Saturday, March 12, 2005

Hey you, dont help them to bury the light. Don't give in without a fight.

I was surfing the web today and I found something interesting called "The Death Clock." What you do is type in some information about yourself like gender, birthday, BMI, smoker/nonsmoker, like that, and it tells you when you're going to die. On the homepage they had this little thing that said.

"Welcome to the Death Clock(TM),
the Internet's friendly reminder that life is slipping away... second by second.
Like the hourglass of the Net, the Death Clock will remind you just how short life is."

Bull shit.
Do we really need a stupid, unfeeling, unknowing computer program to remind us how short life is? We all know already. Frankly it pissed me off, but it got me thinking. How many of us let opportunities pass us by? Maybe we're afraid of change, maybe we're afraid of consequences, maybe we're afraid of making a fool out of ourselves, whatever the case may be we don't do things that we want to because The Man told us we couldn't do them. So, now my friends, I have a homework assignment for you. Do something you've always wanted to do, but you've never done because you were afraid of it. Take a vacation from your worries. Damn the consequences. Ignore your insecurities. Just live.

I don't care what it is; I just want you to do it. You may think it really doesn't matter to me, but it truly does. You are all my friends and I want you all to break on through to the other side. Stand up to life, stand up to a society that says "that's unacceptable." Stand up and prove you're alive! If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. Do whatever you want, make yourself proud; show everybody else that the human spirit is still alive! In the end it's your life, and you do with it what you please (or what society tells you to do), but just remember that you've been warned.

Just do it, for yourself and nobody else. Don't do it because I told you to do it, do it because my thought inspired you to do something. Go tell that guy you think he's cute, ask the waitress out on a date, tell the world that it can go screw itself with your bold statement of self-fullfillment. Whatever you do take it and hold onto it, grab your life and take it back. It's hard, I know. But if you do this one thing, every time it'll be easier and easier and then you'll be free.
I'm on my way right now to go claim my humanity, and I hope you all do the same. People might say you're crazy, but if insanity is the price of living freely, I'll pay it ten-fold.

"We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives."
-Tyler Durden

"While considering your options, remember this and remember it well: choice without consequences is no choice at all."
-George Jung

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

It's interesting to think of the places we end up. How people's lives twist in and out of eachother. The person you sit behind in the movie theater today may be your best friend in a year. The guy you cut off in traffic may be your future father-in-law. We pass these people without paying any mind to until some fateful day we start travelling on the same path.

Change is a strange creature. Coming as slow or as fast as it pleases. Ten years ago go I never thought I would be where I am now; where will I be in a nother ten? What may seem like a footnote in our life today could be our purpose tomorrow. How many of our stories together are coming to an end? How many are just beginning? How many of us will think our time together is over only to find ourselves in line at the supermarket together? And then what happens?

The truth is some of us may know where we're going in life, but none of us know where we're heading because life points us in different directions with every choice we make. "Goodbye" may not always be the end, and "Hello" may not always be the beginning. I can tell you that five years ago drama was not part of me and never would be. Five years ago I watched movies at Movies 8, I was never going to work there. And five years ago I wasn't your friend, and look where we are now.

People I've sat behind in classes and barely talked to have become some of my best friends. And people I thought would stand by me forever have become a distant memory. I'm excited for the future because I don't know what happens next; to find out where we end up, and who we end up with. Things end, things begin, life is one gigantic maze that is being built one step ahead of us and what happens next is a mystery. Life is a gamble, one giant Roulette game. Who knows what numbers the ball might land on, what color, and what our uptake might be for it. And that is the most beautiful thing.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."
-Seneca (Roman Philosopher)

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I'd something more to say."

-Pink Floyd (Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour)
Time