Realizations

[Frater_Tsalal]

One thing I've realized about myself over the years is that it seems I'll never be able to comfortably assign a sexual orientation to myself. At different points of my life I've identified as straight, gay, bisexual, then gay again, then bisexual again, and so on and so forth (these days I just identify as a chaossexual). I do envy people who seem very comfortable with their professed sexual orientation, be they straight, gay, or whatever.

I've also realized that I'll probably never be comfortable identifying with any one particular religion or spiritual belief system (or even any secular philosophical position), though lord knows I've tried.

[ToALonelyPeace]

I realize the other day that all people and things I will never see again are, essentially to me, dead. The friends I treasured so much in the past, my bedmates in the hospital, my old teachers, my childhood bedroom, and the light shining in my old house...maybe they are alive somewhere in this world, but they're already lost forever.

I realize that afternoon, or dawn for that matter, can hide the hideous reality happening elsewhere in the world. Who is repulsed by sunlight because they know somewhere, someone is being tortured under this brilliant light? The beautiful rose-colored dawn is not rosy for the beaten eyes, or the imprisoned ones.

[Pan Michael]

I realized the other day how hard it is to make any final judgments about life without factoring in Time. I think it was Aristotle who said, "Count no man happy until he is dead." Of course, Aristotle didn't mean that oblivion is the ultimate happiness, but rather that no matter how happy or how miserable one is at a particular moment, this can always change. And until your final moment, you really don't have enough information to make a final judgment.

I was thinking about this, because five years ago I was utterly happy about something that has recently turned out to be a chimera. I should be rather depressed right now, but, using Aristotle's logic, there's really no reason to suppose that things won't shift as dramatically with the passing of more time. It's strange how much of an impact this realization has made on me. I feel like I'm little more than a lifetime spectator of my own existence, sitting here on the sidelines thinking, "Hmm, so is this going to be a really good story, or a really ####ty one?" Probably more the latter, but, again, who knows until that very last moment?

I think the general tendency is for time to wear people out and make them more pessimistic. More bad stuff happens the longer we live. And most wide-eyed idealists dying of throat cancer probably have second thoughts. Of course, nothing will ever make me into a wide-eyed idealist, but I suppose that it wouldn't take that much to make me tolerably happy. I wonder if Fortune will ever incline that way? I'm not betting on it, but I do take some interest in seeing how the story unfolds.

[marioneta]

I have come to the realization that nothing is what it seems to be. For example, once a friend invited me to accompany him to a party. The party was being held at a university. We arrived at the designated university building, entered and noticed right away the silence. The place was packed with people and the usual sound of human conversation was absent, nor was there any music. Instead there was an intense whispering sound like in a church. Everyone was dressed in one form or shade of black. For a second my fear was that we had intruded into a memorial service for some deceased faculty member instead of a party. We were about to leave when one of the black, "crow", individuals approached us with two drinks in hand. "Welcome to the party." We both blushed. "Thank you, father." was our combined answer. We had walked into a party of priests and nuns. We quickly gulped down our drinks and departed. "How did I know this is a Catholic university" was his retreating lament. The drinks ,by the way, were grape juice.

[Karnos]

I realized some time ago that we, adults, don't know what we're doing most of the time. Wise adulthood is a weird state attained by the few and most of us just make up s*** as we go along.

It was somewhat liberating when it happened. And like everything else, it turned into landscape and then I just kind of forgot about it.