Tag: thoughts

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.

Witnessing Tragedy from Afar

April 5th began as a normal day. I drove to work, had fun with my coworkers, made plans for dinner… On my way home, I noticed police activity ahead, and traffic was slowed to a crawl. I had places to go, things to do, and the slow moving traffic was an inconvenience. I’ve learned, however, that sometimes life forces you to slow down for a reason.

The reason this time was a tragic accident. A young man had been struck by another vehicle, killing him instantly. His body, hidden from view by a sheet, lay in the road surrounded by cops and witnesses. It was so startling. You never expect to see such a sight when an accident slows traffic.

It broke my heart. Still does. I won’t go into too many details, but I will simply say it was bad. It stuck with me, sent me into a bit of shock. For the remainder of the evening, I couldn’t get it out of my head, and desperately searched through the news trying to find more information on what happened.

They released his name.

I found him on Facebook. This led me to his family, who hadn’t yet heard the news. Friends who were carrying on like normal. They’d released his name in the early hours of April 6th.

I continued to check his Facebook, and saw when the news of his demise spread to his family and friends. I wanted so badly to reach out and say something, but what could I say?

Nothing I could offer would make the situation better. Witnessing the travesty of the accident was a few moments for me, but will be a life time of pain for them. My heart aches for them, but I have no right to share in their grief.

I can only hope the family is able to find peace, and solice. I can only hope that the death of their friend, their son, their brother, has touched the life of a random stranger.

Suffer in Silence

Suffer in Silence

There are many pros and cons to working a graveyard shift. Many of them you would expect, and some depend on perspective. The traffic is rather slow, so you are left with quite a bit of free time to do things you’d like to do. Except you are confined to a very small area. You don’t have to handle quite as much business as your daytime coworkers, but you are often left for almost eight hours without the sound of another human voice, or another human face. You have to make sure to bring whatever you need with you, because if you live in a small town like I do, everything has closed by the time you get to work. Forgot something at home? Oh well. Didn’t bring a lunch? Twinkies for dinner it is, then. Feeling a little lonely? Oh, most of your friends are already asleep. So it’s just you, your entertainment, and the buzz of electrical lights.

Or if you walk outside, you get to hear Sonic Radio. At least, where I work. And no, it’s not 24 hours. Don’t ask me.

I knew most of this when I first began my graveyard shift. Some of it I learned, and I picked up different tricks as I went. I come in loaded down with everything I may, or may not, need. I double everything. Even if I know I don’t need it, I always bring at least two. Better to have too much than not enough, right?

One thing I didn’t expect, however, was how quickly it got to the point where normal means of entertainment just wouldn’t cut it, and how often I would just be spent alone with my own thoughts. At first it wasn’t that big of a deal, I’d usually find something else to entertain myself with. Or I’d clean the lobby obsessively until my bosses started hiding the cleaning supplies from me. And sometimes being trapped inside my own head wasn’t so bad.

I’d imagine my favorite celebrities coming through the door and sweeping me away for a life of fame, glamor, and adventure. I’d picture something bad happening and how I’d magically save the day. I’d play out conversations and other fun or entertaining scenarios that would never happen.

It’s all well and good. Until the nights you’re sad. Or angry. Or feel anything but contentment.

I could feel the start of a low coming on, so I brought my penguin with me to work. He makes me feel better sometimes, and it’s a comfort to have him. I know I get weird looks for having a penguin sitting on the desk behind me, but I don’t care. He’s my comfort object, not yours, nee ner nee ner. But the penguin, as cute as he is, can’t stop the thoughts that go through my head.

I was alone. I am alone. At first, you don’t really think about it. Being physically alone is so much different than being mentally alone. Tonight I felt both. My mind threw every embarrassing situation at me, every horrible mistake I’d ever done, every worst case scenario that could happen.

As my thoughts grew darker, everything I’d held back for years suddenly came rushing back to me. I could feel the lump tightening in my throat, my heart pounded in my chest as I silently fought the inner battle with my demons. I could feel the blood rushing to my face, tears tickling the very edges of my eyes as the torture continued on and on. I started cleaning, as cleaning is sometimes therapeutic. But no, this made the taunts even worse. I could feel my soul screaming in agony, the shadows closing in, and finally when I thought I was going to break I looked up and I saw my reflection.

My cheeks were a darker shade of red. My eyes were red. But my face gave nothing away. I was so stoic, that anyone looking at me would never guess the hell going on inside my head. I was in my head, and I couldn’t tell. You never know what to expect when you look into your own reflection. Many times it is shocking. Tonight was no exception to the rule.

No one could see that lump in my throat, no one could feel the burn of the tears I held back. No one could hear my heart breaking into a thousand pieces, or the taunts that scraped across my mind like glass. My eyes gave me away. They screamed a thousand screams, begging and pleading to let all of this out freely. My thoughts changed to all the words I’d never said, all the things I wish I could say. All that I wish I could do, or could have done in the past. I could not stand to stare at the girl in the reflection any longer, because there was nothing I could do for her silent suffering. I wish I could. I wanted to reach into the reflection and hold her, tell her everything was going to be okay. Force her to see the good she’d done, and all she’d contributed.

But I looked away, and strangely I felt like I’d betrayed myself. So many others look away too because they don’t see it.

I grin, I smile, I laugh. Inside I’m being torn apart and I can’t fix it. I can’t make the demons stop howling, or the skeletons in my closest stop rattling the doors. The ghosts of my memories taunt me from the shadows, luring me further and further into the darkness. Taunting me with relief.

Onwards I go, suffering in silence. I’ll keep that smile on my face, and I’ll laugh at your jokes. I’ll hug you and hold you, make you feel better and tell you everything will be okay. Look into my eyes sometimes, and maybe you’ll see that sometimes that’s all I want too. Sorry for all the word vomit here, I just had to get it out someway or another lol.