Can one put a value
on experience? Is knowing what drinking or smoking will do to you
worth that "five minutes of your life" when you tried them
just for the sake of knowing? I'm confused on what should be
considered valuable. Granted, we could all potentially drop
dead at any given time, but is that thereby an excuse to indulge?
Want does our experience grant us? Not necessarily anymore applicable
knowledge, but knowing and feeling apparently don't satisfy happiness
on the same plain. Is it perhaps better to forsake such
experiences aspiring to something greater; if there is such a thing.
It's killing me to actually start believing that people who smoke,
drink, try "just that one time" a certain drug or another
could really be understanding something greater about life that
eludes me. Are they even bothering to compare whatever it is they get
out of those activities to something better? If so, why bother
wasting time, money, and effort on something that isn't going to give
you the most out of life? Suppose your madly in love, are those
months or years which have been taken off your life worth it if they
would have instead been spent growing deeper in that love? Perhaps
there is a different sort of affection, a different love you can only
get from each sweet drag. Is there a different love in making catch
phrases like "insufficient cancer" with your friends to
mock the threat; some kind of love of one's work or family can't
touch?
After watching
Resident Evil of all things I start to think. The worlds essentially
getting there sooner or later and by that time who cares how quickly
you can degrade your body. It struck me as interesting to see the
characters still had time to put crosses over sandy graves. What is
this faith? The worse and worse things appear, the more grounded
people can become in it. Conversely, you don't believe any of it and
remain content doing whatever, secure in thought you're going to die
anyway. Either method to me, seems as though it's a back road. The
faithful can miss that job opportunity, move on from failed love,
find peace with death. The non-caring nonbeliever can say fuck the
job, she was probably a whore, let's party till we die. Isn't there
something huge missing from both routes? Actions and lives are being
excused,
not expressed. When something doesn't work its disregarded, degraded,
to the level of perhaps how the people view themselves. "I'll be
good enough in the next life, I'll be forgiven and happy then"
and down goes the immediate stress of the problem. "There's
nothing else to do, I really like it" and then who needs a fact
sheet from some truth guy or warning label. Is it not the allure of
feeling high or being drunk that's so tantalizing, but instead the
chance to find an excuse? Not just an excuse, but one you didn't have
to think hard about justifying. One that is reinforced and exalted by
95% of the people you will ever meet.
So now maybe we're
all just (good) excusers. Those that can handle the freedom do what
they want, those that can't find an institution to (help) them handle
it. I've no problem believing there are people of faith who don't
live within the excuses realm and are at the helm of why good things
get done. I've an even easier time believing that many more fit in
elsewhere. What are the non-believers options? Are there not just as
many who mirror the headliners of faith? Of course there are. So what
is so fundamentally different about these kinds of people that truly
keeps them at ends? I think the answer lies in the reward. The
religious person has something to answer to. They have consequences,
quite serious ones indeed, and for all their worth must fight to stay
on that track to heaven. The non-believer gets the feeling of being
righteous, good, and loving for their own
sake.
They get to wrestle with where and how knowledge fits in relation to
those things and not treat it as an endowed truth to frequent to the
masses.
I've heard enough
personal testimonies of how wonderful a certain pill is or how
uninhibited jungle juice will make you. I know how deep and
meaningful people talk about their "relationship" with
Christ and his overflowing love. Neither road would take me to the
level of experience I'm after because, both are used to excuse why
others aren't finding it.
