Tag: hopes

Religion, and other ramblings

I had a long, and lengthy, discussion with a friend of mine on the topic of religion and beliefs. For the longest time, I thought of myself as a pagan. Then, when belief failed me, I turned to atheism. Now, I am not so sure what to call myself. I cannot say there is nothing out there, but I cannot definitively say something is out there either. I simply do not know.

What I can say with certainty is there is much to this world that we still do not understand.

I believe gods were created out of necessity. People needed something to put their faith in to believe that everything would be okay. This could be anything from the weather patterns, food, fertility, even death. Every culture, every people that has walked this earth, has held some form of  belief. By the time Christianity was conceived, tens of thousands of cultures had been long dead, and with them their gods died as well.

We must then choose to belief that there is something, or there is nothing. Furthermore, we must then decide who is right, and who is wrong. But what if the truth was no one was completely right, and no one is completely wrong?

I am of the belief that true faith comes from acknowledging the fact that we simply do not know. We can strive to find answers, but ultimately, we just do not know. We want to be right so badly that we sometimes miss the fact that answers can lie in unsuspecting places. Religion does not explain everything, and science does not explain everything. If you were to put the two together, however, you get more answers, and the divide between people is thinned. If you acknowledge that answers can lie within multiple religions rather than just one, more answers are presented.

I do not believe in absolutes. Nothing is absolutely bad, and nothing is absolutely good. Nothing is absolutely correct, or absolutely wrong. Bad can have good intentions, and with bad comes lessons. Good can have bad intentions, and good can also have its own set of lessons. While we argue incessantly over who is right and who is wrong, we are missing the biggest picture of them all; we are all human beings sharing an earth together, and our bickering is leading to our own demise.

Religion, and even a lack thereof, has led to countless centuries of bloodshed. Our earth is covered in gallons of blood from fallen warriors willing to die for what they believed to be correct, and its the age old chess match. There is no winner when there is death. The biggest armies does not mean one is more correct than another. A religion with a massive following is no better than a smaller following. The number of followers does not dictate the level of faith a group of people may possess. The only thing numbers provide is a larger army from which wars can begin, and how history will remember the fallen.

Going back to a point I made earlier within this post, I believe gods were created from faith, and that faith came from necessity. As people moved from land to land, they took their gods with them. The people changed, evolved, and the gods were forced to do the same. That is why we see so many who call themselves by the same name, yet believe so differently. This is why we see so many beliefs that are similar to other religious beliefs from countries we’ve never visited.  What I see now, however, is stagnation. The world, like it or not, is constantly evolving. New gods are being created out of necessity, new beliefs are forming from necessity, yet people cling so dearly to the old ways they have always known. This is not the way the universe is supposed to work. This is not to say, of course, that we should completely abandon the “old ways”, but we should not stay stuck in them. If we remained stuck, you would not be sitting at your computer, or holding your phone, reading these words while constructing your responses. We must learn from the old ways, and bring the old into the new. We must take the lessons we’ve been given, but continue to move forward. We will be ancient history one day. Our future generations will look back on this generation in disgust, as we look back on certain aspects of our ancestors, and wonder “How could people sit by and allow this to happen?” Stagnation.

There must be a balance, a harmony. The longer we continue to allow ourselves to be divided, the more we see the world being destroyed. Soon, there will be no one to argue with of right and wrong, because there will be no one left to have an opinion.

I do not believe faith comes from a book written by men. In fact, I believe religious texts are one of the poisons of our society. A book that teaches people how to live can easily be rewritten, or mistranslated, to sway the public opinion. We have seen the evidence of this, in fact, with the changes made to the bible over time. Faith comes from within, belief comes from within, and we create our gods out of necessity. Each person serves a purpose, and therefore we must also accept that “bad” people also serve a purpose. With the recent popularity in Ted Bundy, I’ll use him as an example. Ted Bundy did terrible things, but from those terrible things, we got a unique insight into the way the mind of a serial killer functions. We have a better understanding of just how terrible the human mind can be, and we saw warning signs. We bettered our understanding of the evolution of a serial killer, While we focus on the acts done by the man, we also looked at the victims. Each death gives us more answers about the human body, the human vessel. Each day we continue to move forward and learn, and that is the way we are supposed to be. We are supposed to move forward and learn more so that we may have stronger beliefs in the capability of mankind.

From all the negative things that have happened, good has come out of them. Every experience shapes who we are as people. While some events have a bigger impact than others, we cannot point fingers and continue to hate one group or the other. Instead, we take the information, good and bad, and we learn from it. The situations thrown upon us are up to us to decide how we are going to react to them. Bad can be changed to good.

Perhaps I’m getting a bit rambling, and perhaps I’m even not making sense now. I honestly cannot tell. I can only hope these words make sense to someone out there. I wish these words could help the progression by helping people realize the importance of accepting change, of accepting progression, of accepting we do not know everything, and accepting that absolutes simply don’t exist. No one is right, no one is wrong, no one is bad, no one is good all the time. It is simply impossible. Change, evolution of ourselves, however, is very possible, if we’d simply allow it to happen.

It’s Just a Silly Fairy Tale.

I used to believe in fairy tales, when I was a child. Some might argue that this is time when we’re all “naive”. I beg to differ. I do not believe children are naive, I think they have the right idea. Of course, as children, we rarely appreciate what we have until we can no longer have it for whatever reason. “You can’t watch that television show, you’re an adult.” “Get off the playground equipment, you’re a grown woman!” “Hello! Quit daydreaming, you’ve got work to do.” And to think, when we were kids, all we wanted to do was grow up!

What was it about adulthood that seemed so brilliant to us as children? We didn’t have to listen to others, we could do whatever we wanted. We could go places, drive cars, Eat take out, candy, and ice cream whenever we so desired it. We wanted to be noticed, we wanted to make our own choices! But most importantly we wanted the freedom.

Growing up is a trap. It is the ultimate Bait and Switch. When you become an adult, you start listening to your parents even more. Unfortunately for some of us, by the time we are ready to listen, our parents aren’t around to give advice. You also have to listen to, and obey, whoever your employer is. Unlike your parents, however, they aren’t looking to make you better as a person. They’re looking to make you a better employee for that company. They don’t care about the day you’ve had, or the crap you have to put up with on a daily basis, as long as you get your work done.

It is true that, as adults, we can do and go wherever we want. So long as the budget permits. Don’t have enough money to go to that party? Too bad. Maybe next time. Don’t have enough money to buy that new game? Too bad. Maybe next paycheck.

We can even drive cars if we want to! After we save up our money to buy it, buy the necessary insurance, keep the license, tags, and inspection up to date, fill it up with gas, etc. Once you have a car, and all the necessities, can you really afford to go anywhere other than work? It is true that many places do not have to worry about this sort of thing, they have public transportation. I commend you for that, but in small towns such as where I live, public transportation is a joke. Everyone drives.

Yes, you can eat take out, candy, and ice cream whenever you want it. However, you also have to go to the doctor. “That’s not healthy for you.” “Look at your teeth, we’re going to have to pull that one out.” “Your cholesterol is too high.” “My god how much weight are you going to gain?” Not to mention the toll it takes on your budget.

You want to be noticed? The chances of that happening are slim and none. You’ve got to work super hard at it and even then, your net may not stretch that far. Even if it does, there are people all over the internet who are ready to tear you back down and stomp you into the ground. Why? Because people just don’t care. Everyone is trying to be something, and it is truly a dog eat dog world filled with people ripping the competition apart.

Make your own choices? Ha! Don’t even get me started on that. Sure, you can make your own choices to a certain extent. But your bills, and your responsibilities, come first. If you have a child? Those aren’t your choices anymore. Everything you do is for them. If it isn’t that way, then it should be.

Freedom. It doesn’t exist, not really. Not when you’re an adult. In fact, we are most free when we are children. We have way more freedom than we truly realize. Why? Because everything you do as a child is great. Pooping in a potty? WOO HOO!!! Learning the alphabet? AMAZING!! You can count to five? WAY TO GO!!!

As a child, you’re learning. As an adult, you’re supposed to have all of this figured out already. Everything you do is supposed to have purpose and meaning. I remember when I first started this blog, and people would tell me “You’ve got to find something interesting to write about. It’s got to have purpose. What audience are you going to try to get the attention of? You need high numbers.” I want to touch as many as I can, I don’t want it singled down to a particular age group. I can’t create something and gear it towards a particular group at all. As a child, we learned color for a reason: Because the world is not black and white. There shouldn’t be a limit on our imaginations, there shouldn’t be a “what you can and can’t” list everywhere you go. This is YOUR WORLD, damn it, make the most of it. Life is too short for this.

I remember being younger and writing blogs on Myspace all the time. Yeah, they weren’t very serious, but I really thought I was making a difference. I didn’t care about the low numbers. If two people read my work, I was happy as a pig in mud. Two people! My words were read by two people! TWO PEOPLE were inspired by something that I wrote! I wasn’t worried about criteria, I wasn’t worried about “fitting in”. Now, however? “That’s good but.” Or my favorite. “That’s not good enough, you can do better.” 

“You wrote a book? That’s good! You can do better though.”
“Awesome blog! You can do better though. It needs something else, something that will draw people in.”

Well I hate to break it to you guys, but I don’t stick to just one subject. As you may have noticed.

Then there is the subject of love. Ohh bloody hell. As a kid, we all believe that our prince charming will one day ride into town, sweep us off our feet, and we will have the perfect, fairy tale ending. We all, at some point, believe that our “special someone” is out there. After two failed marriages, I’m not sure I believe in that concept anymore. I think love is a confusing bundle of emotions that can be brought on–and satisfied!–by artificial means (chocolate, cocaine, etc). There is no such thing as perfect.

I miss being a child. I miss the freedom of expression, the joy, the mysteries…. I miss being able to be me, and not having to worry much about fitting in. I want the freedom of being able to ask for help and not being criticized for it, I want every little thing I do to be special again.

And I don’t want to be alone. I’m tired of being alone.

At least as a child, I could invent playmates and no one thought differently of me. Try that now and you’re automatically escorted to the nearest mental health facility. “But I’m not crazy, I’m just lonely!”

I used to believe in fairy tales. I used to believe in perfection. But now all I have are my dreams, my imagination, and the hope that one day I’ll be proven wrong.