tender loving caltrate

say it like you mean it

I think the scariest part about the human mind is not its tendency for violence or perversion, or the content of its innermost thoughts, but its ability to be completely rewritten by any person, place, or circumstance strong and repetitive enough to take hold. I don't think we've realized as a species how impressionable our minds really are.
Everyday I've been slowly recognizing that we are being influenced, not necessarily because it is the intent, but because it's unavoidable for our minds to adhere to the minds around us. I don't know if even I realize how nothing we believe is really our own. People work on us. We are surrounded by others who influence us without our consent. It takes time, but we will slowly start to disengage ourselves from past convictions when placed in the midst of those who don't have them, or even make a mockery of them.
Maybe that doesn't sound too scary. But really, where does society end and an individual begin? Are we really just products of our environment?
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has never made more sense. I feel rage as my sense of self is being systematically stripped away from me by mass media, culture, and society, but I do little to stop it. I can see what happens to the people who break away and how insane you can become by seeing the world for what it is while trying to separate yourself from it. The more objectively you view the world, the more you hate everything and the harder it is to want to have anything to do with it.
Only God provides the fire, the spark, the ability to hold strong to our convictions and still meet the world with never ending compassion. We can be separate but satisfied, different but unashamed, honest and brave. Otherwise, I will always find my mind weak and my courage frail.
I can see how people are being influenced. It's by their parents, their books, their girlfriends, their job, the weather, their pet, their music, the town, commercials, propaganda, Wikipedia, porn, their friends, everything. How impossible it can be to stick to our guns when we are bombarded every day with opinions on what to believe, what to think is cool, what is socially acceptable, what makes you attractive, what's funny, what's right, what you should eat, wear, and talk about, what's important. How are we supposed to know what's true when everything everywhere is telling us something different?
I don't have this fire or spark. It's hard for me at this point in my life to stop being a negative, angry person. I have killed in my heart with the hate I feel, have destroyed buildings and burned bridges, all in the name of my hate. It's making me mad, and it's also making me fat, and I'm getting tired of this shit.

Boston

When I moved to Boston at 17, I was given the opportunity to make a lot of choices, and I chose wrong every time. God allowed me to live exactly how I wanted to at that time in my life without getting punished.
Well, that's not true. It was only six months, but I'm still being punished for it. I can take any given event while I lived in Massachusetts and guarantee that it will make me feel guilt, regret, embarrassment, disbelief, torment, or all of the above.
I hate that part of my life. I wish I go back in time everyday, I wish I could just highlight and delete that whole portion of my existence without creating an endless black hole of wtf? physics. But more than anything, I hate that part of myself, which is still in me somewhere, just kept under wraps (if Freud means anything to you, you'd believe that everybody suffers from this hidden id that we try to stifle until it finally comes out when we are vulnerable or losing control). I am humiliated that a person like that could have EVER been me. It creates this huge cycle of self-hate and regret every time I think about it. I can't feel okay about myself and can't find the self-esteem to motivate myself to live a better life. And now, four years later, I really just want it to be over. I want to move on, but nothing will bring me peace, I will never feel better about it, and I won't ever stop thinking about it.
My consequences didn't come right away, and those kind of consequences are the hardest. Maybe one day it won't bother me anymore, but the fact is I will never forget, and the memories won't ever go away, no matter how hard I've tried.
I don't know what spawned this, but everybody, let's just do the right thing. We know in our hearts what's right and what's wrong, but if we don't start caring about making good decisions for ourselves, we will create our own misery that will follow us for the rest of our lives, whether we realize it or not. I myself need to take my own advice. Make the RIGHT choices, do the RIGHT things, have integrity, it will give us peace of mind, security, and openness to God's will.
It's unwise to believe that we can live our lives however we want with no consequences. Don't be fooled--there are ALWAYS consequences, they just might come in an unexpected form at an unexpected time in an unexpected way, and they might not even affect us directly. But everything we do affects everyone around us, and that alone should make us want to be more conscientious about the choices we make.
Like I said, I need to take my own advice. It's something to think about, but hard to do. It's almost impossible to have the forethought, to think months or even years down the road, or to even care about ourselves and our bodies, souls, and minds. I'm not saying I can even do it, but I think I want to try.

To Daniel Cobian

To Daniel Cobian, wherever you are
I will never forget you and how, in our sixth grade yearbook, they asked us what our future goals were, and you had valiantly wrote:
To graduate high school and because a Pokemon master!!!
I can only hope you've achieved your dreams and have caught them all.