To Purchase Heaven on Credit

As my life has been consumed with truths and their counterparts recently, I figured that I would write something that has been on my mind. I cannot say that I have never dreamt of Hell nor wished for something below the beauty of Hope, but I have never assumed that I should be entitled to anything less than the fortitude of feral pain.

I dream every single night. Sometimes the dreams leave me awake in bed, sweating, my eyes scanning the room, looking for a balm to my terror. Other times I awake and try my hardest to re-enter the realm of slumber to continue the awe. I am almost to the point of praying for the former, as my love cannot fulfill my reality.

To put it simply: I hate all things Gold.

Philip Sydney described the Golden World as "the way the world aught be" (emphasis added). In other words, the Golden World is the world without pain, without despair, without disappointment, without sorrow, without crime; a world in which everything is good. A world of ideals.

But that world is referred to as the Golden World precisely because it is not this world. I am forced, then, to reject the concept of ideals.

In point of fact, I hate them.

I hate them because once one believes in them, they act as if they are real and then get hurt in the process because they are not real. Allow me to give you a illustration.

If this were a Golden World, there would be no terrorists. But there are terrorists, so this is not the Golden World. But some people act as if this world were. So they say that we should just forgive the terrorist for killing 3,000 "innocent" people on September 11, 2001. They refuse to allow Americans to racially profile, or discriminate in any way at airports, sea ports, the U.S. border, etc. because they believe in the ideal that all people have certain "rights." But acting in such a manner only enables the wicked to continue their pogrom.

Now I believe in having rights. But they are NOT inalienable. 

Allow me to repeat that: your rights are conditional.

You, as an American citizen, as a human being, can lose your rights. This is not a popular thought, but a very real one. We see it in everyday life: if one commits a felony, that person loses his or her right to vote, carry a firearm, etc.--these "rights" that we feel we are entitled to.

In the same way, we can lose our rights of humanity. Aristotle makes the point that we are what we do.  I am a murderer if I murder. I am a father if I have a child. I am a jerk if I act like a jerk. So to act in ways that are strictly indicative of animals, or non-humans in general, then for all intents and purposes, I am an animal (or non-human). Terrorists have forfeited their rights as human beings. Therefore, they no longer constitute as "human beings."

"Wow, Luke, you are a bigot and a racist and a horribly close-minded person!"

Trust me, I know.

The problem is that approximately 6,000 years of history (including the Bible and other such jems that people really like to mis-interpret to fit their own beliefs) says the same thing. And perhaps the reason why there are so many problems today--even though most people like to think that our generation is so much more enlightened that those in the past--is due to the fact that so many people believe in ideals, in the Golden World, and they think this is it.

Make no mistake about it, it is not.

So many people get married because they believe in the ethereal idea of "romantic love," that is, the belief that if you love someone, you can brave any fire and come out unscathed; scale any mountain without fall; and overcome any obstacle. This action (marriage) based upon such an ideal (romantic love) would work in the Golden World.

But not here; not in this world, the real world. Here, such behavior results in divorce, familial hatred and lost friendships. We cannot let ideals stand in the way of us acting according to reality. We must not if we want to be effective in this world.

Now, it is time for me to rest. I truly cannot tell you what kind of dreams I will have, or if I will even make it though the night, but I promise you that my love for you will grow this day more than the last and more tomorrow than today. I can promise this because I do not believe in the Golden World. If I did, then I would have to conclude that the love I have for you cannot continue to grow and will never actually see the light of day. If all love is perfect, how can people commit such brutal crimes against each other, against their own families and friends? But this isn't the Golden World, so I can still believe in love. True love; a love that can grow and a love that can die.

But love can only grow in the Fallen world. My world. Your world.

Make no mistake: in a perfect world, none of this would need be said.

Perspective

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Every morning he opens his eyes. He quivers, trying not to think about all the images that will pass before his eyes that day. The only beautiful vision he has is that of the Sun rising, and even that passes too quickly to enjoy.

He doesn't like breakfast, but he eats it. Usually just enough to fill his stomach; either way it's meager. He watches the dead bodies on television and listens to the protests. He wonders where his family is at such an early hour.

On occasion, he entertains the idea of going back to bed, wrapping his arms around his second pillow as if it were a body. That fantasy never lasts long. He does not enjoy delusions. He wants a better world. A world full of flowers.

Lavender. His favorite. He passes a patch of it from time to time while traveling. He always admires it, but doesn't stop anymore. Only once, when he picked some for girl. He stopped that practice after she rejected them.

He doesn't know how but he always makes it through the day. Some are better than others. In some he's able to laugh. In others he merely cries. In all he pretends. But his eyes always tell the truth. They alone contain the mystery.

Soon, he will go back to bed. His eyes have seen enough. He desperately tries to erase the images from his mind. He fails. He can't close his eyes or he'll see them. Sketched upon his eyelids. So he holds them open until he falls asleep.

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Can you imagine what it would be like to lose everything you have? Not just the obvious things, like your car, your job, your home, your friends; but the truly important things: inspiration, fulfillment, purpose, and hope. Everyone gets depressed; and everyone is the hero of their own story: that is not what I am talking about.

Here's what I'm talking about:

In December of 1991, a baby girl was born to a single mother on the streets of Paris, France. The mother was an American college student living with her aunt and uncle for a year. At a party one night, she met a handsome guy with whom she ended up having sex. Eight weeks later she found out she was pregnant. She chose to give birth to the baby with the intent of putting it up for adoption.

Three months before she came back to America, overcome with shame and the ridicule of her aunt and uncle, the mother, instead of giving the baby to an adoption agency, placed the one month old baby girl in a garbage can in a back alley of Paris.

A homeless man, looking for food, found the baby. Thinking he could use the baby as a means of sympathy to get food and money, he decided to keep her. The girl was raised on the streets, abused in countless ways--was malnourished and sickly--until 2002. At the age of ten, the girl turned to an orphanage for help. Within a few months the girl was adopted by a family of four: a middle-aged set of parents and two teenage boys. The entire family was drug addicted and quickly got the 10 year girl involved.

By 2005, at 13 years old, the girl somehow managed to track down the aunt and uncle of her mother. She found out how she was conceived and born and what had been done with her. The aunt and uncle, torn apart by guilt and sympathy, tried to get the girl to live with them.

The girl refused. She ran away from her adopted family, but was still addicted to cocaine and meth. In an attempt to get more drugs, she was attacked by two teenage boys. She ended up stabbing one in the throat, killing him, but could not fend off the other. Two months later, the girl found out that she was pregnant. Even at 13 years old, the girl could not stand the thought of bringing a child into the world to live as she had.

Just as the bump on her stomach began to form, she took a metal pipe and beat her stomach until it was bleeding.

The baby was never born.

In 2006, at 14 years old (FOURTEEN YEARS OLD!), the girl wrote a little letter on a blue-lined piece of paper, tucked it inside her shirt, placed the barrel of a military issue pistol to her head and pulled the trigger. No one knows where she got the pistol.

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This girl could have been saved. She said in her suicide letter that the only reason she killed herself was because she had killed the baby inside of her and that justice demanded that her life be taken as well. She also said this: "I'm sorry that my mom didn't love me even before I was born, I wish I could have been better. I'm sorry to all the people that I hurt, and I hope the ones that hurt me get better...I hope everyone who is worse off than me gets help too." (For clarity purposes, I fixed all grammatical errors). This girl had been pushed to the brink of humanity, and somehow, she managed to retain it.

The next time you think you have it hard because you lost your job, or your best friend lied to you, or your parents yelled at you, or you feel lonely: understand one thing and one thing only: you are blessed, and you don't deserve what you have, and if you are that self absorbed in yourself to think that you should be the center of the universe, than I'm sorry. The little girl would probably agree that you have it "worse off" than anybody else...

I just hope your humanity isn't too big a price to pay.

Who is the What and Where is the When Why?

Nothing seems to be easy anymore. Do you remember those days when everything was as simple as pushing a button or pulling a lever? Summer vacations held nothing more than free time to hang with friends, watch TV, play video games, go to the movies, etc. Even school was merely an exercise in patience--because once that bell rang, responsibility disappeared into thin air. Sure, there was some homework, but really what was the worst consequence of not doing it?

The term 'child's play' refers to any task or performance that is simple and easy to accomplish, as in, "Wolfgang, riding a bicycle is child's play. You shouldn't have fallen over 46 times in a row. I mean, your 38 years old!" But I want to make an addition to the meaning: the implication of freedom. Yeah, riding that bicycle may be easy to master, but when was the last time anyone over the age of 20 had the time to go out and ride one? When was the last time you had the time to go run through your neighbor's corn rows? Or build a treehouse? Or go night swimming?

Maybe you have to ride a bike to work because you don't have a car and it's only a quarter of a mile. Maybe you had to run through your neighbor's corn because the cops were chasing you after discovering 300 pounds of heroin in your bathtub. But that's not what I'm talking about here.

I'm talking about leisure.

Children have little else but leisure. The world does not stop rotating if a child decides to sit in a grassy field for 14 hours and guess what shape the clouds are making. Nobody suffers when a child dedicates 12 hours a day for two solid weeks building a fort made exclusively out of snow (complete with an arched entryway and ceiling, I might add!). And no one loses sleep when children moll about the playground discussing the weird idiosyncrasies of the opposite sex (to this day, some of my friends and I are still not entirely convinced that cooties aren't real).

In fact, I believe the opposite is true: Adults DO suffer from NOT participating in 'child's play' activities. Adults whittle their lives away trying to pay for a place to live and food to eat and clothes to wear; they suffocate themselves in pursuing fanciful pie-in-the-sky reveries of success and, to be quite honest, trivial ideologies that amount to a modicum of moral or social value.

Here's my point: Saint Paul said that when he was a child, he spoke like a child and acted like a child, but when he became a man, he put away childish things. He's right. Adult's cannot, I repeat, cannot do the things that children do; not, at least, if they want any form of society to exist. Such is the sobering nature of life.

For the Youth: Enjoy your life to the fullest. Don't destroy yourself with drugs; don't waste your time with work; and whatever you do, stay the hell away from sex--it's perhaps the only act in this world that can immediately take away your innocence and make you an adult against your will.

For the Adults: Our lives are over. I hope you enjoyed your childhood. Clench your teeth, grind into life and for hell's sake, make sure you remain moral, as getting to the end of life and finding out that you didn't make it would be the ultimate suck.

Whew, that's a hard reality. Okay, here I go. Good luck, everyone!

Tschuss!

The Importance of Zero

It's a tough thing; a tough thing, and odd. But not necessarily a bad thing.

While the mathematical significance of numbers is unquestionable, the emotional significance is no less monumental. Without the numbers 1, 2 and 3, I would not be able to count the spheres of people's eyes when, in a nominal situation to them, I am desperately biding my time, searching for an exit way. Without the numbers 0, 2, 3 and 6, I would be left to exigently seek a new system of word-codes. The absence of numbers would leave everyone vacant of the knowledge of birthdays, anniversaries, appointments, and schedules. Chaos would be captain of that ship. And these things are directly responsible for our emotional health. We find comfort in having schedules; we take pride in being punctual; we keep others happy by remembering birthdays and anniversaries. This knowledge is good for us, and it is dependent upon a system of numerals.

And we use people daily. We use our friends and family, our loved ones, our enemies, strangers, store clerks, employers/employees—everyone. And again, while this has the potential of evil, it is not so inherently.

Allow me to explain. The negative connotation to the verb "to use" in regards to relationships has become transient and nonsensical; everybody assumes it's a bad thing, but nobody really thinks about the meaning.

***Hypothetical Situation #1: A man dates a very attractive girl, not so much because he likes her for "who she is" but merely because she is attractive.

***Hypothetical Situation #2: A woman marries a wealthy man not because she is "in love" with him, but because she wants to have a safe place for her children and money can provide security.

Here's what I say: both of those situations are fine with me. I see no problem with them whatsoever. Relationships, after all, are all about what you have to give to the other person and what you can get out of them. Few, if any, people get into a relationship for no reason whatsoever. "Oh, I just feel like calling someone my boy/girlfriend today" is probably not an expression that has ever been muttered. Most want to squelch the pang of loneliness, or fulfill the instinct of matrimony, or satisfy some carnal hunger (hopefully the latter can be squelched in most cases). I want to be in a relationship for the companionship, the sharing of experiences with someone, the comfort of another's arms around me, the convenience of having someone help me with Life. A vast multitude of other things, as well. What I want to give: the same things back; as well as the protection of my furious fists, the experience to save them trouble and pain, the knowledge to make them comfortable and provide security with a home and a family and all the other beautifully barbaric necessities of Life.

So, am I "using" someone to get specific things? Are they not "using" me for the things they can get out of me?

Of course! If a female chooses me over some other guy, not because she likes me more, but because I can offer something they can't, I'm okay with that. And I think most people would be if the idea is couched in such terms. Use me for my love, and I shall provide it. Hence, the nature of relationships.

What, then, do numbers have to do with using people? Essentially everything. But track with me here. The number zero is circular and begins a sequence of numbers that continue into infinity. The number nine is a circle with a tail pointing south that, in symbol value, ends the sequence of numbers. The circle begins the sequence, and the circle grows a tail pointing south to end it. In the middle of the sequence are various shapes and dimensions that comprise the whole of the numerical system. Hopefully this is starting to make sense. Relationships begin with a promise, a pact. In other words, a circle. And relationships end in, at worst, a broken promise (a tine pointing south) and at best, a fulfilled death. In between one finds a plethora of shapes and sizes and eternal dimensions of shade. Without a pattern of numbers, no real happiness would exist in relationships, as well as no measure of success. We use numbers, we count on each other; we use each other and we number everything in life. I have had 1 relationship. That number will mean something to any future partner. And it will mean something very different from the number 9. At the End, we will view our lives and relationships as a series of numbers (I only swore 1,453,590 times); I loved my wife on each and every day of my life (298,914 days).

Count your blessings in Life, and never underestimate the importance of a circle--no other shape means as much: except, perhaps, a triangle.

Tschuss!