Posts tagged life

 ixthil said: Though quick aside, there may be only one fixed point soon-ish: birth. Death might go away depending on various things about how you feel about the singularity or just modern science and such. Anyway not disagreeing with life not being fixed.

Well, for right now there are two fixed points.  I’m not sure how I feel about eliminating death, though.  The singularity doesn’t hold much promise to me, because I believe that the brain is responsible for our consciousness and no matter if we copy ourselves to another thing, the we that is here, this us that is alive will still die.  It may be possible, with very careful and clever work to make the mind immortal without breaking continuity with the organic brain, since a person can lose a significant portion of their brain and still retain continuity, but that’s still a large hurdle to overcome.

The longer I live, the more I realize that I am fundamentally incompatible with other human beings.  Save, perhaps, for a select few willing to understand me without judgment.

There’s nothing quite like that sudden sinking feeling when you realize your furnace hasn’t come on and it’s less than fifty degrees out.

Except perhaps the elation of finding out there’s a reset button and having your furnace come back to life with a gift of air from it’s lungs.

I need to learn more about working on my own car

The only major thing I really regret is my meltdown some years ago.

It was unavoidable, really, in some respects. I had been under a lot of stress from high school and I was under a deep depressive and introverted streak, keeping all this bottled up inside. And then my girlfriend dumped me. That was the final straw and I went a bit nuts.

Looking back on it, I was a real dick to a lot of people and probably lost a few good friends in the process. I will always regret my behavior at that time, but I look back on it as a reminder of why I shouldn’t let myself get all stressed out like that and why it’s important to have people to talk to. Some good came out of it as well. The relationship I was in wasn’t really a healthy one and while it hurt to lose her, I think that was good for me in the long run. I also made one hell of a good friend in the process (she and I have been friends now for something like thirteen years) and learned a lot about myself as well.

Still… I kind of wish I could round all the people I was a jerk to up and apologize to them. Oh well.

Yeah, so you’re an Orc and you’re not that great with magic… but that doesn’t mean you can’t get better at it, that doesn’t mean you can’t learn it and do it.  You might never be as good as the Elves (who are born with latent magic skill) but there is literally no reason why you can’t be a mage, if that’s what you really want in life. It will be harder and there will be those who don’t understand your struggle, but if you really want it, you can be it.

So it is in real life.  I mean, it’s tempting to believe that everyone is equally able to do all things and that anyone can master any skill, but that’s really not true.  Some people are just better by nature at certain things than others.  Certain traits my be common along certain lines be they genetic or social, but really it’s a crap shoot, and you get the dice roll at birth.

But, like the Orc mage… just because you’re not born good at something or even born bad at something that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn it and do it.  Provided you aren’t saddled with a truly crippling disorder, provided you can learn, then you can be whatever you want to be.

That’s the great thing about being alive: You can change and you have the power to shape that change in the direction you desire.  So long as you live, you have hope to be that dream.

It hangs around, like a heavy shroud.
This woeful, waffling, Someday Cloud.

Someday, it says, you’ll be good with art.
Someday, it says, you’ll be truly smart.

It weighs me down, keeps me cowed.
This woeful, waffling, Someday Cloud.

Someday, it says, you’ll meet the one.
Someday, it says, you’ll have some fun.

It persists by day and waits my night.
Till aspiration and hope take flight.
All things, it seems are dim and far,
And all the answers it seems just are,

A Someday Cloud