night

The Eventual Death Of The Universe

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Do you ever think about the heat death of the universe?
From the moment I learned about it in high school chemistry class, I reflect on it and what it means.  The heat death of the universe happens when all energy is expended when all matter has reached its equilibrium, and there is nothing left to do. It’s the ultimate end of everything because there’s nothing left, just the cold and the still.

Life and nature curve its way toward entropy, a chaotic system, without any help something that is orderly will slowly break down over time to little bits and pieces.  This happens until there is nothing left to do, and it will move on to something else. Nothing is immune to this effect, and if we want to build something or maintain it, we have to put an effort in, use up the energy to do so. This lost energy we can never get back and slowly it ticks us ever closer to the end.

I think about how this relates to people, the idea that our relationships or lives are these massive towers we build for ourselves.  To create these monuments in our lives we spend time and energy, and without time and energy, they simply wither away.  We try and sometimes maintain order in our lives, but all it takes is a little bit of disorder to throw us off our game.  Life is effortful, it takes a lot of energy to live the life we want to live.

Our bodies are made to conserve energy, to ration it properly, as if it were always in scarcity.  The truth of it is that people will always skew to doing the easier thing.  It’s within our nature to figure out the pattern to something and learn to cut down the process to its most essential.  That’s why patience and discipline, for the most part, are learned traits, not inate.  That’s also why when you hear about great peoples and their great actions, it’s not about what the result was, a lot of the time what they did was nothing more than a series of small, doable things, it’s more that they did it.  They pushed themselves beyond what peoples see as natural or the doable.  The push themselves to new heights because they are willing to continue to put in the energy to do so.
They are not afraid of building towers and having them fall willing in spite of that.

I think about the heat death of the universe and wonder if I can fight against it, even if by just a little for a little while.  To build a life that I expend this energy to create something more than what was there before.  To build and maintain relationships and a life that is in spite of the constant pull toward the comfortable and the easy.  I want to try at least, to become something more than this scarcity.

If I’m constantly worried about where my energy is going, I never am able to use it all for what really matters to me, living a good life the best way I can.

The World In The Life Of A Guy – Part 8 -Growing Pains

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I’ve been told my entire life that guys mature much slower than girls, that we as a couple steps behind in growth and willingness to accept responsibility for things.  I’m tired of hearing it as often as I do but maybe it’s true, that we don’t mature like girls do.

I think part of the problem is the level of expectation for men to mature tends to be a bit delayed in general.  Girls, by the time they are teenagers and already going through puberty, are expected to bear the responsibility that growing up female entails, both body and mind wise.  Where as guys, even though we grow and go through puberty later, they are treated as if the changes are only sometimes cosmetic. Through our actions carry more weight we are not treated to the same standard, partially because what I had brought up last month about the level of fear for men and women deal with and the need for girls protect themselves from the dangers of the world. I think it’s this lack of responsibility for oneself creates a situation where men fall behind women in this area.

If you learn anything from these posts is that I believe that there really shouldn’t be a huge difference between men and women in how they are treated and are accountable for.  There is though a sort of necessity for women that doesn’t appear in men. The need to settle down. By far, I am not saying this is something intrinsic to women, there are a lot of social and cultural pressures for women to marry earlier than men, to have children sooner than men, and to generally have their life together sooner than men. Why is that a burden placed on only one of the sexes? Why can’t both either worry or not worry? Be told they are too old or their clock is ticking.
I am figuring part of the reason being is because of the timing of it all. For men, they still have the ability to have children later, and in some ways are suppose to be established before doing so. This doesn’t necessarily happen but once children are involved, people, for the most part, turn their attention to providing or settling down.

There is also the idea that is a bit ingrained into the minds of young men to sow their wild oats before settling down.  To let all the craziness out before deciding on something. This isn’t a bad philosophy, I think people should really try and live the life they want especially when the amount of responsibility is negligible.  Girls don’t get that message though, they are always told to be protective, not to go wild by to stay in control.  They are told that they need to be looking for that next step, working towards it because they only have a limited time. Both have their own benefits and drawbacks, but again they should be closer together, a balance of both.

Ultimately, people will learn to meet the expectations that are set for them, and as a culture, if boys are treated as if they should be just as responsible and mature as girls from a young age they will meet that standard.  For now, I just have to deal with the stereotype that I am a few years behind the maturity of girls and hope I am doing my part to prove it wrong.

Stupid Thoughts

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I have a bleeding yearning
A picturesque promise of pain
My heart bounds at the notion
That makes me feel all but lame

The stench of love wafts by me
In now the season of death
When our impulse should be to find shelter
And try to eliminate threats

What timing do I have
That these feelings start to well
With no home to anchor
And no way to quell
So they feel like they want to fester
To grow fat in the absence of purpose
It is dangerous
For feelings that were spurned without purpose
Look for a place to attach
Then it is love without meaning
Like a well in a swamp

I hope that in my troubles
That I am able to let this feeling pass
To move towards a future without sorrow
Or chance of relapse

I want to change but to change requires discipline
Discipline to say not to what pains me
To think, measure, and act
I want to strike this balance within me
And not worry about what I may lack

I hope I am busy tomorrow and the next
I hope that I will be stressed
That way when I come across it tomorrow
I don’t have time for it even on my breath 

my breath

Help And Aid All Day

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A world made up of heroes and villains, a world of fantasy that over lays itself on our own.  People far and wide look up to heroes and want to be like them. I think the world loves its heroes not because of the flashy way they go about their lives but the idea that someone of an almost mythical quality can come an take you away from the problems you have.  I’ve always wanted to be a hero in someway, someone who can save people, change their lived in an instant, and inspire other to carry on doing great things.  Its not exactly that straight forward though, it doesn’t just happen in a moment.

I just want to help others, lessen as much of their suffering as much as I can, but it doesn’t always work out the way I want.  I can’t save everyone on my own, but does that mean I should stop trying. Never. It’s a matter of understanding what I can and can’t do at the moment. The limitations that I have, and what powers I can use to lessen a problem not create new ones.

Situations may arise where it turns out I am simply not the right person to help, that in no small way am I the hero in their story, not the right person to be telling people advice or helping them along the way.  That there is someone more meaningful or impactful that in their heart of hearts they hope they see. Do I keep at it then, it’s a bit of a slog over time. Perhaps I should help find the person that would be most impactful for them, being an intermediary hero. Maybe I need to maximize my impact by excelling in my own way so that people can look up to me, perhaps they will listen then. Then maybe I can become this right person to help them along the way.

There is also the saying of “healthy neglect” the idea that people in some way have to struggle on their own through situations so they can learn the lessons and get stronger.  I have a hard time with this because I see somebody struggling and my first instinct is to extend my hand in aid.

Furthermore, I hate that the world has its own plans.  It’s the hard part about psychology, even if you know the problem and answer, it doesn’t mean it will happen or that you can do anything about it.  Each person had to make their own choices because they are the ones who have to deal with the feeling afterward.   Each step they take they have to take on their own.

Who really knows though, I will keep fighting because that is who I am.  I might get saddened by peoples sadness, hope to god that I can just make their life better even if it’s not by much. To create that positive impact that follows you like a trail blazed through a forest.

Chasing Dreams Before They Die

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I think all of us deep down inside have a part of ourselves that calls out to us, calls out to follow down the path we have honestly hoped we were destined for.  A part of ourselves that leaves us deeply unsettled by the continued nature of reality that doesn’t align itself with where our heart truly lies.

I constantly wonder, does the path we travel down require us to sacrifice part of our soul to keep afloat or is it a test to see if we are willing to devote ourselves to our dreams properly.  I regularly ask the question whether I am sacrificing enough or is there more I can give.  Can we strip ourselves down to such a fundamental level that we can devote ourselves so singularly to a cause that it becomes apparent that we no longer are a person but the living manifestation to a singular purpose or ideology?

I find that within these thoughts, in some way contains greatness.  It is the ability to focus on the one thing in front of you that it becomes your entire being for the time being that you exist within it focus until you have accomplished whatever you initially set out to do.  

That’s what I need, that laser focus, something I have never really fostered through my life. Instead, I let my mind wander endlessly from place to place stringing thoughts together like party decorations.  Though I might get to the destination, and it might bring me from place to place by the time I get there I will have all but run out of string.  It’s about using what I have wisely. Picking and choosing all that I do so that at the end of it all I have something that I can look back to and say I have built.

I am though greedy, I want to experience everything so choosing one seems almost unfathomable even though in my heart I know it’s not enough. Variety may be the spice of life, but I can’t sustain myself on spices alone, I need substance.  Where to cut and prune is the question, what to give up and slough off the tree of life so the branches can grow tall instead of being forced down by the weight of barren tree that never go anywhere.

Aside from that, I think what we spend most of our time on actually dictates how we feel.  In that, for us, it becomes then our jobs, a place where we spend most of our days that rule over our existence.  It has the greatest effect and even though in some ways we take every opportunity to spend the time we are freed from our time at work decompressing. In those moments we end up not really ever doing anything at all.

So it is up to us to make the life we want, the life we will sustain.  Our life is what we do and accept having done to us.  My biggest fear is becoming used to these feelings of my soul asking me to change and never doing anything about them. Slowly letting my dream die and dying along with them. Living a life that will never really feel satisfying because in the back of my mind I know that there could have been something more for me to do.  I want to chase the dream, but maybe it would be better to also be reminded that it can die and with it so would my soul.

Live life, and if your not, change it.  In the same way that the world will keep spinning if you are not around, we have no excuse not to at least try to make something new.

Stress bubble

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It sits there in my throat
Moving back and forth between my chest and my head
An overwhelming rush of feeling
One that yells “RUN” at me
It throws jitters through my body
Makes my eyes water as if wanting to cry
This overwhelming feeling makes it seem like I am being crushed

I want to hide,
Get away from this stress that I feel
I could end it all
Stop the stress, but stopping doing things in my life
But that’s not how it works
I can’t be active and involved
Without the stress
Change will come eventually
And it’s best to face it rather than hiding from it.
I used to eat through my feelings
I used to throw myself into my hobbies
My games
I used to throw myself into my relationships
all of these things to rid myself of these horrible feelings
but I can’t do it anymore
I have to live with them
Fight through them

For now, I swallow the knot in my throat
Wait for the feeling to pass
Stop feeding the flame
And work toward the future.

I just don’t know when the stress bubble will pop.

The World In The Life Of A Guy – Part 7: Fear and Freedom

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IMG_0099.JPGThere is something I take for granted, this ability to move through the world without having to worry too much about how the world will react.  Using only a little bit of common sense, I can manage to not have to worry about much.  Strangers walking down the street, glancing eyes about what I may be wearing, an offhand comment, these things don’t skim my radar.  But for women, this is something they have to deal with every day.

I think the easiest distinction that can be made is with travel.  I was lucky enough to be able to backpack through Europe, going from hostel to hostel, train to train, and airport to airport.  All without having to really think about the possibilities of strangers doing anything to me.  I took the standard safety precautions of locking up my stuff, but in coming back in the middle of the night to my bunk in a shared hostel room, the thought never crossed my mind that something could happen to me.
Maybe I am lucky that things didn’t but in talking about my trip with several of my friends and touting how great and inexpensive hostels are all my female friends had the same consensus ” that simply would be too risky for them,” especially having gone alone like I had.

Now whether or not that is true is one thing, but it’s this general feeling of being paranoid about the world that is the problem.  It’s both taught to girls at a young age and substantiated by how people act as they get older.  In walking in unfamiliar places there is always some dangers, but I never have to be overly suspicious of peoples intentions, and I am more concerned with theft then I am harassment.

I’ve seen it happen too, the unwanted attention or a misread signal leads to women being harassed by men.  It’s crazy in some way how non-stop it really can be, and I don’t envy women for having to be on guard for danger so much.  It’s this crazy situation where the threats are so much greater because it’s not just your things or your life, its other atrocious acts like assault and rape that comes to their mind.  This is something people have to look out for in their day to day life, not even just when they are traveling or abroad.  That’s why groups are so important, and something like walking to your car in the middle of the night can be more of an endeavor than simply walking down the street.

But in the spirit of trying to explain a male perspective on things, I am going to steer the topic back.  Fear is something for a guy that is thought as something to be conquered.  We throw ourselves headfirst into situations where courage becomes the only currency.  I have an appreciation for the fact that I don’t feel in danger all the time, or that I am in a state where I feel like a target is regularly painted on my back.  I think in some ways, that’s why (not to get all white knight-y) we are called to defend. To lessen the fear of others by putting ourselves between the fear and the fearing.  Since we do not have to worry the world constantly, we can spend time helping others feels safe too.

Safety is something that comes from being able to walk down the street and not have to worry about the world trying to harm you, and I believe we all should try and work together to make the world a safe place for as many people as possible.

Linkin Park:​ Reanimated

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Originally there was going to be a different post here today but in light of the more recent events, I decided to postpone it to write about the recent tragedy of the death of Chester Bennington and the loss Linkin Park’s bandmate and singer.

You see, I’m sure like most of the people of my generation, Linkin Park’s music proliferated their childhood. Whether or not you were a fan, their notably different types of music stemming from many different genres made them unique and memorable. They continued to push the envelope and play the music that they wanted to play, even when there was a backlash from their fans.

My memory though stretches back to a Christmas where I received my first ever album for Christmas. It was a band that I really knew nothing about but would soon become intimately aware. My sistered received their first album ‘Hybrid Theory’ and I received their remix album ‘Reanimation’.  In putting it in the first time, it was my first taste of a   musical theme from an artist.  Up until then, most of the music I was aware of was either one of my parents or things I had heard off the radio.  Uploading it to my computer, I just remember playing the album over and over, discovering my taste for that type of music.

The music stuck with me, they were my favorite band for many years, taking me through the hardships of my youth, playing songs on loop until they felt part of my very soul. It was a type of music that I felt understood me. The different vibe it gave with rock, electronic, pop, and rap all squished together made me experience all sorts and different types of sound I didn’t know I liked hearing. I followed their albums and resonated with their songs. Watching for release dates and even downloading their app.

As I changed, so did they.  Their sound continued to evolve into a push into different avenues and for a while, I continued to follow. Eventually, our paths diverged, not out of dissatisfaction or distaste but the venturing into other avenues of music that they introduced me to. I no longer knew when their albums would drop, and I hadn’t listened to all of their songs anymore, and yeah that might make me not a very great fan anymore but I never saw their constantly changing sound as a bad thing. It is an exploration and evolution. Though it might not be what I want to listen to on repeat any more, it’s something I still respect.

With the death of Chester, is the death of part of their sound. I don’t know what the future holds for the rest of the band and I hope and pray for the best for his family.  I do know many people out there have experienced something similar to me in regards to their music. And with the help of their music, it helped save many peoples lives.

Linkin Park will always be my first favorite band, a band most of their albums I know by heart. They will be the band I first felt like understood me, the first one that pumped me up to start to change my life, the first one that helped me through rejection from a girl, the first one to make me feel less alone in the universe.  Their songs live in my memory and in my soul, etched there by many moments I spend listening to their sound.

I want to  Thank You Linkin Park, and Thank You, Chester, you changed my life for the better, I just wish I could have done for you the same. For now, with your death, it feels like that burning inside just got Reanimated.

Moving Through

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I feel in this place
A sense of calm
As if I had been lost in the forest
Trying to find a way to get through
And bustling and blustering
And freaking out
But now I see the path
and I am moving to it
As if I am okay with where I am going
And how I am getting there
I just have to get to the path
And I’ll be home free

Lessons On Adulthood

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I think I finally understand what it means to be an adult.  It’s that feeling of not knowing what you are doing, but having to do it anyways. The strange thing is, is that regardless of the training you get, and how much you might prepare for it when you are emersed in the situation it always feels a bit different than what we are told. It’s a matter of then embracing that feeling and doing our best to resolve this situation.  I think that’s the difficulty sometimes, there is no guidance to follow, and when people tell you that they can’t be decided for you that’s because it’s true, how are you suppose to be able to tell someone to live if there are so many different paths to take.  I think that the lessons are how to cope with this abundant change and lack of guidance are the ones we need for the future.

There also comes a time when it feels like the curtain is being pulled back like the whole show is demystified right before your eyes. The magic seems less like magic and more like years of hard work. This isn’t a negative thing because it means that with a little bit of elbow grease and a lot of time, anything is possible. It has a way of trying to destroy the idea of magic in the world, which magic is that can make life a lot more worthwhile and enjoyable.  The other part of that is that at the time when you pull back the curtain you find this everything is built makeshift and in all sorts of different directions. No one really understands why it was made the way it was, but we keep doing it because it always been done that way.

Point being there is some sort of arbitrariness to being an adult. The question as to why something is the way it is a lot of the time comes down to what time and resources you had at the time.  This revelation is something that confuses me a bit because, on one hand, it lends itself to the incredible nature of human ingenuity to come up with ideas and workarounds for our most complex problems. On the contrary, though.. it gives some insight as to what most of our institutions may actually be, a set of good intentions and effort stacked on what we may think we know at the time.  At times decisions are driven by a purely utilitarian nature, something is done that way because it was easiest, or it was done because it conveys a sense of style or familiarity like when decisions are made because someone thought that way is best. As with our minds, we travel and create roads and inpaths to make things more robust, more secure but making our decisions less fluid in the process. We live upon the shoulders of giants, but we are also cursed to live by their decisions.

Being an adult takes a lot of work, a lot of effort to do it successfully.  Even through all its really absurd nature, it’s a challenge that either drives us to grow or defeats us.  As I grow up, I can see that I am learning and growing along the way.  Hopefully, the world doesn’t feel so arbitrary by the end of it all and that one day I can help the next generation grow and learn just like I am.