Danny's Epiphany

As he reached for his latte, Danny wondered why he felt the way he did. He has not felt at ease for a long time now, but somehow the feeling was much more intense today. As far as he could tell though, today had been the same as any other. He had woken up in his flat, careful not to jostle what's-her-name. He had watched the news, gotten dressed, and drove his Ducati to his office downtown. After that, he got into the executive elevator and rode it to the floor before the last, where he flirted with the receptionist, what's-her-face, as usual, and entered his office where his latte was waiting to be drunk.

So, if nothing special or different had happened, why did he feel so down? He was a 28 year old multimillionaire! The five million dollar deal he had to finish off today was irrelevant. Five million dollars were immaterial to Danny, let alone his whole firm. How many people could call five million dollars immaterial? And yet, no sooner had the thought occurred to him, he felt miserable. Before he could delve deeper into the issue, he was interrupted by a soft timid rap at his door. It took only an instant for him to compose himself – it was a vital skill for any seasoned and successful business man like himself to have, and one that he was exceptionally good at.

"Come in," he called out, and dropped the pretense of arranging papers as soon as he saw his best friend Ronnie's head poke into the room. Ronnie works in the mail room, and Danny had met him on the very first step of his staircase to success. The many floors between Danny's CFO office and Ronnie's mail room had had no effect on their friendship.

Knowing Ronnie as well as he did, Danny directly detected something off about his friend. For although Ronnie's lips were arched in a gesture of mirth, his eyes bespoke pity and sorrow. "What's wrong with your face?" Danny shot, "You look like you just saw a cat get beaten to death with a stapler."

Confused, Ronnie replied, "I was just wondering what time you wanted to…uh…" he hesitated, bit his lip, and then continued, "Go to the cemetery."

With those last four words, it all hit him with the force of a cliché piano falling out of nowhere. Becky has been dead a full year today. Danny's wife, whom he loved with enough intensity to pass for worship, was killed a year ago. Becky had stolen Danny's heart in preschool and had never given it back. Becky was a surgeon who had found time in her busy work schedule to go on campaigns to third world countries and provide health care to those who could not afford it, and she had loved Danny in spite of how different they were. Danny never cared for anything except her and making money. She, on the other hand, was making a difference, saving lives, and keeping him happy. She was superwoman, and she was no more. A stray bullet caught her in the neck during a skirmish between rival militias in Africa. She never stood a chance. Danny scoffed at the irony of her dying at the hands of the people she was trying to aid.

What would she say if she saw what Danny had turned into? He had all this money that could be doing so much for the world, and he was using it to keep his ass warm. He was not even happy. He had been trying to distract himself for a whole year from the agony of not seeing that gorgeous woman's face, or hearing her soft voice and feeling her warm breathe against his neck as they lay in bed, talking late into the night. He busied himself with work and one night stands so as not have any free time to torture himself with thoughts such as he was having now.

Danny began to lose his composure, and he felt tears well up in his eyes. He felt despair wrap its cold cruel hands around his whole being. Where were his values? Did he ever even have any? How could Becky have loved this? She would be mortified if she saw what he had let himself become.

Ronnie, who had been eyeing Danny anxiously but respecting his need for silence, got up, walked around the table, put a hand on Danny's shoulder, squeezed it, and left the room. A few minutes after Ronnie left, Danny emailed his resignation, wrote a check with most of his money to the organization Becky worked with and was so passionate about, canceled his meeting, and went back home.

Danny had decided to go to China and see his brother Bobby, a Buddhist monk. He needed out of the city and he needed to grieve. The serenity of a temple was perfect for that. Who knows, maybe he would join the monastery himself. "Maybe, but I'm not shaving my head," he mused.

My Journey To The Island

I Would like to start this off by saying how much i loathe the source from which all my inspiration stems. However, without it I seem to do no meaningful writing what so ever. Irony, I'm lovin' it. So, I usually think along the lines of emotions, and how to over come them. I have thought myself a sort of genius as i was able to belittle the power our emotions have over us. In my opinion, it is our own psyche that controls our emotions. Manipulate your psyche, you manipulate your emotions and attitudes toward a certain situation or ordeal. The flaw in my reasoning is that i thought that I had found a cure. But how can i assume i have when i never looked for the source of that which had ailed me? You can only effectively fix something if you know how at works because once you do you can single out that which is not working properly. Otherwise, what i have deemed to be a solution is only a temporary numbing of emotional turmoil, but not a cure. It's a way to numb ourselves, which in its own right is useful for its own purposes. I wonder though, would ignoring an issue that is causing emotional distress cause the problem to fester?

I have been having radical, unexplainable emotional patterns. I remind myself of a pregnant lady. Sudden outburst of rage, nervousness, irritability, and unexplainable friendliness to people i had been extremely prejudiced against, to mention a few. All this could happen within the hour, but as random as my behavior is there is always that unyielding, unwavering feeling of unease. Something is missing, and the cliche "there's a hole inside" would definitely apply to the way i have been feeling. It feels like i can not try to subdue these emotions without knowing why i feel the way i do. So, I started digging for answers, experimenting. The first experiment was to alienate people. I reasoned that if the people we care about the most are the ones with the most power to hurt us, then no one should be in a position where they can do any real harm. So, i decided to push my friends back. I did not want any trouble to come from the push though, so i did not end up pushing them as much as i pushed against them and let myself slide back. i found it to be a effective way not to alert them to any change. after all, some of the biggest changes that happen tend to be ones we barely notice or pay any mind to during our daily lives. kind of like the immense speed we are revolving with the Earth through space. Point being that it was a smooth transition from having many close friends to barely any at all. That, regretfully, was not enough to solve the problem. There was more that had to change.Logically, if there is a problem now, it must have been caused by something in the past. My past, however, is not something i enjoy visiting. For the sake of piece of mind though, i plunged as deep into its recesses as i could and found one particularly interesting thing.There are many things that have happened in the past that i do not know how i feel about. I am finding that intense emotions are hard to recognize. i caught myself wondering if i was extremely crushed or immensely relieved by a certain development. No wonder i felt uneasy.A past riddled with confused emotions is no easy thing to cure, and i am not naive enough to think i can find the answer to any question i pose to myself, or that any of my answers or solutions are right. Even if the methods i use to remedy what ails me work in their own right, like i already mentioned, it has so far merely been sedation. I wanted to know why i felt the way i did, and i was able to figure out why the same situation made me happy and upset at the same time, not that it was any help. The problem was with the sheer number of emotions which for the most part were hard to identify in most situations. So, like one would deny a disease to spread from a limb throughout the body, i decided to cut the problem at its source. I tried to get rid of my need for contact with people, but the attempt was as ridiculous as the notion sounds. it was not going to happen. instead, i began to give people reasons to want nothing to do with me. i would lead people to the decide that i am someone they should keep their distance from, if not cut off completely. I could not keep myself trying to get close to people forever, but i could definitely sabotage my chances.needless to say, casting myself away on an island worked to keep me from getting into any new trouble. Except there is certain contact we need as humans, the damn unreliable and flawed creatures that we are, and i find myself yearning more than ever for that contact. My reason has marooned me on an island and is keeping me from building a signal fire to attract the boats that are my salvation.

It seems that i have prevented the recurrence for a problem at great cost. It is starting to feel like the costs out weigh the benefits of my decision. Still, as long as i remind myself that i do not really need that contact, that the only harm it can do to me is psychological, i should be fine. People can not have power over me because if there is one thing i have learned from my past experiences is that some emotional wounds are deep enough that they never stop gushing blood. As for my psyche, i should be fine as long as i keep a firm hold on the part it is playing. that part being, mostly, to make me thing i need that contact when it is no more than another want.

Ramblings

what next? is this it? Is there nothing more? am i supposed to follow the routine life cycle? find a job, start a family...? how cliche is that? What mark will i leave on the world? There has to be more to life than this. It is not easy to be told to give up on your dreams. That, "You're so young and naive, you'll start to see things clearly when life starts slapping you in the face." It is frustrating because i can not decide which is worse, getting slapped in the face by someone who cares, or rolling the dice and hoping that life doesn't stick its studded boot up my inexperienced rectum. I can't help but tell myself that no matter how hard i try, there will always be someone trying harder.
is it naive to say that i would rather be fighting for a cause? what if i acknowledge that no matter how hard we fight, we're always going to come up short? it's just that everything is so out of our control that it's scary. There's only so much we can do to help others, and it is almost inevitable that we come up short. times like this i feel like the best life to live is that of a soldier, fighting to protect others. but isn't the protection of some, the doom of others? is life so trivial that it is to be thrown away for something as ludicrous as a conflict of opinions? Who are we to pick up a weapon and decide who dies? Are we not the ones that our enemies are protecting their families from? The same enemies we made under the excuse of protection our own? Still, I believe the life of the soldier is the one to live. Sever all connections u ever made, and fight for peace. Yes, ironically enough, there has to be conflict before there can be peace. The same thing goes to peace of mind i guess. Regretfully, its hard to tell how long internal conflict will as it is to tell for actual violent conflict. How do u even make the right choice. What is a right choice, really? Sparing some one's life so they could kill countless others? Wrong choice? Is killing them the right one? What if someone were to join the army for the sake of protecting his fellow soldiers? Do my country men deserve my protection more than the people they're after?
As far as I'm concerned, death is peace of mind, and so it is welcome. I don't fear it. I believe it's all we truly have to live for.

Logic

There was a time when I was untouchable and utterly heartless, a state which would be heaven on Earth for anyone with strong enough wits to achieve. Lately, however, I have been feeling like a complete spectator, waving at the events of my life as they pass by. What I have been finding hard to understand is how I can see logic, but not be able to bind myself to it. You see, the world is very simple and its simplicity lies in our ability to ridicule ourselves. Emotions cannot exist for they are the very pillars of our anguish. Love is folly, and the people who allow themselves to believe in it are fools. It is immaturity and does not really exist. Immaturity is not saying you cannot live without someone, but believing it. Our emotions are fickle and are based on our most primitive impulses, which proves that we are as shallow as God's creatures will ever be. The reason for that is we cannot love that which we cannot see beauty in. This brings to the most important factor to consider, our minds.
Beauty is a matter of perspective, and perspective is how our minds have learned to interpret. So, no matter how amazing a person's personality and wits may be, unless some of his/her features appeal to someone's interpretation of beauty, this person will never be loved. Nevertheless, and it is only fair that I point out here that someone with incredible beauty but an unbearable personality and wits that would shame even a gold fish, will not be loved either. Point being that what us immature humans call love is actually compatibility. We "love" someone whose personality, appearance, and wits appeal to us, and what appeals to us best is that which we are familiar with, and therefore compatible with us. This is also, I believe, the reason for racism. People reject what is alien to them, and when living in a society dominated by a certain stereotype like light skin color, sudden exposure to anything different will trigger negative reactions.
Now, for the logic of this whole ordeal, emotions exist where logic does not. Emotion and logic cannot coexist for they are complete opposites. The world of logic states that there is no reason for someone to feel bad for losing a "loved" one. Here is where people would say, "But you will never speak, touch, see, hear… that person again," and logic says "So freakin' what?" The only emotions that logic allows to endure are those of pleasure, because logic states that we must pursue happiness. What really makes logic so powerful is its ability to manipulate and redefine happiness. Companionship has its ups, its addictive ups which are the cause for most of our grief. Here is where the real beauty of logic appears. When we find someone who is compatible with us we tend to cling, and when we lose that person emotions take their toll on us. However, if we but allow the stream of logic to pass undeterred we will easily realize that no matter how small the number of people compatible to yourself on Earth, its still an immense number and one which can provide enough hope to kill all despair.
If you are betrayed, lied to, scarred and discarded like no more than a candy wrapper, the question remains not whether you can fall in love again, but whether you should. In addition to that, the true quandary is if logic described the perfect person to you, and that person spat right in your face, can you still trust logic? And if you can not trust logic, your emotions, or even people, then what can you trust?

Drawing a Blank

Once again I find myself completely baffled, and utterly speechless. Peace cannot exist in a soul tainted with conflict. Since my last entry, every ounce of serenity I once indulged myself in has slowly deteriorated into naught but a crumble even an ant would not consider to be much. I am not so foolish as to think I can solve my quandary in a couple of hours, but I must start somewhere, and what better place to start than with the two things that separate us from the other creatures of this wet rock we call home?

I thought long and hard about my struggle with school work this year, and I think I have found the source of the problem. I am lost in a trance between 11th grade and university like this year which links the two does not exist. I find myself constantly thinking about what I am going to do after I graduate not what I am going to do in order to graduate. It's simple; the present exists but is masked by worries of the future and regrets of the past. So many there that by the time I am done worrying about the future and dwelling about the past, what was present would have become past, lost time that I spend the "now" regretting to have mislaid and planning not to again. I have fallen victim to a routine I have so far found impossible to escape. It is psychological, but I'm no shrink, and all the affairs of the heart have left me weak and weary enough to let my mind be overwhelmed by my relentless emotions.

Avoiding love's perilous clutches is impossible. Eventually, even the strongest of us shall fall victim to and live through the unyielding pain that comes along with it. I had given up on love, for she who stole my heart would not give up hers to compensate. I was heartbroken and depressed, but not going to let my feelings get the best of me. I was going to resist, and that is exactly what I did. Needless to say it was an ugly fight, but one that I ended to win; One that I won. Wars of the heart drench the soil with crimson sap, so although I prevailed, I do not know how much of myself survived. I wished I could have moved on to the next affair, but with love it is never that simple. Some how, she came back to me, and I experienced the most amazing time, and feelings I ever had. Sadly, it seems that some unearthly power thrives on filling my life with emotional turmoil. Backed into a corner with nothing else to do, she, who I can only describe as the most beautiful creature ever to walk this planet, and I, one humbled by the very fact that she knows I exist, were forced to separate. It is a cruel joke for two people to want each other but be kept apart by those who love them the most. It is even crueler for these people not to be able to look at each other for fear that the subdued pain of their separation would erupt and stab at them until they beg of their hearts to stop beating, or that is how it is for me. I do not know what I am feeling, have answers, or know what to do. What I do know is that ours is a barren road, at least until certain things, or individuals decide to let us through. So, there is nothing either of us can do to get what we want, each other. In that very fact lays the essence of my impasse. My mind, driven by the unwavering passion of my emotions, will not accept the fact that nothing can be done. I have come up with many a plan on how to make it work, but it seems no matter what I cook up, I find myself foiled by the same eight words that she said to me when we last talked. I loathe sharing these words, not because of what they are, for they are not as significant as you might think, but for the implications that they hold for me.
So, with so much on my mind, and a staggering inability to worry about one thing at a time, I have no idea how I am going to clean this mess up.

All I know is that every little thing is going to be alright, 'cause Bob Marley said so…

Veni Vidi Vici

His eyelids sprung open, however this time he did not panic. Sand or snow, black or white, blurry or clear, he was ready for whatever would be thrown at him next. He began to access his senses and could not help but let a smirk run across his finally relaxed face. It was not a desert or an arctic pole that he was laying in, but the comforting warmth of his bed and blankets. What felt like an eternity, was only two hours, for it had only been that long since he got into bed. He is only human, one, like any another, controlled by the ever consequential mind. He, she, you, all of them, and all of us have experienced turmoil. We all have our worries, but that is not the root of the problem.
The root of the problem is the trajectory of this notorious mind. We worry about the past and the future, but never about the present. Why is that? Why do we not worry about the time we are wasting, worrying? The answer to that lies in the eyes through which u see the world; what you identify as important, and worth worrying about. What is interesting about that is no matter the perspective you have of your world, it is without a doubt a selfish one. Why do we worry about our financial problems and not our neighbors'? Do I "deserve" to live a better life, or do I just "want "to? We are greedy, and it is because of that we are sad. We mourn, our dead relative or close friend; do we not want them to move on to a better place? Are we really mourning the fact that the person has died or the fact that "we" will not be able to see said person anymore? We face devastating anguish when we do not get what we want, no matter what it is, money, power, happiness, love, etc… Even when a friend has a successful relationship, we might feel envious. Does our selfishness know no boundaries?
Your selfishness is measured by your ability to mold your minds. You control your mind, and through it your emotions. The trick is to compare how good is coming out of everything in our lives. It's the same concept as value for money. Enduring pain for something you may not have is never the right thing to do. All you have to do is make a positive gesture, and if you're supposed to have it, it will come to you minus all the unnecessary pain and hard work.
However that is not what we do is it? No, instead we escape into our minds, falling in mental sand traps, facing confusion and unease, and trying to solve problems which exist only in our own minds. Sadly, we do not recognize that the way to escape the cruel reality that is our selfishness, is by teaching ourselves that happiness is not about having what we want, but wanting what we have.
We have concurred the world, yet we failed to concur ourselves.

A Gold Fish

The emptiness of the world around him bore a striking resemblance to the emptiness that lurked inside of him. Things started to fall into place. He knew all along that the wretched path he had taken would result in no less than disaster. The patterns around him were all too familiar. Yet, the only thing that he could think of was gold fish. Slowly, paranoia took hold of him. Had he turned into a fish? Could the transparent walls be the glass of which the aquarium was made? It certainly made more sense than not. The fluid paintings made sense once he took them to be people and furniture seen through his could-be fish eyes. Dazed from his interesting assumptions he was, that is until the long-expected chain of reason came back to him. How could he be in water when he was just embedded in the maw of the hungry earth? Not to mention that he had legs carrying his weight down a path of what felt like solid ground. The perplexity of his situation started eating at his nerves. He wanted answers and he wanted them now, so he started a one of a kind list. What I am he entitled it. An interesting concept, what was he? He was dead, he was saved, he was lost, he was a fish, he was a man, he was sad. Now, he cried. For love and hope, freedom and peace-peace of the mind, body, soul, and last but least the world- he cried. He cried for what felt like years on end. From fear and confusion, he cried. To God until his throat grew sore, he cried. Nowhere near ready to stop, he swallowed hard, then cried and cried some more. Desperate to contain himself, he lay on his side, grabbed his legs and rested his chin on his knees. His beard hung over his legs all the way down to his ankles. It seemed as though it had been many a year since he started crying. He dismissed the thought shortly after he had had it, in an attempt to clear his mind and calm himself. From there, he slowed his breathing and focused on his senses. The ground felt as soft as snow, and provided comfort ,with which he dozed off into the unknown that is his sub conscience, before he had a chance to interpret his other senses.