the meaning of life

I'd be surprised if their was anyone who at one point or another in their life hadnt asked themselves what the meaning of life is. I know i have spent many a long nights, sometimes happily sometimes in tears over trying to and sometimes figuring out parts to that question. I think that even if you feel you know what the "meaning of life" is or you know your meaning in life or you just think their is no meaning, i feel thinking and contemplating about that question still has many benefits. I think it can clarify what does motivate you, and really give light to how you view life and basically why you do or should do anything in life. In my research about this question, i really did have days where i would be crying because of the uncertainty and lack of security i had when i had fully let my guard down to explore this question. I guess i was raised to never ask that question, or i guess i was just raised to have this assumed meaning and all my goals i were chasing and everything in life i was doing was following this assumption. When i decided to question this assumption, shit really hit the fan. I dont know if i just have a knack for philisophical thought and reasoning, or if just some long serious of events in my life led me to need to reason and find truth and be analytical about everything, but i really began a long process of searching then. There definetely is a spiritual/religous answer/part to this question (ill talk about my religous journey beliefs in another blog) and that can give you a variety of answers. I at the time hit this unsurpassable break between this one viewpoint and one meaning and this other view. I was at the time believing and doing everything it said in the bible, and there was this one book, cant remember now, where they talk about everything being meaningless, and that you must totally commit yourself to God because everything else is meaningless other than that. After thinking about this i really could understand what it meant. However i had a hard time giving everything up and had this other competing view that said that life had no meaning, just do what you want. This is the one that i explore more and i guess eventually led me back to end up holding some view relatively close to the first. A version of the just do what you want, and i think the way 90% of americans truly have answered the question is basically to say that the meaning of life is to be happy. Woah can i not accept this. Happiness is nothingness. I have looked and studied happiness long and hard, even before i really decided to look at this question and when i really decided to question my "assumption". I learned through seeing research and reading books that happiness cannot be bought. Happiness is not something that can be ultimately gained by material things. I also learned and experienced that long term happiness is much greater than many short term happiness, and that, i had felt, it is important to sacrifice some short term happiness to achieve this greater long term happiness. This could be seen with my success in Golf, i would give up the comfort and ease of watching TV or i would give up eating foods that would give the most happiness to eat foods that would help me acheive the long term happiness of winning golf tournaments. Then i realized when you start to look wider and broader and more long term you see that happiness means nothing, and even happiness as it is is something so hard to grasp. Sometimes all i would wish for in a world where i had created everything to be happy is a good cry or atleast a good reason to cry to feel some other deep emotion. Another thing i learned about happiness is that without sadness, without unhappiness there would be no happiness, and that we get used to a thing that causes happiness and then it no longer causes happiness. This fact along should make this a stupid pointless path to travel. But beyond that what is happiness....its like this momentary feeling. Happiness is experienced for breifest moment and then its gone and you have nothing to show for it. I mean what is that feeling anyways, i guess it is supposed to be good to have this feeling, but what is it when you look at it objectively and think about it its like just this frivilous stupid emotion, its nothing. And plus even if it is, or you feel it is, something it still doesnt change the fact that it is such a momentary thing. I mean like every thing that makes you happy has a certain time that it stays with you. Like eating a chocolate chip cookie, its like its great for the ten seconds you eat it, but then what, then its done, you cant have it back, you cant in any way hang on to the happiness that eating it induced. other things have longer ranges, like what i said before, winning a golf tournament, (but this specific example will be adressed and broken down in other blogs, basically sports is empty, hollow and shallow, i say) but even this will run out eventually or will not stay with you forever. And then of course comes death and all the happiness you have in the world could really mean less. Especially the shallow, but desireable happiness of being remembered....what does that even mean to you when your six feet under. Why does the thought of being remmebered and having their place in history sound so appealing to people. Your going to be dead, its not going to matter. I still find myself desiring that, desiring the notirity or just hoping that i am remembered or looked well upon, why, why, why why shouuld i care, i wont be able to know or appreciate this recognition when im dead. short term happiness, living your life minute by minute amounts to very little, living for long term, or true happiness amounts to just a little more than very little. On a 100 point scale of it actually mattering though in an objective way they are like .001 and point .002 respectively, and thats being generious becuase its most likey a 0. woah this blog needs a break, ill continue sometime else, i have to go pursue my little short term happpinesses like an animal and eat some chocolate, because i hopelessly instinctually tied to happiness

I wanna be a minority

the pride, the benefits, the community,the college, the job...the title of this green day song rings so true to me

walmart checkout

I was born and raised in Wisconsin, i now go to school in rural South Carolina. South Carolina can be a cold, lonely, chaotic place to a northerner who doesnt have a dog named buddy, a friend named bubba, and a truck that says git r' done. Don't ask me if i think Wisconsin is good place, because i will never be able to unbiasly answer that since i have a geneticly coded passion for the state which makes me believe it encompasses everything holy and good. Anyways i was in the walmart checkout line by myself on friday night and i started talking to a college buddy of mine in the line next to me and he was commenting on the 5 gallons of milk i had in my cart and asked if i was having a chugging contest, i told him how it was for my program (im an ra for a high school, i force kids to watch movies that i like by giving them donuts and milk, slowly brainwashing them to my point of view), and he said its impossible to chug a gallon of milk anyways. The guy in front of me 30-35 years old piped up about how he won a bet by chugging a whole gallon and said it is definetely possible, i was pretty astonished, and then everything after that is a blur.... just playin but then he, in this rural SC town with nothing but a college, said yea but im from wisconsin ya see...and i of course was like AWESOME and overreacted because of my genetic passion towards the 1 state and told him i was from wausau, he is from oshkosh and said he was down here becuase he was a paramedic or something. Yeah thats pretty much the story.....I am so wierd, that occurence at wal-mart made my day a happy one though, even if i am going to spend the night writing on this blog and then watching movies ive seen 100 times with high schoolers.

bretharian....interesting

So i was watching this show that i have been wanting to watch for a long time on FX. The show is "Starved" and the episode was about these people who for various reasons are choosing to starve themselves. They discusses breatharianism on the show and i really thought they were making it up. I then decided to check it out today on the internet and found all sorts of information about it. As the show states a breatharian is someone who believes, in general, that one can survive on air and sun alone, or atleast that at one time they could. Food was however just a bad habit that people have aquired over the year, the breatharian institute talks and explains more and more clearly about this on their website (http://www.breatharian.com/ . I was fascinated by this and by their rationales and outlook on things. I myself have gone on a 3 1/2 day juice fast (only had water and juice) and found myself feeling better, cleaner, more aware, and surprisingly with more energy (however i admit that i dont know how much if any of this was psychologically based). I guess the thing that pisses me off the most about the show and the movement is just the reaction it gets from most people. There is really not to much that makes me more angry than hearing people ignorantly put something down. I can maybe understand you just not being interested in hearing about it, but most people when approached with the idea of breatharianism would, without learning about it, put it down and laugh at it. I didnt look at the show as necessarily doing this, however it was somewhat negative about the idea. But i guess just the idea that people are so easy and quick to closemindedly put things down makes me mad. I think the best trait someone can have is to be openminded. Now i myself have been told that i need to be more openminded, and this in the correct sense of the word probally has truth (see middle of blog about grammar, before you call me a hypocrit), but what pisses me off is when others misuse this word. Some people believe that being openminded is nothing other than just having the same views as them, and these people dont even deserve being talked about. There are others however that see there being a contradiction between holding a view at all and being openminded. I could almost contend that to truly, honestly, deeply hold a view you would have to be openminded. The openminded person considers possibility and after trying as hard as they can to unbiasly adresss the stiuation takes some kind of a stance, yes sometimes that stance is a complete IDK, but sometimes it is a well this seems most correct, or even ok this is the right way.

amusion

As you will see by reading my blogs, i am very amused by the world around me. I think this amusion (dont think its a real word), all sprouts from my early high school years, when i was fascinated by happiness and how to get happiness. I thought, like i have over a thousand times, i had figured out the exact meaning of the universe and my life when i realized that (as i think the great philosopher sheryl crow has said) Its not having what you want its wanting what you got. Like if you allow yourself to see the beauty in the small things the things you have the natural things and be content with these things you will find happiness. If you can get yourself to find ammusement in your everyday or (for me at that time) academics it will make your life much easier, happier, better. This outlook was very beneficial for me and i saw how easy it was to control your mind and how much you could make yourself feel something. I allways had a friend that said feelings just are, you cant change them. This is probally true to some point, but he lived his life by animalistically following his feelings, "not a life worth living" as socrates would say. Anyways this theory of amusion has led me to become fascinated with the nature of humans, what we really need to survive, why we are happy when we are.....etc... Im pretty much obsessed with finding out things that relate to that. That is probally why i like the idea of bretharianism so much........see next blog

Grammar

One thing that has really been annoying me is people using bad grammar. I first started to get really annoyed by this when I noticed a teacher (who has her doctorate) that i have and think is terribly ineffective and unintentionally negatively influencing students, uses bad grammar. Like in most of my classes i got all riled up. How could this lady be as strict as she is and condescendingly scold everyone unjustly for things that she just feels are inappropriate, when I have met 5th graders that can speak better than her. Now I generally hate it when people call others hypocrits, or use the word hypocrit at all (yes i use this word alot, and i guess that would mean im a hypocrit), I mean there are valid times that this word can be used however I think people should be trying to do the very best and should only condone and expect out of others the very best. I can say that you should do things right, but thats not saying that i think i do them right, what someone thinks should be how things, themselves are is not always what they really are (a sad, sad fact). Another way/reason that i feel the word is misused, is becuase people can and should change their views on things in light of new perspectives and information, yet i myself have been called hypocritical becuase one day i say that i think something is like this, and then when i see something differently and/or am in enlightened by new information and change my view i see something differently. If this is hypocritical, then hypocracy is a much needed practice. Anyways i think i started this blog talking about grammar, if anyone reads these blogs i should let you know this does and will happen alot. I guess i was talking about hypocracy in light of me using bad grammar and seemingly condemning or getting annoyed by others using the bad grammar, i also started talking about it becuase this is not necessarily what drives my dislike of this teacher or my annoyance of bad grammar in general (maybe, however, it is and i just dont want to admit it). I generally feel there is no place in society for things like professionalism (as it relates to wearing a coat and tie), manners (outside of the essential ones that disturb others directly (not disturbing them becuase thye just dont like them)) and even about strict language rules (if the point is gotten accross good enough). But with language rules and communication i do see the need of a more formal accurate way of presenting ideas. Words as it is are already fake and already a deviance from the true object they represent (ill probally write about that alot in other blogs). There are real reasons for correct grammar, bad grammar can mean a different meaning to the sentence. It is however strange how annoyed i have gotten from this bad grammar. I mean why do i get so annoyed, there are other much bigger much more important things wrong with the world, society, humans in general than bad grammar. Also it got me thinking about how I of course feel that i have good grammar and can be understood clearly generally because i have only heard things through my grammar. I do however think my grammar is closer than that teacher's to the one-universal set of strict grammar rules that each language must have. Luckily not that many people have grammar that is much lower than what i am used to and therefore i am not as easily annoyed by this. What about the people with absolutely stellar grammar, they must get terribly annoyed by me and the other 95% of english speakers that have grammar that is much much worse than theirs. I guess they probally are able to get used to eventual, or like a friend of mine don't get used to it and transfer their annoyance to you by correcting you for every minute grammar infraction. The inadequency of good grammar and lack of proper adherence to a set of strict communication rules by not only people coming out of high school but also poeple with their doctorate shows a very serious problem with our educational system and i feel severely hinders our progress.

Welcome

Welcome to my blogspot. I don't really know who i am adressing this to. I suppose I am doing it for myself, for clarity and revelation about myself. Of course i want people to read it, but I'm not writing it in that way. I guess I just want to say what im thinking and hope that it relates to someone or maybe relates and makes sense to me some time else. I am anxious and curious to hear what people think about what i have to say and there criticisms, good and bad. Enjoy, I hope you like it, or maybe even better, i hope you don't and then tell me why!