Rest In Peace, My Little Man

Why do people have pets? They’re full of excitement at the beginning, they’re a fun hassle through their good years, and then they get weak and die after only a fraction of a typical human life.

Maybe it’s because they really are our best friends. All that my little bunny Snow needed to be happy on his birthday was a new wooden carrot. Ten years later, even if I came home from a long, stupid night with some unreasonable kids, my gerbil never knew the difference between my bad and glorious nights. All he wanted was for me to come home and feed his hungry little tummy his favorite sunflower seeds.

He knew who I was, and he knew he depended on me. He was less than 4 inches long and his tail was longer than him, but he was a little ball of friendly energy. Everyone in the world could be mad at me, and the little runt would still play with my hand. Our relationship never changed. Nothing ever made him stop being my friend, except the day nature took his life.

Biology is like math; life is systematic. You’re born, you live, and you die. One day, even the Sun will die, and unless we’ve migrated elsewhere, life in our solar system is done. Physics will take its course. Chemistry will take on new roles. Biology is the finite science. This will be the destruction of our local biology.

We are the finite science. Our tears over the lost will one day be lost themselves. But the opportunity to breathe the air on a planet brimming with life is an incredibly complicated, rare chance. The tears are worth it because the life that just came and went was an absolutely beautiful happening of chance.

Henry, you died today. I’m gonna miss you, little buddy.

Why Is Tragedy The Best Inspiration?

How do you know you're a terrible excuse for a human being?

It's easy. It's something that happens to you when you witness a head on collision in the lane you just switched out of. You're not a terrible human being until you realize you switched into the lane that might have saved your life, but also completely prevented you from saving the lives of others.

You're now in the middle lane, surrounded by an abandoned idle car of a sprinting hero on one side, and the damaged metal on the other. You have a choice: get out and help and leave zero lanes for traffic flow in rush hour, or avoid causing massive gridlock and drive on, leaving a path for emergency vehicles to get through. Be a burdening savior or be an awful but useful person. Take your pick.

Which one makes you feel worse?

I felt useless by being useful. I drove on. I wonder if they were okay.

Just when you think you're the one having a bad day.

Maybe it's sentimental, but I appreciated the few good things that happened that day a little bit more. I may have shed a tear or two of thankfulness for still being able to appreciate.

Thirty minutes later, I finally got to class, unaware that it was spring break for the college my class is at. But I got there in an unharmed car. For some reason, that was okay.

I now had an extra two hours to spare. I had a choice: go home, or spend some time living a little.

Which one makes life worth it?

Only 300 Miles To Go

It's a rainy day on the rural highways of nowhere, Arkansas, and the biggest thing I can see in the distance is a water tower, smaller than a thimble at arm's length.

In reality, one bad tornado has the capability of destroying everything and everyone that water tower tends to. If there were no paved roadways around here, that kind of tragedy could go unnoticed for awhile. Mother Nature wouldn't phone the families; she never really intended to be a mother in the first place. Her children were the ones that called themselves children and put a meaning to the concept of love and family. Grandmother Earth cares even less; she'll be here no matter what her daughter destroys or what her descendants pollute the air with. If anything, she's given up on them for being suicidal. They're just killing themselves at this point. Let them.

So maybe there's no meaning to life. Maybe whatever we do only works toward creating something we can be proud of, to impress ourselves with what we've managed to make out of nothing. The universe didn't start with biology, and biology won't be its end.

The world didn't start with you in it, and you won't be its demise.

Make your uselessness worth it.

Grow on, grow up, grow out. Move mountains.

It's 1:23 AM, and I am terrified to go to sleep.


Maybe this has something to do with the sensations of my face mimicking a mudslide into my brain after 10 seconds of shuteye. It might have something to do with my lungs vanishing after 15 seconds. It could even have something to do with my knowledge of my existence slipping away after 20 seconds, when I flinch back into reality and, more importantly, into my very real bed, with my very real comforter, which happens to not be doing a very good job of comforting me right now.


How I got to this inconvenient mental state is not important. All you need to know is large amounts of caffeinated drinks after 9 PM and Sudafed tablets should never, ever mix.


Ever.


Unless of course you want to be awake T-minus 6 hours until your next test, first thing in the normal waking morning, thinking about everything but communication in the business world.


Maybe, for some reason, you enjoy thinking about what your life is going to be like 13 weeks from now when you won't have to set foot back into your dreaded high school ever again. Will you succeed? Will you even try? What are you doing with your life, sweetheart?


Eight straight hours of school will become a foreign concept, as it has in summers past. If you want to see somebody, you can plan on seeing them for more than the 3 minutes between the 30 seconds you need to bolt to and from your tardy-policy-enforcing classrooms. Those confined dictatorships will no longer call mommy after the third time your in-depth conversation about the applications of modern religion and battle of the bands runs over in the hallway.


Life will be kind of nice. You'll actually have to try to maintain your friendships that you want to last. There will be no more passing-period rekindling of friendly flames. You're on your own now. You're free. Fly with it. Embrace the wind. Hug it a little bit.


Maybe after another 13 weeks, you'll start to think about everything you never thought about during your four years of deans' offices and dress codes. Maybe there will be somebody you shoved aside in pursuit of a better standing with your friends and yourself. Maybe this person had the potential to change your life. This person could have been that one person you've always dreamed you'd meet one day, and you would have no idea what you passed up. The only idea you'd have is the one telling you that you probably failed yourself in this aspect.


I still don't recommend mixing caffeine and sinus medicine. It's a terrible idea, unless you enjoy setting your brain on fire in your spare time. It's 1:44 AM, and this is not a good feeling.


Nonetheless: what are you doing with your life, sweetheart?


Are you sure?


Well, that's a nice idea.


But did you miss anything?

If I Knew What Any Of The Sigur Ros Song Titles Meant, I'd Incorporate Them Into This Headline

My winter break has been over. I've disregarded this fact for a couple weeks now, but the time has finally come for the last night of the longest college break I know of, which, sadly, is now over. I realize I've probably spent way too much money on gas and inconvenient meals driving out to a town I've never once lived in to see people I didn't even grow up with. The thing is, I don't regret any of that time spent driving 30-minute straight shots and ensuring my early-on, greasy heart attacks. According to the last conversation I had in the last car ride I had tonight, the last month has been nothing but enlightening, in so many unprecedented ways.

Sometimes, everything matters. The people you find around the abstract corners of your life can become the driving force of any hope you have in anything. When you can look past your dashboard at the sign pointing towards your exit and feel the same fuzzy feeling you get when you come home from vacation, especially in a place you've never held residence, you know you've found some kind of treasure. Who knows how long you've known these people. Regardless, you know they've changed your life.

Other times, nothing matters. When high school is over, walk around a college campus and see how many people care what happened at that dance Senior year. One day, take a break from your school day or your work day, drive a few towns over, and see how many of those people judge you by who your friends were last month. If you get in a relationship, see how much longer it lasts if it's never about who pays, where you go, or what you do. Find a few interesting people and see if you can't have one of the best nights of your life in a basement with no alcohol and no drugs. See what happens when you round up everything and everyone that makes your life miserable in any way and get rid of 'em. See if you aren't happier.

I know this isn't some kind of crazy end. In fact, some of these people are still around, not away at college. This isn't any kind of epic goodbye, because reality is there is still Spring break, there is still Summer, and there is still a thing called visiting. This is a crazy moment though, because I never once thought I could let go of years of social stigma in just one month of great people and great times. This has been transcendental. This has been love. I think I may have cried a little tonight.

I'm Speechless And Redundant (Cause I love you is not enough, I'm lost for words)

I've had Comedy Central on for the last few hours, just kind of playing in the background through my truckloads of homework and preparation for finals. They have this awesome habit of repeating the same 3 or 4-hour block of shows, same episodes and all. Granted, no one should be watching that much TV and it shouldn't really be a problem, but it's a little redundant the second time around.

So this episode of South Park is on for the second time, and it occurred to me that it's going by about 3 times faster than it did the first time. I know this is just a game being played in my mind, but it's still weird.

Which brings me to the actual point here: High school, or just school in general, seems to go by faster every year. We get up at unreasonably early hours, we go to school, we take our core classes with not a terrible amount of variation between years, and we go home. This is living the same life in 9-month increments on a yearly basis. This is watching the same plot unfold for a second or third time on a TV show. This is repetition.

It made me think about how I get so caught up in the moment during new experiences, but not so much after I've already "been there, done that." It reminded me about all of the facebook and myspace profiles that mention the desire to meet new people. Almost everything that makes for a truly exciting and involved experience are things that haven't been done before.

It's like our minds are begging to be refreshed. Our desires are dehydrated, and our routines are salt water. I think this is an indication to live a little when you can. It feels good. Don't deny it.

P.S.-I'll give a quarter to anyone who guesses that song in the title correctly. Except, probably not, because I'm broke.

Typical, a little?

Dictionary.com has found 36 different ways to define "life."

Honestly, I don't know how. I see one definition that's universally fitting: "The condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally."

Because no one likes nerdy dialect, all this means is that there are certain things that separate the living world from the nonliving world, and these things are completely measurable and testable qualities.

Like I said in my previous blog, life elsewhere isn't impossible, but it is rare. It's so rare that we could have missed it, or we might miss it after we're gone, even though some form of us has been here for more than 2 billion years, and we probably won't be going anywhere anytime too soon.

So why is it that everyone takes life so seriously?

It's embedded in us from birth to consider the human species as the most important of all on Earth. I don't find it necessary to give a lengthy explanation of why this is, because everyone has experienced this feeling firsthand.

If I would have never been told I was important, maybe I wouldn't have cared so much about what others thought for so long. Maybe I wouldn't have been so terrified of interacting with people that I would have let go of my teacher's hand during pre-school recess. Maybe I would have climbed more jungle gyms and not worried about people thinking I looked scared or stupid. Maybe I wouldn't have abandoned everything in middle school that made me a smart kid, and maybe I wouldn't be so exhausted all the time trying to make up for all those years of studying I lost.

Then again, maybe I would be writing about how the human species is important, just because I'd been told otherwise all my life and felt the need to give a counterargument to the issue.

In the end, all I really wish is that people would stop taking things so seriously. I wish people would reach out to the people they hate and find an incredible connection, somewhere, deep down. I wish people would willingly give people second chances, because that grudge that's clung so tightly to will disappear with the rest of the solar system when the time comes. If the Big Bang Theory is right and the universe collapses in on itself just as it exploded, none of the remnants of our species, no floating satellites, no radio signals, nothing of the sorts will even exist after so long. So what is it that makes people so judgmental, so hostile, so closed-minded? Why can't people talk to other people that have a different sense of style from them? What makes a person more socially acceptable, and why is it even an issue? Doesn't that just inhibit our potential advancement?

On these issues, I usually make little sense, but I'm so tired of how people treat me, how people treat each other, and how people don't understand that they're like this.

Maybe this will always be just a wish.