"Never be afraid of the future while you can still affect it."

Fidelity

"Fidelity is like driving: so easy to do, yet so many people still manage to fuck it up."

Optimism

Optimism without realism is insanity.

Reality

What if, in the very act of understanding reality, we change it, creating an endless cycle of understanding and variance that never reaches either the state of total understanding or total transformation?

Complaining

"Complaining doesn’t get you much in this world. Except someone telling you not to complain."

Revelation

"Tying shoelaces is quite possibly the only thing that’s harder to do to someone else than it is to do to yourself.”

Human Hands

I sat in church today staring at my hands and had a silly realization. These same two hands that have caressed have also brutally beaten. These same two hands that have created poems and art, have also destroyed bones and brick.

Then I looked at human hands in general. Human hands have done amazing and terrible things. The same human hands that painted the Sistine Chapel assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr. The same human hands that made Penicillin also made smallpox.

The power in human hands is unlimited.
Don't waste it. And don't abuse it.

To be a Realist

"To be a realist is to know that life and the powers that be are fully capable of chewing you up and spitting you out in ways that are beyond the scope of your imagination . . . and living your life anyway."

Purpose

Ignorance is rampant. But if ignorance is bliss, then why is everyone depressed? Some might say, because ignorance isn't MEANT to be bliss. But surely that isn't an adequate answer, because, just as surely, famine isn't MEANT to be so widespread. Genocide isn't MEANT to occur. The Nazis and Hitler weren't MEANT to take power and commit the atrocities they did. Surely there are many things that ARE, that are not MEANT to be. Is ignorance the exception or is it the rule?

Better yet, does it matter?

Take, for example, a car manufacturer's assembly line. Near the end of each car's assembly, the car is painted by a machine. For argument's sake, let's say that one particular car was MEANT to be blue, but due to unknown and uncontrollable circumstances, the car ends up being painted red instead of blue. One could say, "this car is red, but was MEANT to be blue," but in acknowledging that the car's intended purpose was to be blue, does one affect the actuality that it is instead red?

No, it doesn't; one could say, "that red car was MEANT to be blue" until one was blue in the face, and the car would remain red.

If, in being red, the car defies its intended purpose, similarly, in being bliss, does ignorance defy its intended purpose? And further, in simply being one way as opposed to the other, does one defy one's intended purpose?

In being, does one defy one's fate?

All of the previous supposition operates on the assumption that the person examining all of this believes in fate (which I do not), but entertaining the idea regardless, I come to the conclusion that without knowing one's fate, it is impossible to defy it with utter certainty.

Until one reads the cosmic book that holds the knowledge of all events and people past, present, and future, how can one know that one is not doing exactly as it foretells? It would be like playing a game you've never played before without it being explained to you beforehand; how could you know that you were or were not playing by the rules, if you didn't know the rules in the first place?