So we have all heard the analogy that is, "The Tapestry of Life". Have you ever stopped to wonder how absolutely amazing that metaphor really is?! I mean, everything in life, everything we eat, breathe, do, and interact with makes up this tapestry. Each thing, moment, person, and event is a thread woven through to create you and me.
Now that is easy, but we can expand on this even more...
If we say that the above is true, then the beautiful part is that with the absence of any single, little, minuscule thread, the entire creation would cease to be. The essence of everything that we are is destroyed. By denying life we choose to be apart from it. From denying memory, we choose to kill a piece of ourselves. That goes for all memory, not just the good or the bad times.
People find it easy to remember the good times and the painful times. Both are extremes but in the end they are all the same thing. The great moments are just terrible moments in disguise and vise versa.
Pain is only weakness escaping from the body.
Pain is the most direct way to know you are alive...(No middleman required)
So is pleasure. Whenever we...well...snatch life out of the jaws of a little death, if you know what I am talking about, we do just that. We live. Not only are we living at that time, but we are accomplishing what our bodies were built to do. We are beings that were made to procreate and survive. At that moment, we are truly human.
Remember all those times, from the most amazing to the most painful. The only fool is the one who does not learn and grow from his mistakes. Well, I guess I am not really going anywhere else with this. Memory is important. Without it, the blanket of who we are is immolated.
This is why dianetics (and henceforth Scientology) is not a good thing. This is a belief system that willfully and conscienceless destroys those things that make you the beautiful, wonderful, interesting human that you are. It is an injustice to all good things in this world.
Our memories our what allow us to remember history and learn from it. We need to grow and attempt to learn from the beauty of love and the horror or war.
The modern genius Tom Waits
once wrote, "I will tell you all my secrets, but I will lie about my past."
Our personal past is an amazing thing. The thoughts, memories, dreams, and accomplishments are the little things that we have which no one can ever take away from us. In effect, the only person who can control those things is yourself. You have every right to block out whatever memories or regrets you may have. It is not the way I'd recommend, but it is one way to live.
I believe in openness. I believe in telling people about all of my sins or acts that are less than reputable because hopefully someone else can learn from my mistakes and errors. This is why I have been a decent councilor for people. I have made a lot of mistakes in my life, as we all have, and I do not wish to lie about those things. I see no purpose if lying, forgetting or hiding those facts. If we do forget, then all those mistakes were in vain. Use those things, those acts or sins and learn from them. Use everything bad you have ever done to evolve and create a better person from them.
I understand certain things that people like to hide though. I know how sometimes you may not want certain things as public info because of our chastising, non-forgiving society and the way it looks at certain things.
It is fucked up for us to take the past and hold it against someone, especially when that person goes above and beyond to correct their actions. I am speaking right now with a certain person in mind. Anyone remember Tookie Williams? He was the man who started the gang wars in L.A. and all that. Many people died because of what he created, but he learned from it. He spent 25 years in prison, educating himself, denouncing the gang lifestyle, and writing books to educate others on the horrors of the gangs and other options. He spent many years doing good for the world in an attempt to make ammends for the wrong he released onto the world. Then we, as a group, had the option to not kill him, but to let him spend the rest of his life in prison where he could never harm the public again and attempt to do more good, but instead we chose the way of bloodlust and hate. We did not forgive, even though he could never injure society again and he in fact did a ton of good in return, we still were not happy until we killed someone. Mind you, I am not trying to defend his actions, but put them into perspective.
When we commit someone to the death penalty, we have decided to play the role of executioner. Acts such as that only tend to perpetuate a cycle of hatred and violence. I do not fault the people who wanted him dead. I only feel sad for the fact the people still cannot live happily until someone dies. It is a pathetic excuse for what we call "the most advanced species on the planet".
If this is the most evolved, then I want off this fucking rock...
These are things that I remember. These are things that make me who I am. As much as I wish that we could live in a world where education and honesty was paramount, we don't, but everyday we should be attempting to use history and memory as a tool to future enlightenment. People will always have selective hearing, choose what to know and how to interpret that knowledge, but as long as we take time and effort to evolve and better ourselves, then each day we will be one step closer to truth. Each day we will be more human and less of a talking monkey.
We think of ourselves as the top, but if there are higher beings out there, then we are nothing more than talking monkeys to them. The late, great Carl Sagan once wrote about Earth as nothing more than a "Pale, Blue Dot
" in space. He was not putting us down, he was attempting to teach people that there is more in the universe than our squabbles over land and oil. Maybe it is time for us as people to stand up, accept our dark sides and grow into what we could be. Memory is the key to all of that. I will end this post with Carl Sagan's words. Anyone that knows me has probably heard me talk about this speech on multiple occasions. I like to remember it because it is still poignant after all of these years. Remember, he is give this speech in the context of the famous picture of Earth from millions of miles away.
Carl Sagan:From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
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