eclectic thoughts

In times of peace children bury their fathers and in time of war fathers bury their children, a simple phrase with a deep sentiment.  In our lives isn't it true that when conflict and calamity arise our the new things in our lives are the first to go, our hopes and our dreams slide through our fingers as putty while those dreams of old and old habits creep back to the forefront.  How many well thought out dreams and ideas have been lost because of circumstance that would have if given the time and effort to mature changed their lives or even all of our lives.  Good seeds which if given the proper care and nurturing would have turned into large trees which fed and shaded both their creators and others alike.  It is thoughts like these that give me pause and make me wonder how much of the world I myself could have changed if I had followed through  and given the proper effort where that proper effort was due.  Life would be great if we could all go to some alchemist who would use his mortar and pestle  to concoct a potion that would allow us to have the proper motivation to pursue our goals and to stand in and stand up for those things which we let fall by the wayside because of our own pessimism and doubt. "Carpe Diem", drink your potion, do whatever you must do to make these dreams and ideas come to fruition, because time does not come in a bottle and neither does motivation.

"The leaf that slowly lands on the pond leaves few ripples, while the rock thrown into the pond makes ripples which can be felt on all corners of it."

Piracy is not always Piracy

"In life there is what a man can do, and what a man can't do" a great quote from Pirates does an awesome job illustrating life and our toil to get the things we want out of it.  Every time we make up our minds that we are going to do something there is a metaphorical line drawn in the sand that shows us what we are or aren't willing to do to complete that goal.  I think a pretty common trend with people is they tend to forget better or for worse what can be done in pursuit of our goals.  Propriety often can stand in a persons way from doing everything they could to achieve that which they have set there mind too.  For instance what would you be willing to do for a million dollar pay check? People have been killed for a lot less and people have done some unspeakable acts for the same.  So then we ask ourselves Ok so some pretty drastic measures  can be taken to achieve those goals but then we must ask ourselves how much of ones lives do they sacrifice for propriety.  How often must we sacrifice our own comforts so that someone else can be comfortable in the name of propriety? That I think is the very nature of the beast and the lesson of this story.   Life is and always has been a game of balancing these types of things and finding a happy medium.
I have wrote in the past of being placed in many situations in which I (being a person who always wants to be considered a nice guy) have had to be the bad guy for the sake of self preservation. For unfortunately not everyone in this world is willing to play by the same rules as me, there are those who are willing to take what I have worked so hard for, and live off of your sweat.  Therein lies the irony a Pirates going to do what a Pirates going to do, however is that going to dictate what I am going to do in a situation.  In a life filled with so many greys I seek not to muddy the waters but to give the advice that one must not always be the good man helping give others their dreams, but one must as a pirate be willing at times to steal another dream/or prolong their journey to their dreams so that they can in part partake of their own.  Sometimes an act of Piracy is simply someone taking that which rightfully belongs to them and making others wait their turn to find their own treasure. The adage "Nice Guys finish last" often rings true if one is not willing to bloody his/her sword when someone is taking what they have worked for.

Masks

Why would a man hiding from a blind man wear a mask, for what is a mask in its nature more than a way to hide ones face from the light which catches it and reflects their image to the eyes which consume them.  Moreover if a man is able to wear a mask to conceal its identity what other things in nature have masked themselves and their true identities from not only mans eyes but his senses.  For science has shown that more things exist than than we have the ability to sense and that these senses show us very little in the grand scope of the universe.  So what then might be hidden in the space between the space mirrored in our own perception, and if we had the ability to see in this space which is masked by the limits of what we are able to perceive and that which we are able to understand. 
 Have you ever considered why a person is unable to know what a person is thinking of, or why we cannot divine the entirety of a persons actions through looking at them.  So in our very nature to hide and conceal certain aspects of our lives from others.  Which means our very existence is a mask, and maybe  the very purpose of our existence is to see what this mask is hiding.  

Ones Cracking Soul Can Lead to a Shattered Existance

The initial trauma to a window or a pane of glass which chips it seems insignificant at the time and often leads us to initially curse it but then quickly forget it.  We get busy with our lives and other things and forget about the little nick in the glass which we can barely see, until one day the heat or cold which we spend an even smaller amount of time thinking about causes that little chip to spider web out into a large cracked surface which blocks our vision and begs to be dealt with.  This little fact of life reminds me of how life works, it tends to be a lot of sitting around surrounded by flurries of excitement and movement.  Things which where once new and seemed to be big problems for us to deal with get ignored or tolerated until the branch into things which are much bigger problems and  turn our lives upside down.  It makes one wish they had a crystal ball to gaze into  that could tell them which of these small problems in life will turn into larger and uglier monsters down the road so we can deal with them now.
How often to we as humans let this little cracks in our lives turn into our own shattered existence.

The Demons One Battles

Life is a fecal  thing, I have always gone through life looking for my place and what fate has in store for me hoping maybe that one day something would just hit me in the face and give the once mundane meaning, the once ordinary significance.  The more time that passes the more I have begun to think that life has a way of forcing your hand, and pushes you towards the demons and confrontations you so often try to run from.  In my life I have battled many demons both mighty and small and the more I face them it seems the stronger they become, and the more time goes on without those demons giving way to me the more likely I am to say to myself its not worth it.
It is very strange I have as I've said in the past always loved to delve into the cerebral and have always felt that my life always has meaning when there are some kind of puzzles to figure out, some riddle to both write and solve.  This however in my own mind seemed to be the driving force behind me thinking that would be my path and admittedly I always thought that is what made me unique.  Now I find that that life, fate, God, or whatever you want to call it has shown me that I was looking at the picture and not the hand that was creating it.  My need for riddles does not simply stem from my overactive mind needing stimulation, nor is it my curiosity and need to know the reason why, though they are part of my character and big portions of the underlying problem, they are not the hand or driving force behind it.
The underlying problem is my need for conflict and my need for battle as it were that fuels this flame which is such a big part of me.  When I worked in the Juvenile detention center I felt so full of life and as if I were making a difference in the world and had feelings of fulfillment helping them solve their own personal riddles.  There I helped those that I worked with do battle with there demons with themselves, with the demon that is themselves and with what makes them feel as demons in the first place.  In so doing as many warriors find I found that I was in many ways no different than those demons I faced,  For what I am to them they are to me, and what there nature is in this world is me.  Since I have left and since I have finished school I have been as a warrior with no war and one can only sit and sharpen their sword for so long until they lose their purpose and their will to fight.    For after all is a warrior without a war still a warrior?
Therein Lies the Paradigm in my or our battles with our own personal demons whether they be something tangible or something intangible  we are given our purpose which is to fight the demons.  When we back off and say I am tired of this battle, lets have some tea and crumpets we grow fat and tired and forget why we went to battle in the first place.  In so doing we lose our purpose, ourselves, and what we were "fighting" for.  This has become true to me in both a metaphorical sense and a literal one.