Neal was here

Every now and then, I see people crying and wish I could live that hard.

To live that in-the-moment such that emotions can grab control and really, really let you live. To free you from the self-evaluation and self-awareness that limits you to acceptable behaviour. This, to me, is to live.

I’ve had a few of these moments, albeit few and far between and usually involved hurt quite deep, and usually a ridiculous physical activity, such as punching my car, or walking 4 miles at 1am, and usually involving a girl. But in those rare moments, I truly feel alive.

The rest of the time is spent just avoiding life because it might sting.

[ image yoinked from http://www.paperheart.org/imtoosad/ ]

Your friends will find other friends. They will from time to time prefer to hang out with other people. You will be the odd man out. You shifted in, you’ll shift out. It might hurt.

Does that mean we shouldn’t invest in our friends?

The catholic Anglican church is trying to apologize for critisizing Charles Darwin and his evolutionary theory.. Still haven’t decided how I feel about that. Darwin’s descendents think it’s a futile effort to ‘make themselves [the church] feel better’ (from the article).

I applaud the church for realizing that they misunderstood the theory, and apologizing for hurting the reputation of Darwin via that error. I don’t, however, think they should apologize for disagreeing with him. Even if one side is wrong, debate and disagreement is what verifies truth.

The church, from the article, also states that the teachings of Christianity and the teachings of Darwin are not in disagreement, and I’m not 100% sure on that. A literal interpretation of Genesis is clearly in disagreement, so the questions then becomes whether Genesis should be taken that literally. That’s a debate that I cringe to enter.

amendment: it’s the anglican, not catholic. entirely different story. thanks for the clarification, phil.

[don't gasp]

We’re finding out as a culture that all of our sexual ‘liberty’ is not necessarily making us happier or more progressive. Turns out we’re just getting more distant, less satisfied, and more depressed.

Men less hungry for real sex due to pr0n.
“Not Tonight, Honey. I’m Logging On.”

What better argument can you make? God knew what he was doing when he set up the moral principles we know and [as a society] seem to despise occassionally.

On the slightly more humorous side, Smarter kids do it less. If I remember right, it’s these kids who wish they were dumb enough to indulge. Or, again proof of the Idiocracy principle.

I have weeks or months where I can surrender myself to what needs to be done at the cost of what I want to do. The reality of life comes in with a thunderous roar and demands surrender. The weight of the implications of simple choices crushes down like a whale on an ant. And yet, the guerilla inside me refuses to completely let go. To lose oneself to the ideal of maturity feels an empty endeavor. I long to explore; I pine for new experiences in sights, location, personalities, and sensations. So periodically I will break away from my best interest and indulge. Such a battle it is that rages inside between the elation of fullfilled whim and desire and the longing for stability and maturity. The pursuit of ‘best interest’ and the conscience of knowing what is right fights mightily against youthful exuberance and willy-nilly thinking. Perhaps growth is an accurate satisfying of both, knowing that strict rigidity produces painful legalism, whereas unbounded indulgence truly never satifies anything.

But to pursue long-term good requires faith and patience. Faith that your desires will be fullfilled in a more meaningful way via the long route, and patience to wait for their fullfillment. Testimony of those who have gone before affirms that faith and patience are not ill-rewarded.

But to pursue long-term good requires faith and patience. Indulgence reqiures nothing. Maturity requires sacrifice your immediate desires; your present. Immediate satisfaction requires a sacrifice of much more: it requires you to sacrifice your future.

addendum:
Hebrews 12:1 – “.. let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Contrary to what might seem intuitive, satisfaction is not found in the abundance of pleasure. Neither is meaning. In these pleasures, we find only that what we expected to be satisfactory is, in fact, not only incapable of satisfying the need and multiplies the desire itself. The good things of life are merely allusions to a deeper good, and the cavity in our soul that creates this infinite, often misunderstood, longing can not be filled by the mere finite pleasures of this life. Only an infinite pleasure can fill an infinite void, and to accept anything less is to settle for mere fractions of what true satisfaction can deliver.

I am becoming more and more convinced of this fact, but have yet to fully know, in the Biblical sense, this truth. To let go of a trivial good in the hope and promise of a bigger good can be a difficult thing.