Things
The fiery promise of independence burns brightly in the recesses of my mind, but the chilling thought of loneliness freezes those dreams. Independence is an ideal that I hope to one day grasp, but I don’t know why. Is it to prepare for a possible future loneliness? Those I see who have the least loneliness also have the least need for independence. Yet they are the ones with the most.
Seeing his independence is frightening: a stagnant, dull tradition of mediocre occurrences. But it’s simple. That’s what it’s always been about, hasn’t it?
Ramblings about God’s Plan
I wrote this during the post right before this one, but I couldn’t find anywhere to fit it.
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Isn’t is so convenient that “God’s plan” coincides with the materialistic consumerism on this side of the globe? I’d assume that God’s plan would be something so much more meaningful, for example that most if not all Christians would become ascetic-like missionaries/nomads with socialist ideals (as during Jesus’s time) and run around helping and loving people, like the good Samaritan, who paused his own life and travel for at least a day to help a complete stranger who might have a completely different set of beliefs. It feels so contrived that most Christians want to be in a stable, high-paying job with a nuclear family so they can “reach out” to the non-Christians who have stable, high-paying jobs and their own nuclear families, which is such a niche of a market that I cannot believe that God would send most of his American followers to live that life. In all honesty, it just seems like most Christians choose to live the life they want, and fine-tune the unimportant parts to God’s will, waiting until they break God’s commands to beg for forgiveness, over and over again.
I think it’s about now that I’m realizing that Christian or not, I don’t want to do the 9-5, 5 days / 40 hours a week life. Half of me wants to say that I’d do it to sustain a family: I imagine that a stable income is the price a person would sell their soul, if it meant maintaining a living. I think if I really did have a family or a potential family or a significant other to devote my life to, I would bear the 9-5 life for them. I’d hate it, but they’d make it worth everything. As a Christian, I wouldn’t believe that God’s plan for me is to sell my soul to the devil. The other half of me says that that lifestyle is horrible, but not only that: I wouldn’t have the people to make it worth it.
I’m not sure what’s the middle ground here. Pascal’s wager would work out nicely if I weren’t such a short-sighted person.
At the end of the day
you’d choose your brothers, because blood is thicker than water.
Wrong
I nurtured our friendship for the wrong reason. Why do I always do things for the wrong reasons?
And now I keep you at an arm’s length away because I can imagine the fiery rejection I’ll get when I tell you. All of the nice things you’ve said, the laughs you’ve shared with me, the leases we’ve signed, they’re just burnt ashes that will disappear in the wind once the rejection sets ablaze our friendship. And if it doesn’t set ablaze, it will at least set back.
I keep you away because I’m afraid that I’ll continue to nurture our friendship for the same wrong reason. I don’t even know if I want to be friends with you anymore, but to sever ties with you would be impolite, and you seem so lonely nowadays.
Why is it that I’m the only one who continues to talk to you? Am I still doing it for that same wrong reason? Is it wrong?
My heart doesn’t ache, my mind does.
Startup of a new era
It is up to me to make what I want of this world, to be the change that I want to see. And today/tonight, I make this decision: I will become a programmer, and I won’t resent it or lose myself for doing it. It feels weird to be making the decision to become a programmer, as it’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the past three (or five, including high school courses [or eight, including middle school messing around]) years. Programming isn’t too bad: it was fun to program for around 26 hours straight through with my project partner (and continue working on a lab after our project was finished and demo’d), or to finally see that my (yes, my, as my partner did literally less than ten percent of the project) compiler passes all required benchmarks.
But the truth of the matter is that I hate the industry. I hate the way the world works in that way. I hate the American/cultural indoctrination. That is, the process of going to college and then getting a job, getting married to a girl and having kids, going to church on Sundays and being someone else on other days. I hate that people are actually happy and adjusted to working a job from 9 to 5, doing little to nothing to make a change or to become someone great or even to make themselves happy, yet I accept that fact of life. This is my worst fear: to become a trapped sheep in the herd of industry, just one more enslaved taxpayer in a slave-driver’s plantation of an economy.
I’m not gifted to do other things that are great — I can’t become a great doctor, as I can barely stand biology, I”m not compassionate enough to become a social worker, or smart enough to become a scientist/mathematician, or healthy enough to become an athlete, or Christian enough to become a missionary. I don’t have the right gender to become a house-wife, or the right race to become a movie star. But I do know that I have a gift for at least one thing: programming. I will pompously and shamelessly admit that I am one of the best in my classes when it comes to programming.
Maybe that’s the deep-seated reason that I hate the industry. Maybe I actually hate that despite me understanding concepts quickly and getting straight A’s in all of my programming courses, earning the top grade in every course, that my classmates can get internships and jobs and relationships and lead fulfilling lives. Maybe I resent the fact that the world doesn’t reward people for how smart or how good they are, but by luck and by the social intercourse that happens during interviews. It doesn’t boil down to the fact that I have to hold their hands so that they don’t fail their projects, but to the fact that they can pretend to know what they’re talking about, and that they can make small talk with the interviewer.
But I do know that getting a 9 to 5 industry job in this world is against all of what I want in this world. It would restrict my expression, both in time and in production (though interestingly not my wealth), and make me work with those that I resent for being in the same place as me, but not being as smart as me. Instead, I want to work for something that I personally find interesting and exciting. I want to pull 26 hour all nighters with people I respect, working on something I like, that people can also like and appreciate. I won’t judge myself by the internships that I don’t have, or by the paycheck I receive, but I’ll judge myself for what I do and what I’ve done. This is my new ideology: that I’m not me for what I have, but for what my hands and mind can create.
(And to think that I would gladly regress to a sheep and sell my soul to the 9 to 5 industry if I had one person to devote my life to chills me to the bone.)
Dark Grey and Black
Floating in a bubble but with a huge smile,
I pretend like a friend with my deceptive guile.
Oh how I tire of this daily show,
but on and on the show must go.
So I’ll just keep walking where I hope not to defile.
Dying in a burning house: embers ablaze around.
Escape the pain, hear the brimstone sound.
Hide the face of agony in our hearts
and feel the ache as love departs,
but life goes on, no life undrowned.
Death
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/05/02/osama_and_chants_of_usa
“This is bin Laden’s lamentable victory: He has changed America’s psyche from one that saw violence as a regrettable-if-sometimes-necessary act into one that finds orgasmic euphoria in news of bloodshed. In other words, he’s helped drag us down into his sick nihilism by making us like too many other bellicose societies in history — the ones that aggressively cheer on killing, as long as it is the Bad Guy that is being killed.”
You
I know you didn’t do anything. But why does it feel like you stabbed me right in the back? This only confirms what I’ve tried to disbelieve all along: I can’t trust anyone.
The Impossible
I stopped believing that the impossible could happen the same time I found out that leaders were flawed and that my ideals could not exist in this world.
