Ubuntu
I feel like retiring this LJ, it really does me no good.
Today is my brother's birthday, so I called him up to see how the big day had gone. He was pretty glum for a 12-year-old. He hadn't received any of the things he wanted as gifts, and I can remember how that was always a disappointment when I was that age. But there have been better birthdays and there will be better ones to come, as my mom told him. Hopefully his day was a little bit better after the phone call though. It's no fun expecting so much and receiving so little, whether it's birthday presents or anything else. His personality is strange for a kid his age. He's very generous with his money, and has no problem dropping all the cash in his pocket just to see someone else smile. I admire him for that, and in a weird way try to emulate it. He can't see that other people sometimes don't act that way, sometimes it's more complicated than that or it's just not in their nature to open up like he can. He sounded pretty empty on the phone. Although I have a few years on him and realize that the material things are secondary, I can completely relate to the feeling. Sometimes no matter how much you put in, you don't get a damn thing out. C'est la vie.
Yesterday was my mom's birthday. I think her comment to my brother meant a little more than she let on. I made it home for her day, but life at home appeared the same as it always appears. A family of five all pulling in different directions can ruin even the best day. I've grown to appreciate it now, but it was still a little discouraging to see. When my brother and sister were finished complaining about various things while my dad and I were trying our best to make it a good day, I think she was pretty much ready to sleep it all off. It's got to be even more disappointing raising a family for the last 19 years only to be stepped on, on the one day it shouldn't happen. Generosity is met with emptiness again. I can't help but think there's a trend here. When you go through most of your life being judged and graded and assigned numbers that are nothing more than indexes in a massive list, trained to worry about yourself and not to feel for your fellow humans, told you must take a stand and reject all opponents, conditioned to maximize your own personal luxuries as they will later mark your status in society, although everything in you screams to get back to being human again, in the end nobody is there to be human with. And so that part of us becomes empty, we develop some kind of deficiency which we fill with ideals and labels and even God. But each of us is still so addicted to human nature that we combat that spiritual loneliness to the bitter end. We give it everything. And then some of us are so far gone that we simply don't try, we lock ourselves up and exist only on paper, a straight-A student here, a successful business owner there. The truth is, if our accomplishments win us a picture in the paper, nobody reading knows who the fuck we are, and so in essence we exist only in our creations, which don't mean anything to anyone. We are walking reflections of what we've been robbed of. Birthdays don't mean anything anymore. Birthdays are celebrations of life, and what has been created. They are celebrations of human beings and what roles they play in other humans' lives.
To me, freedom means that a hundred people can think in a hundred mutually exclusive ways and still get together like old friends. It means never having to settle or agree just to avoid confrontation. We have a Constitution that tells us what freedom is, and it's being chipped away daily. We feel trapped. It's time to revert to true human freedom, a freedom we have here and now. It's time to shout out against our own self-enslavement. The problem is, nobody's listening. And nobody gives a damn.
Today is my brother's birthday, so I called him up to see how the big day had gone. He was pretty glum for a 12-year-old. He hadn't received any of the things he wanted as gifts, and I can remember how that was always a disappointment when I was that age. But there have been better birthdays and there will be better ones to come, as my mom told him. Hopefully his day was a little bit better after the phone call though. It's no fun expecting so much and receiving so little, whether it's birthday presents or anything else. His personality is strange for a kid his age. He's very generous with his money, and has no problem dropping all the cash in his pocket just to see someone else smile. I admire him for that, and in a weird way try to emulate it. He can't see that other people sometimes don't act that way, sometimes it's more complicated than that or it's just not in their nature to open up like he can. He sounded pretty empty on the phone. Although I have a few years on him and realize that the material things are secondary, I can completely relate to the feeling. Sometimes no matter how much you put in, you don't get a damn thing out. C'est la vie.
Yesterday was my mom's birthday. I think her comment to my brother meant a little more than she let on. I made it home for her day, but life at home appeared the same as it always appears. A family of five all pulling in different directions can ruin even the best day. I've grown to appreciate it now, but it was still a little discouraging to see. When my brother and sister were finished complaining about various things while my dad and I were trying our best to make it a good day, I think she was pretty much ready to sleep it all off. It's got to be even more disappointing raising a family for the last 19 years only to be stepped on, on the one day it shouldn't happen. Generosity is met with emptiness again. I can't help but think there's a trend here. When you go through most of your life being judged and graded and assigned numbers that are nothing more than indexes in a massive list, trained to worry about yourself and not to feel for your fellow humans, told you must take a stand and reject all opponents, conditioned to maximize your own personal luxuries as they will later mark your status in society, although everything in you screams to get back to being human again, in the end nobody is there to be human with. And so that part of us becomes empty, we develop some kind of deficiency which we fill with ideals and labels and even God. But each of us is still so addicted to human nature that we combat that spiritual loneliness to the bitter end. We give it everything. And then some of us are so far gone that we simply don't try, we lock ourselves up and exist only on paper, a straight-A student here, a successful business owner there. The truth is, if our accomplishments win us a picture in the paper, nobody reading knows who the fuck we are, and so in essence we exist only in our creations, which don't mean anything to anyone. We are walking reflections of what we've been robbed of. Birthdays don't mean anything anymore. Birthdays are celebrations of life, and what has been created. They are celebrations of human beings and what roles they play in other humans' lives.
To me, freedom means that a hundred people can think in a hundred mutually exclusive ways and still get together like old friends. It means never having to settle or agree just to avoid confrontation. We have a Constitution that tells us what freedom is, and it's being chipped away daily. We feel trapped. It's time to revert to true human freedom, a freedom we have here and now. It's time to shout out against our own self-enslavement. The problem is, nobody's listening. And nobody gives a damn.