This evening (I am writing this at 12:17 am) was pretty good. Sarah and I went out to Panera Bread for dinner, filmed silly dance videos, and watched Gilmore Girls (not too big a fan of that part). But as the evening progressed, I went into the quiet of my room and became overwhelmed out of nowhere with a terrible sadness. I didn't want to be in the house so I got into my car at 10:30 at night and drove down onto US-50 and drove west until I reached Rising Sun, Indiana. I got out and went to the river, sat down on a bench, and sat in the absolute darkness with the only sound that of passing cars and the water lapping against the rocks. And all I could think was, "Life teaches us lessons, and we'd better damn well pay attention." My life has taught me many lessons; through my experiences, I've learned the nature of things. Some deny this nature, and maybe they're right; but when your experiences confirm again and again your current perspective on things (and, mind you, my current perspective has not always been my perspective; in truth, my perspective has evolved and morphed and transformed, been shattered and rebuilt again and again). We perceive the world through the lens which we wear, and oftentimes our perception of this world is based not upon the reality of the world itself but upon what we want reality to be. For example: some people believe in a thing called Destiny. A fictional conversation from a book I've been writing illustrates this point:
The main character of this story is a reflection of my own belief: that there is no such thing as destiny. I used to believe in a thing called destiny, and that destiny fostered a thing called hope. And then when my pie-in-the-sky, happy-go-lucky perception of the world was shattered, I was bathed in a deep and gloomy darkness, and in that hellhole I went through cognitive dissonance: when our perceived reality does not match up with the reality presenting itself. When one experiences cognitive dissonance, there are three routes he can take. First, he can rebel: he can ingrain himself even deeper into the prison of his futile hoping and ignore reality, constantly reminding himself that things will get better and that great things are in store for him; and the one who does this will constantly find himself experiencing cognitive dissonance again and again, and if he does not persist in his rebellion, then he will embrace one of the other two courses. The second course is that of resignation: it is resigning oneself to reality in great despair, falling into the pit of helplessness and hopelessness; those who truly resign usually go out with a bang--literally--or a few slashes to the wrist. The third course is that of rebuilding: it is perceiving reality as it has presented itself and remolding and reshaping one's perception to fit better the reality that is presenting itself). I have taken the third course of action: I have rebuilt my perspective on things into a perception that is more in keen with my experiences. And my perception is this: there is no such thing as fate, no such thing as destiny, and our lives pan out according to happenstance and the consequences of our actions and the consequences of the actions of others.
This is not an optimistic nor pessimistic perception of things. On the one hand, it is liberating--if there is no such thing as destiny, no such thing as fate, then we have a say in the matter as to how things will pan out. Of course, our say in the matter is offset by chance events and the "sayings" of others. On the other hand, it calls into questions the substance of our hopes: if we have been hoping in destiny, then we must find somewhere else to place our hope. When I first realized that my hope has often been placed in wrong places, it was devastating; when you spend eight years of your life hoping for something, and then realizing that the hope itself was ill-placed, and when you see the unfulfillment of that hope slapped in your face, it makes you rethink things. A person can hold this view--my view--and be pessimistic, and a person can hold this view and be optimistic. I fall somewhere in the middle (not a "realist", I hate how the term is used; I don't know which term to choose).
I would be naive if I thought that my current review would remain with me forever. I may have more experiences that will cement this view in my mind, or I may have experiences that totally bring this view crashing to the ground. But this is my current view, and while I was at the river's edge, sitting on that bench, I realized that I have been foolishly placing hope in something ridiculous, that I have been like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand to avoid seeing what really surrounds me. My life has taught me lessons, and I'd damn well better pay attention.
He had told Camille, There is no such thing as fate. There is only choice, and the consequences of our actions and the consequences of the actions of others. There is no guiding light in anything. Our lives pan out not due to what the stars have written for us, not for destiny, but they pan out according to our decisions and the decisions of others, and their affects on us. He had spoken so eloquently, and when he talked with her sometimes imagined himself behind a podium, dressed in a gray suit and black tie, speaking before an audience of naive children overcome with the ideals of destiny and fate, ideals pressed forth by Disney and cartoons. He had continued, Destiny is an escapist tactic. It is what we use to console ourselves. When life does not go according to plan, we tell ourselves that our destiny is much better, and we convince ourselves to be patient and persistent. Camille had told him that she believed in destiny, and he had been enraged. She had been genuinely surprised at his anger when he had leaned over the table and said, How can you believe that? Anyone who actually observes the world can see it's nothing but a lie. Rape, murder, genocide. You say your destiny is good. What about everyone else's destiny? What about the destiny of the little girl whose father molests her, and she turns to sexual deviance out of trying to overcome that and gets AIDS and dies? What about the destiny of the young woman who is chopped to pieces by her husband? What about the destiny of the hundreds in Africa who are slaughtered because of their ethnicity? Where is destiny for them? Camille had dropped the subject, and he had leaned back in his seat and gripped his soda with white-knuckled fingers. She didn't press the issue, had changed the subject, but he continued to fume. When everything started happening, and when his entire family fell ill but he was left alone, and when he walked the streets amidst the caravans carrying the dead, and when he smelled the stench of the burning corpses, and when he walked through the hospitals with the sick lining the walls, someone had told him, an elderly woman clutched in the vice of her last moments, Fate is sparing you. And at that moment he wondered if he was being smitten for his own arrogance, for his own refusal to believe; and he wondered if there were such a thing as fate; and he became convinced that if there was such an animal, it was not a pie-in-the-sky and happy-go-lucky beast, but rather a cold-hearted whore.
The main character of this story is a reflection of my own belief: that there is no such thing as destiny. I used to believe in a thing called destiny, and that destiny fostered a thing called hope. And then when my pie-in-the-sky, happy-go-lucky perception of the world was shattered, I was bathed in a deep and gloomy darkness, and in that hellhole I went through cognitive dissonance: when our perceived reality does not match up with the reality presenting itself. When one experiences cognitive dissonance, there are three routes he can take. First, he can rebel: he can ingrain himself even deeper into the prison of his futile hoping and ignore reality, constantly reminding himself that things will get better and that great things are in store for him; and the one who does this will constantly find himself experiencing cognitive dissonance again and again, and if he does not persist in his rebellion, then he will embrace one of the other two courses. The second course is that of resignation: it is resigning oneself to reality in great despair, falling into the pit of helplessness and hopelessness; those who truly resign usually go out with a bang--literally--or a few slashes to the wrist. The third course is that of rebuilding: it is perceiving reality as it has presented itself and remolding and reshaping one's perception to fit better the reality that is presenting itself). I have taken the third course of action: I have rebuilt my perspective on things into a perception that is more in keen with my experiences. And my perception is this: there is no such thing as fate, no such thing as destiny, and our lives pan out according to happenstance and the consequences of our actions and the consequences of the actions of others.
This is not an optimistic nor pessimistic perception of things. On the one hand, it is liberating--if there is no such thing as destiny, no such thing as fate, then we have a say in the matter as to how things will pan out. Of course, our say in the matter is offset by chance events and the "sayings" of others. On the other hand, it calls into questions the substance of our hopes: if we have been hoping in destiny, then we must find somewhere else to place our hope. When I first realized that my hope has often been placed in wrong places, it was devastating; when you spend eight years of your life hoping for something, and then realizing that the hope itself was ill-placed, and when you see the unfulfillment of that hope slapped in your face, it makes you rethink things. A person can hold this view--my view--and be pessimistic, and a person can hold this view and be optimistic. I fall somewhere in the middle (not a "realist", I hate how the term is used; I don't know which term to choose).
I would be naive if I thought that my current review would remain with me forever. I may have more experiences that will cement this view in my mind, or I may have experiences that totally bring this view crashing to the ground. But this is my current view, and while I was at the river's edge, sitting on that bench, I realized that I have been foolishly placing hope in something ridiculous, that I have been like an ostrich sticking its head in the sand to avoid seeing what really surrounds me. My life has taught me lessons, and I'd damn well better pay attention.
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