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[acaelousque]

Nothing like a cold winter afternoon with snow up to the top of your boots to make you feel positively delighted about fixing a hawk someone ruined through misuse. Oh, for a little proper respect--maybe the new management will have more interest in things other than jostling for position

Comments

[just_irving]

... hey, who's to say lives are meaningless?

[acaelousque]

Who's to say they aren't?

[just_irving]

Well, I certainly think only each person is a measure of their own meaningfullness. I think my life has value.

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[acaelousque]

Oh, if it's going to be a war of I-think, you-think, we're not going to get anywhere fast.

[acaelousque]

Value to whom? You? You're a biased observer.

[just_irving]

Well... I think that the moment we're born, our life has meaning. Just by being born we affect the people around us in some way. You can't deny that fact. And uh, if that's not enough...

Hopefully, one person views his or herself as valuable. If not, then the people around that person and his or her relationships with them prove that person's value, don't you think?

My dad has a value to me because he found and adopted me, taking me in when he had no true obligation to. He has value to customers, because he's good at what he does. I like to think I'm valuable to him because I help with that trade as best I can. I also have some friends I like to think... uh, value me at least a little bit.

[acaelousque]

Hmmm.

So what we mean...is founded entirely in our value to others--in the society we are born, live, and die in.

A safe answer. A--conditioned answer, that chains you to the base of this tottering structure we call "culture". Live free, or--

Well. Seems like slavery to me.

[just_irving]

Slavery? But... we choose who we meet - or at least, we choose who we befriend or pursue to make those values.

[acaelousque]

So you chose the circumstances of your birth? I'm impressed!

[just_irving]

When did I say that? I don't even know the circumstances of my birth; there's no way I could have chosen them.

Still, my adopted father chose to take me into his life. After that, I've chosen my own path to walk, and my own people to befriend.

[acaelousque]

If birth is the very first instant in which we start to mean something, it stands to reason we can't always choose our own path to walk--and how much would you mean if your stepfather had not taken you in? Would you still be you?

Although Origen contests that you didn't choose to be born as you were--but then, he's a heresiarch for a reason.

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[just_irving]

I don't know if I'd be the same me. There's no way to know that for sure. Even if I wasn't, I would still have meaning to my life because just by being here, I'm changing things around me. Dad took me in - that changed something in my life. Therefore, he's highly important, valuable, and meaningful in my eyes.

I kinda hope to be like that for someone else one day, you know? I think it would be nice for a person to come to know that they're the reason for being in another person's life.

[just_irving]

... and uh... 'heresiarch?' Is that a type of bird or something?

[acaelousque]

Nice, huh. Being bound to that expectation of you, to make things worthwhile--and otherwise, if you fail...

That's slavery for you. To forever be forced to define yourself by what someone has given you, made you what you are--and in turn be indebted, all because that's what society has taught us to be.

And a very strange bird it is indeed; the one kind the Church deems unnatural and never to be taken as food.

[just_irving]

I'm not bound to anything. People change everyday. You probably have, too.

Whoa, really? It must be like a sacred... Christy... bird or something. Was that bad to say?

[acaelousque]

So you could, in this moment, just up and leave everything?

Never come back? Make your friends' names a hiss and a byword--or worse, pretend you never knew them at all?

If you can, I'm doubly impressed.

Quite the opposite. If ye eat of it, ye shall surely die.