Religion just doesn't seem like a legitimate reason to start a blog. I really felt tempted to post about my religion on my blog (let's just say it's far from Christianity), but refrained. I won't fall in to what everybody else thinks is cool. I'm not like that.

My life has drastically become more enjoyable in the past week. I read a quote from a friend of mine, and I felt it was on topic enough to share with you: "Fun is happiness. Nothing should ever be sadness and negativity." Personally, I think that goes along with my pursuit of the meaning of life. Fun. I experienced all of this first hand. Having people that care so much about you surround you and just to have an incredible time. Life has its ups and downs. You can never tell what way life is going to tell you to go. People say that you have the ability to control your life.

I find that statement unrealistic.

If we could control life, I'm sure that an incredible number of us wouldn't be in the position we were in. We wouldn't choose to lose certain people in our life, we wouldn't choose to be in a low-income portion of society, we wouldn't have people living in the streets impoverned and hungry and without a mother or a father. Life is as uncontrolable as the raging sea. No matter how much you fight the current, you will eventually be pulled in whatever direction the sea has planned for you. I wish it were different.

That's besides the point.

I learned other things, too, that I once thought to be impossible. Long ago, in a time of grave hardship, I had a dear friend of mine tell me these words that I still live by today: "When one door closes in life, another one opens." Lately, I have been experiencing that in full force. So many opportunities have been knocking at my door, and I've been answering. This is a gamble though. Not everything that comes through the door will aide us in our oddessy through life.

When we answer the door, a bright and happy man comes to the front step, dressed in fancy clothing and wearing a brilliant smile. We trust this man, even allow him into our own residence. This man can definitely be who he claims to be. His promises of fortune and wealth can follow through, impacting us in such a unfathomable way. At the same time, this man can wear a smile of lies. He could be after us, to decieve us and to take everything away from us. Our fortune. Our prosperity. Our happiness. Even our life at times. In this sense, sometimes the man at the door comes to us with a promise, and leaves us for dead. With nothing.

Maybe I'm too trusting.

Food For Thought

I've been thinking heavily about my last blog post. How happiness makes life beautiful, all about the beauty of life and what causes life to be seen as beautiful, as many see it. Unfortunately, I have witnessed many flaws in happiness being the beauty of life. In fact, the happiness that we spread amongst each other like a plague is the same force that drives many people into their own sadness. It's highly ironic. But it exists.

Human nature perplexes me.

The way we view life has several different vantage points, there is no one person that sees the world the same as another. Our minds just don't work the same way. We are all the same anatomy when it comes to the brain, but the contents of the brain are all so very unique. I picture the mind like a book. Every book ever made consists of the same materials: pages, a cover, and events within that tell the story of who we are. We all have our own books with our own stories. However, the books themselves are significantly different. Some are childrens books, others are Dan Brown novels that seem to have no end (or point, speaking of Dan Brown novels). The contents of one book might be of all of the incredible accomplishments that one has overcome, and others might contain the tragic tale of childhood and how loathsome the world is. Some books have damage to the cover, or some pages are ripped out.No one book is alike.

Anyways, I digress.

It seems that I share the similar story with a couple people. It seems that one's happiness affects me deeply. There's something so painful in losing someone, knowing that they are in a better place. A better situation. Away from everything we have to dwell with. Although comforting at times, those lingering memories break the foundations of the strongest buildings. Lately, I've been experiencing quite a bit of tragedy in my life. Suprise? Not to some. Seeing a lot of those memories around my life has been gradually strangling me, choking me under my own will. I've been lost for quite a while.

Yet, lately, I haven't been able to find those pages that tell the particular chapter of my tragedies. There is only empty space now from where the pages have been ripped out of their place. Now there is only a gap in my book.

I'm quite content with that.

Since those pages have been missing, I have been re-writing my whole entire book. My story is no longer that of tragedies. I can now say what I have accomplished, what I have gone through, and how I am drasticly different now than I was at that point in time. It's one of the greatest feelings you could ever feel. However, people are beginning to read my story. Now they seem to be traveling down the same road I was not too long ago.

I really wish people wouldn't follow my footsteps sometimes.

Just a thought.

Catch 22

Defenition of a Catch 22: an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response.

For example, my life is a Catch 22.

The story of my life is quite the interesting tale indeed. But hey, enough about that. Welcome to my blog, and most importantly, welcome to my mind. Every quandry of my mind is delved into in these blogs that I will write in the coming future. It's a chaotic place, and I can almost guarentee very little of it will make sense, some of it will make sense to others, and some of it will only make sense to me. But regardless, it should be something quite interesting. The only thing is, where do I begin.

A first blog post usually consists of "Hi, I'm (this person), (a whole bunch of bullshit about the person that no one cares about), thanks for reading my blog! :)". Yeah, not my forte, especially to everyone who knows me. Rather, I'd like to elaborate on some of the things that I've been thinking lately. There's a lot I've been observing that I think is really...fascinating, if that encompasses what I am trying to elaborate on. We'll see.

Lately, I've been looking for true beauty in life. What really...makes life beautiful. Every single person I ask produces a different result. Through my personal experiences, I have heard that nature makes life beautiful, that other people make life beautiful, that life even has no beauty at all. I have yet to find a concrete answer for my question. But yesterday, I think I might have found my answer.

I was riding as a passenger in a car, and at a traffic light I noticed something that really spoke to me. Two young girls (I'm assuming twins, both around 7 or 8) were walking with their mom on the sidewalk. I saw them smiling, and laughing, and the mother was so engaged in her children, the honest look in her eye really told me without words how much she has invested in her children. The two young girls showed how much the mother had done for her, and there was true happiness. All in the 18 seconds that I was at a traffic light.

This made me think for the rest of the car ride...what made that group so beautiful to look at? It makes me think of childhood memories. Everything that we feel as children. A nostalgic feeling, almost. I'm starting to believe that the beauty of life is happiness. Unity. But what brings us to find happiness? What spawns happiness? A simple question with an impossible answer. To be happy, you have to find something you enjoy. But to enjoy something, you have to be happy about it. Where does the happiness come from? A Catch 22.

Think about it.