A thin red, nonexistent line

Two posts in a row...watch out, I'm back!

"There's a fine line between love and hate." "All's fair in love and war." Early in life we learn to associate many things we encounter by categorizing them. We break things into black and white only to learn further down the road that life is much greyer than we thought. The moments of lost innocence...

It is funny how we feel the need to see things along a spectrum, how our very understanding of the world around his hinders on positive and negative...right and wrong. It's with an understanding that not all things are exactly opposite that we can break out of our naive perceptions. We label this black and that white, not out of understanding of what black or white is, but out of necessity...the necessity of the imagined truth. Knowing, even thinking we know, is much better than the uncertainty of not.

To shorten a very lengthy philosophical debate...we perceive that love and hate are opposite. We see the results of both and thus have no doubt. But what of apathy? What of the complete lack of caring, even the lack of thought in the extreme cases?

Who the hell should care? Why is this even worth talking about? It's much better to fight something you understand, is it not? We understand hate to varying degrees because it is an outward expression...an agressive emotion and thus giving us more opportunity to experience it. But while hate destroys fomr the outside, apathy destroys from within.

Hardly any of us can truly claim to understand the grey areas of ourselves let alone the dark recesses of our souls. How then can we understand something that strikes out from those very places...something that drags our dreams, our ambitions, even our will to hells far worse than imagination can conjur. Hate then seems a very trivial thing...

We gain power by understanding ourselves and by coming to terms with who we are and what purpose we may serve. Then can we only defend against the lethargy of apathy. But to not be overconfident or simplistic...understanding only allows us a choice. Through choice we have hope. Because of our understanding...our grasp on our humanity we gain what was given to us...free will. But that, my friends, is a completely different discussion.

Feenix

Reality

Soft white foamy waves crest over the sunlit horizon. It's almost mid-day and the sand already feels warm underneath your bare feet...a contrast to the still colder water that splashes up unto the beach. A relaxed sigh escapes from your tightened chest...what is it about this peaceful place that keeps you on edge? It's only been a matter of minutes...maybe seconds but already the calm serenity of this place makes it feel like hours. Gusts of wind blow over the ocean, catching the leaves of the scattered palms and pulling them ever downwards. The wind carries with it the call of the gulls flying overhead and the spray of salt water you're somehow very familiar with. You dare to look back at the horizon to find the peaceful sky blotted out by a massive, falling ball of blue flame. 'This is the end of the world' you hear yourself say....you know, as you reach into your pocket to grab your phone, you only have time for one call...goodbye. The words barely pass your lips as the impact occurs. You stare breathlessly as the shock wave rolls over the horizon. What light there was fades in the moment the wave rolls over you....you wake up.

I know I missed my chance to comment on the elections...about how Rummy got the boot and many great things that happened between 'here' and 'there'. Don't worry those events have there place and significance.

The premise of what I wrote is simple depending on your interpretation. It might be simplistic or wholely the wrong way to view it, but I look back on my dream and see the duality of reality.
I'm sure the dream has more meaning than that but recently my thoughts have been consumed. Consumed by reality...Some people can't face the true reality of their situations...a reality that so closely parallels the truth of the world around them. Most of us, conscious of it or not, construct our own little realities...excluding the harshness...the brutality of the total truth. We find ourselves immersed in our imaginations, ambitions, greed, lust, etc...We're so immersed that we barely see outside the rapidly deflating bubble. We take careful looks outside of that bubble to the clouded, stormy outside world and run back into the warm fire of apathy and contentment convincing ourselves that this is all we need.

I don't claim to think we all are apathetic with what goes on in the world. No, we don't start out that way. I think we all see, at some point in our lives, the honest brutality of the real reality. The shock...the gore...the horror drives us away and makes us more than just timid to venture out again. Someone once warned me about finding the truth of things...he told me, "You can't unknow the things you learn. Once you know, you're stuck with it." So those of us that are stuck handle it or we don't. Most of us sedate ourselves in our private reality. My personal tools of sedating are a big cup of coffee, a good fantasy/epic story/myth/book, and a cigarette. Worse yet...sometimes it gets too much and we just shut down.

I'm not saying that everything bad comes from having a personal reality. That's what imagination is! It is when we seclude ourselves, abandon the outside world that our little bubbles begin costing us real things...rights, money, friends... Our bubbles cost us knowledge and without knowledge we're just ignorant. What we discover outside our bounds might frighten us. We may just discover our mortality...our insignificance...our helplessness...and in so doing we may just discover our humanity.


Feenix