Raven's Rants

Psychiatrists tell us that, of all the human needs, the need for safety is the greatest. It is the need that concerns us before worry about anything else. Without safety, they say, we can not be happy, fulfilled or content.

But safety is an unusual need in that it is based almost entirely upon an illusion. As humans, we are blessed (and cursed) with the knowledge that death is inevitable and that it could happen at any time. At best, safety is relative, at worst it is nonexistent and just a figment of our overactive imaginations.

The simple truth is that we are never safe. Freak accidents, diseases and any number of other deadly incidents can take place at any given time. Even if we lock ourselves away in a metal room and remove all foreseeable hazards, death and injury can find us. Deep down we know that.

If true safety were a requirement of our happiness, humans would be driven mad in frenzied attempts to mitigate every possible hazard, knowing that it is all a futile effort. As long as our mortality can not be escaped, safety can not be achieved.

Yet, most people, feel safe when they sleep at night. Though literally anything can happen while they slumber, they rest assured that they will wake up the next morning in much the same condition that they went to bed.

Our minds, over the years, have trained themselves to ignore the millions of risks we face, responding only to the most immediate and probable dangers we face. Much of this is self preservation, enabling us to spend our energy on the things that are most likely to hurt us, but much of it is also self deception, allowing us to turn a blind eye to less visible risks.

This has resulted in a warped sense of safety. The dangers we face every day have become skewed and warped by a combination of convenience, media hype and misinformation. Whether the dangers are bad drivers, terrorists, heart disease or bird flu, we know we can't possibly protect against all of the hazards we face, so we focus on the ones that make us feel the most safe, not necessarily the ones that pose the greatest risk.

That is the crux of the safety problem. Since safety is an illusion, so are many of the dangers. What makes us feel safe is often very different from what actually improves our chances of survival. What helps us sleep at night is rarely what helps us wake up in the morning.

This need for safety has become our Achilles heel. Our mortality has become our mortal weakness. We know neither safety nor happiness so long as we give in to illusions of safety and of danger. We are never as safe as we feel we need to be, nor are we in as grave of danger as we often think we are.

These notions, however, are lost on us as safety is a feeling and it knows no intellect. There is no rationalizing with the idea of safety or the people that feel they do not have it. Once lost, the quest for the feeling of safety is all-consuming, usually overpowering better forms of judgment and pushing us down paths we would never otherwise take.

The time has come to breathe. To realize that, while this need for safety that drives us is a positive thing, it is no being used to drive us down paths we need not tread. Safety has never been anything but an illusion and that lack of grounding is used against us every day of our lives by our governments, our media, our businesses and even others on the street.

The truth is that safety comes from within. You can not buy it, you can not vote for it and there is no knowledge that mysteriously grants it. Safety comes from within ourselves and our loved ones. It's about a place in your room that makes you feel safe, about being warm in the arms of a loved one, about finding the one thing that reminds you of safer times.

Safety is an illusion and it is a necessary one. However, we have to stop looking outside of ourselves to find it. Any illusion the world can give us can also be found within. If we make our own illusions, we can use them to our advantage. If we let others make our illusions, they can use them to their advantage.

It takes inner strength to do this, to look within for answers that do not exist, But that strength is what it truly takes to feel safe in such a crazy world.

You see them everywhere you go. The people that blaze through four way stops, the jerks that cut in line at the movie theater, the morons that intentionally take up two parking spaces at the mall and the fools who thrash around their lives without a care for what impact they might have on others.

While everyone makes mistakes and, on a planet with six billion people, we're going to adversely affect those around us, some among us take it to a whole new level. They are either so negligent, or even malicious, that their acts are a conscious disregard for others. This goes beyond a lack of compassion or the absence of empathy and shuns all convictions and morals aside.

When you see these people, take a moment to look into their eyes. You'll see something truly unique. When you stare down into the pit of their souls, you'll see that they believe they're better than you. They seem themselves as a superior life form and yourself, along with those around you, are just insects waiting to be stomped.

With this form of imagined superiority comes a sense of entitlement, and that is where things go wrong. These people not only believe that they are better than the world, but that the world owes them something. Be it the color of their skin, the way they grew up, the money in their pocket or just something inside them, they feel that they are entitled to better treatment and they will take it if necessary.

That sense of entitlement is what leads to their downfall. Nature, as luck would have it, doesn't possess and entitlement clause. Those who think that they are owed something might be able to take it from time to time, but will never really be able to possess it. Those who believe they deserve something, for no other reason than who they are, are incapable of working for it and earning it.

And in there lies the bitter truth. All men are created equal, but they don't always stay that way. Some of us work hard, achieve great things and make something of our lives. Those who do that, for the most part at least, learn humility and invest themselves emotionally into ideas of justice and equality.

Others feel entitled; they do nothing, achieve nothing and, instead, leech off society. These are the ones who feel superior, the ones who achieve the least, offer nothing to the world and, instead, only flex their supposed superiority by taking that which does not belong to them.

In the end, it's their very sense of superiority that prevents them, not just from becoming better people, but from becoming anything at all. They can't plow the fields in the kingdom they believe themselves to rule, thus, they never make anything grow.

Their accomplishments are fantasies and society, let alone nature, will not favor these fools. They are doomed by their own delusions and will feel the wrath soon.

So when wronged in such a manner, try to let it go. If it was an honest mistake, it will not be repeated and, if it's someone taking what does not belong to them through a feeling of entitlement, they will feel their own demise soon enough.

For nature is cruel to those who don't earn their keep and nothing you can do will ever be able to compete with the very forces that keep evolution going.

There are times when the world is just too much. When fate, fortune and the will of man all turn against us and the deck is simply stacked too deep for us to come out ahead. These are times when a stiff upper lip and a drive to push on simply aren’t enough. These are times of desperation, of hopelessness and of isolation.

Many turn to their faith, hoping and praying for relief, others reflect within, searching for answers within themselves when none can be found in the world around them. But no matter where you turn or where you look, you always learn about yourself and, in that small regard, our darkest times can be turned into our most valuable asset.

For when we’re just going about our lives, we’re practically standing still. We’re not changing or making any effort to improve, we’re simply drifting. With shifts happening over months and years and little idea where we’re going, just a vague idea of where we’ve been, we learn nothing and grow little.

The moments that move us not only change us, but show us the direction that we’re heading. For the first times in our lives, we see who we really are, what we’re becoming and are given the power to change it. Through the tears, pain and loss comes a sense of opportunity, a chance to rebuild, to improve and to grow.

In the long run, we are defined more by our dark times than the times we were just surviving. Our darkest hours are the ones that cast the sharpest contrast on our life, change us the most and make us who we are.

Though that doesn’t reduce the sting of those times when we’re in the thick of them, nor is it meant to, it means that there is always hope, a chance for a brighter future and better days. For no destruction takes place without presenting and opportunity for recreation and no dark times can pass without providing valuable lessons and a chance to become something stronger.

So yes, right now we need to cry our tears and mourn our losses. Yes, we need to deal with the tragedies that have surrounded us and cope the best that we can. But through it all, we must remember that the future is being written today, even as history is being destroyed.

Finally, we must remember that when we emerge from these times, no matter when that is, we’ll all be changed people, wiser, stronger and with a new understanding of who we are. We must use that to work toward creating a better future, a greater tomorrow.

That’s the only way to ensure that what was lost hasn’t perished in vain and the only way to paint a picture of our lives defined not by the darkest hours, but by the lessons learned from them.

Envy is a dangerous emotion, it is a cancer to society and, sadly, a natural part of human nature. It causes us to look at the accomplishments and possessions of our fellow man and react not with awe or esteem, but hatred and discontent.

Those with envy look up to their targets while spitting down upon them within the same stroke. They desire their possessions, crave their qualities and lust for their accomplishments all the while creating a hole within themselves, a deep void that must be filled.

However, rather than filling this void by bettering themselves and earning the laurels they crave, they fill it by stealing them from those who've earned them and by breaking their victims down, dragging those with merit down to the level filth the envious occupy. Those with envy in their hearts work tirelessly, chipping away at what others have created until they can climb the pile of rubble left behind and stand alone atop it like a king.

Envy is destructive, it is petty and it is within us all. It's in the insults we hurl, the fists that we throw and the games that we play. Though some are more prone than others, we are all vulnerable to it. Every one of us has it in their hearts.

As good humans, we must not give in to these petty urges. We must never let our desire for more turn us against those who have it. Tearing down what others have built purely for the sake a filling a hole within ourselves achieves nothing, neither filling the hole nor creating any greater good. Difficult though it may be, creation is the higher achievement and it is the only thing that quells the voice of envy inside all of us.

Also, in addition to checking our own hearts, we must not let ourselves fall victim to the envious. They will prod, they will kick, they will insult and they will vandalize, but, unless the creators lower themselves to level of the envious, they can never destroy.

For we are what we build and we are what we do. If we never buckle before the weight of the envious, we will always be above them, no matter what they say.

Because no matter how much pettiness and insults might sting, nothing hurts worse than being trapped in the abyss that is the sludge of envy. We must endure the pin pricks of the envious in order to avoid wallowing in the lake of stagnant inadequacy.

It's a small price to pay and a burden all too easily carried if one can look ahead and see the larger goal.

None of us are born with an identity. Though our born and bred genetic code goes on to define a great deal of who we are, our coding means nothing without the experiences we go through and the things we witness.

We are largely reactionary souls, responding to stimuli and forming opinions on it while using our memories and predispositions as guides. What this creates is a pattern of learning and adjustment, spanning from birth until death, carving a flowing line through the years in between.

But people find themselves seeking something solid in their lives and, looking back through their past, they only see the calligraphy created by the experiences that make them unique. With nothing rigid to anchor them, they start to hammer out the dents and curves, striving futilely to make a fluid thing solid, erasing their own experiences just to feel more secure.

Worse still, many seek out templates and begin mimicking what others have done. Rather than listening to the experiences of their own lives, they put their trust, almost completely, into a person or a thing that has never walked in their shoes.

It's as if they've taken an eraser and stricken their memories from the face of the earth, making time they've spent on earth completely pointless. By the time it's over, they might as well have never existed at all for they're just living a shadow of someone or something else.

Our individuality isn't just a matter of being who we are and living our lives on our terms, but also of making the most of our precious time. If we walk freely where others have tread before, we have achieved nothing. If we allow ourselves to ignore what we have seen and felt, it's as if we never lived at all.

We are all vulnerable to the pitfalls of conformity. Countless so-called iconoclasts appear as such only because they imitate other individuals. However, it's not because they don't want to be true to themselves, but because it's frightening to look out into the future and have no idea what to do next.

If our lives are to count for anything we can only be rigid in regards to ourselves. We have to use the gifts we were given and the experiences we've had not just to form a common bond with our fellow man, but to discover and cherish what makes us unique.

The calligraphy that is our lives is a truly beautiful thing, even at its ugliest; it plays a part in a gorgeous image. To erase that, out of fear or convenience, is to erase ourselves, and not just our memories gone by, but also our future place in the annals of history.

A code, in the moral sense of the word, is a simple thing. It's a series of laws and rules written by human beings to set down a series of beliefs, a pattern of conduct or a collection of ideals. It is as tangible as the paper it's written on and it's easy to read, understand and, supposedly, follow. It's as real and as solid as the people who believe in it.

But codes, all codes, are held hostage by their solid nature. For though they are tangible, they are not rigid and are prone to being twisted and bent. Even though the words themselves are simple and pure, no code is so perfect as to withstand the interpretations of mortal men and the actions of souls living in an increasingly complicated world.

It's in that complicated world that codes find themselves pitted against themselves, one line against another, one paragraph against the next. Even a code with only two ideals will find itself in a civil war, Line A against Line B, faster than you and I can comprehend.

It's when these civil wars erupt that codes becomes something other than a rigid set of rules for us to follow. They become almost spiritual in nature as flawed human beings try to understand the "meanings" and "intents" of what was often written thousands of years before. We try to look past the simple words and find deeper meanings, meanings that we hope will guide us as we try to decide which part of the code to violate.

These battles can tear codes apart. Even the most useful systems and most heartfelt ideas can be ripped apart by internal struggles, struggles caused by a world that it couldn't have possibly forseen. Once-proud ideals are rendered useless and tossed aside, grand visions are lost and marvelous dreams are crushed simply because one sentence and another found themselves at odds and no reconciliation could be found.

That's why the written codes, though often good in intentions and wonderful in nature, can never be our sole guiding force. Not for our lives, not for our government, not for our world. Any code written by man to be tangible and solid will never withstand the shifting landscape of the earth. Without flexibility, without some means of resolving conflict, even the simplest of laws and ideals crumble before the forces of time.

The only code that can hope to survive is the code within each of us. The code we teach ourselves through our morality and our ideals. Even though we need laws as a society and the codes of paper have their place, any set of rules written by another will falter and any code interpreted by another will fail to represent us.

But in a day and age where every code is made of the shattered pieces of the countless ones before, finding our own ideals is difficult. But if we don't, we find ourselves either locked into a system that's doomed to fail or floating in the winds of the interpretation other mortals, most likely less qualified than us to tell right from wrong.

That's what makes it so important to try and to wrestle with the tough decisions ourselves. To shun outside influence and to think with our own minds and hearts.

For everything else is doomed to mediocrity and, in the sands of time, mediocrity is doomed to turn to dust.

The very nature of life is that of struggle. From the moment we take our first breath until the day we take our last, our lives are locked in a series of constant and ongoing battles, battles against ourselves, the world and even each other.

Conflict is perhaps the most universal thing in life. Adversity and challenge are two concepts that everyone, from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor can understand. Even though the nature of the battles and the way the world views them can change, we all know what it's like to struggle, to fight and to suffer for it.

We can't avoid this horrible twist of life, nor can we hope to conquer it since it waits for us equally at the top of every hill the same as it does in the darkest part of our valleys.

But the key to life is not to avoid struggle, nor is it to conquer it at every turn. Rather, it's to turn it around and make it into something positive, to turn the energy of our battles into something beautiful, something wonderful. That's a kind of success even the wealthiest of men can't imagine and it's the only way to temporarily abate the turmoil within.

Because the only alternative to letting the constant struggle of life wear you down until it buries you, both literally and figuratively, is to take that neverending flame and let it warm the world around you.

It may not make your own demons any easier to quell, it might not make your life any simpler, but it does make the world around you a better place and it does give your energy some place to go other than back into the constant erosion of the spirit.

If everyone did this, tried to exorcise their demons by turning them into something productive, even beautiful, the world would be a much easier place. If we all understood the nature of life and worked with it, not against it, then we could change it and create a world where everyone was able to struggle just a little bit less and lived a little bit more.

And that's why I'm here. Not because I beat my demons and left them behind, but because I continue to fight them and I want my struggle with them to be productive, to mean more than just another way to pass time between sleepless nights. I don't want to change the world, in the ultimate act of reversal and revenge, I want my demons to do it for me.

Because even though my struggle, like everyone else's, is never ending. That force, that unlimited kinetic energy, has been turned from the very thing that was killing me to the greatest power I ever knew.

And if I can make the world see that, then I will have done more than I ever could have imagined to change the world. I will have lived every dream I ever had and conquered every fear I ever held.

That's no small task, but the rewards are equally inspiring.

Everywhere we look, we see badges. We're surrounded by them, bombarded by them and entranced by them. They're a part of our lives, almost from day one and they remain as such until the day we die.

First there the physical badges. We're all familiar with the ones police and other officials carry. Those are symbols of authority, of power. They give the person behind them a sense of control and it instills a sense of fear in those that are facing it.

But others carry badges too. Your weary cubicle dweller often needs a badge to get in his office. Others use badges to get inside their apartment buildings or communities. Badges also get us back stage at a concert, into our favorite club or wherever we want to go.

But then there are the more metaphorical badges. The badges of honor or shame that we wear on the inside. Though invisible, they too shine though in our smiles and our eyes and become just as distinctive as the ones we wear on our sleves and around our necks.

Finally, there’s the little things we do, our mannerisms, our clothes our hair, the hidden badges we carry with us day in and day out. The badges we don’t’ even realize that are there. The badges that we can't or don't take off, even as we sleep.

The only thing that these badges all have in common is that they define us. That they represent who we are on a fundamental level. Even the simplest badges identify us, tell others who we are and why we're there. They let others know, within the confines of a small square of plastic or an article of clothing, what we represent and why we should or shouldn't be allowed to do the things that we want.

And the bitter truth is that we all wear badges. It's a requirement in this society. There needs to be some representation of the self worn for others to see.

The problem is that most aren't careful about what they display, they take the badges handed to them by the world and wear them recklessly. They wear them to fit in, they wear them to feel like someone important and they wear them to do the things that they think they want.

Soon enough they find themselves wearing everything on their sleeves, their insecurities, their weaknesses and their desires. So eager to fit in and go everywhere, they tack on every badge they pick up and place them upon their sleeve. Very quickly, their badges either tell their full story, or fail to represent them at all depending on where they took their badges from and why.

So if we must wear badges, then let's wear them with pride. Lets be cautious about what we say and put out there and make sure we represent ourselves honestly, but proudly. Let's make our badges, literal and metaphorical, speak volumes about us but only what the world needs to hear.

After all, we're more than the sum of our badges and if we try to define ourselves with what we wear, both literally and metaphorically, we find ourselves portraying very two dimensional images of who we are.

So wear your badges proudly but be careful what they say. Let your true depth show through to those who know you best, the ones that can look past the badges you wear, and don’t cheapen your spirit by slathering it on your body for the world to see.

Our hearts are too valuable to be worn on our skin, the same as they’re too valuable to be tucked away in the darkness until the end of time….

The most vicious force of time is how it wears down all of the things it touches. Time, in its purest form, is the only thing that can turn mountains into dust, empires into shadows and human lives into distant reflections.

It’s time that drags its jagged surface over us, stripping away our layers one by one, first giving us shape and form, and then whittling us down until we’re just a sham of what were in years gone by. It’s a vicious, perpetual and never-ending cycle that breaks down everything it touches, even corroding the idea of eternity until it seems only seconds brief.

Whether the tools of time are wind and water or trials and tragedies, the effect is the same. Whether it’s wearing down rock or human spirit, the results are identical. Whether it’s an erosion over eons of torturous decay or a swifter spiral over a few years, the principle remains the same.

However, unlike the mountains, buildings and countless other objections that are the victims, if not the slaves, of time and its forces, we can fight back. Though our bodies decay and eventually stop, our spirits need not erode.

Yes, they are also subjected to the remorseless brutality of time and her tools, yes, they suffer and wear down under the trials and heartaches that life puts before us. But unlike objects of stone and wood, spirits can grow. They can gain knowledge from time and, even as the years strip away the layers of who we are, we can take back from those years and emerge wiser, stronger and better than ever.

After all, the greatest element of being alive isn’t that we are subject to the whims of time and fate, but that we can take back from them. Because, no matter how much life may wear us down, as long as we’re willing, we can learn and take more back than we ever put in.

It’s as if we’re stealing from time, drawing from its forces as it tries to draw from us and, though she wins in the end, we rip a million small victories from her grasp before finally succumbing to her on our final day. Though we don’t win the prize of immortality, at least not in the physical sense, we do win the prize of a long life of growth when time tried desperately to wear us down.

So let our spirits defy nature, let us shove our thumbs in the eye of time and her tools of erosion. We have the power to create beauty where there was nothing, to make mountains out of dust and to make them last for all eternity. Even if it’s a power only within the confines of our heart, it’s one I dare not forget for, at the end of the day, it is the key to our happiness, to our future and our lives.

And you’d be amazed what a few strong souls, unerroded by the years, can do in a world slowly turning to dust. It’s a beautiful thing to think about.

The need to help others, in my experience, is one of the greatest weaknesses a person can have. Though posessing it is seen as a good thing and earns one the laurels of being noble or saintly, it's a bitter curse that follows those who posses it, often clean to their grave.

The bitter reality is that most people don't want to be helped. They think they do and they act as such, but what most people want is nothing more than reaffirmation for their own ideas and goals. They don't want you to tell them or help them get what they need, they want you to tell them what they think they need. Often times being helped requires more effort than the act of helping, but most people, even those at their lowest, aren't willing to put forth the effort to change their perspectives, mend their ways or open their minds.

The result, the people you try to save find themselves running in circles. As if trying to wear down the fabric of their souls, they place themselves in vicious cycles, unable to break free, constantly tricking themselves that they're making ground when nothing could be farther from the truth. An abusive boyfriend who brings home a rose is a saint just long enough to bring her back home, a backstabbing friend extends an olive branch just long enough to twist the knife again, an addict comes clean just long enough to let his friends pull him back down when he tries to save them, it's all the same, it's all a cycle.

Everyone knows that these things are lies. That most of the good things in the world are just illusions created by the cunning snakes that surround us. Still, we believe in them, we believe in them fully and totally not because we don't know better, but because we want to, we need to. The real world is far too cynical and vile a place for the human heart to survive, so, for many, naivete becomes a lifeline and those few of us that live in the real world are damned to eternal frustration, not because we ourselves become duped, but because those we care about do.

And in there lies the problem with caring. By caring, you take on someone's pain, someone's heartbreak, their misery. It's as if you reach inside them and pull out a fraction of their struggles and place it inside yourself, as if trying to lighten their burden by making it your own. Then you watch them as they go about their lives as if romping through a field of flowers, only to watch them get sucked down a hole. It's heart-wrenching, especially knowing that you couldn't stop them, that you couldn't save them and that, despite your better judgment and your stern warnings, they're suffering and you can't pull them out.

When I look back over the people I've tried to help, I don't see a string of successes or even checkerboard of successes and defeats, I see the faces of those I couldn't help. Those who spurned me and disappeared to parts unknown. They know who they are, I don't need to point them out, they all paid for their decisions, but yet, they all remain trapped in the same cycle that they were in before I met them, the cycle I tried to help them out of.

But yet, though they definitely suffered for their mistakes, I suffered as well. I let myself care for them, relate to them, sympathize with them and my only reward was a stern rebuttal and the heartbreak of watching them sink farther. All of my compassion has bought me nothing. Nothing save a curse that I can't seem to shake.

But as time has gone on, those souls have multiplied. It was as if they knew, by means of some cosmic force, that I felt this sick need to help others and that, they could turn to me. A few I've helped, and for those I am grateful, but most I've watched continue their ways, unmended, riding on a roller coaster of tears, only to call me when things bottom out again.

Now their cries are a deafening howl, like the sound of a million tormented souls crying out in pain. it echoes in my head, it rattles in my heart and it keeps me awake most nights of the week. Combined with the faces of those that turned me away and broke my heart, it's almost too much to bear. All I ever offered was a helping hand, all that I ever received was punishment.

So perhaps it is true that no good deed goes unpunished. That in my attempt to help my fellow man and bring some good to this venomous world, that I too have made myself a jaded, cynical and bitter man who's losing his compassion, like water through cupped hands, one drop at a time.

So yes, I was born with a curse, the curse of compassion and understanding. Though a pragmatist to the end, I've never been enough of one to save myself and that alone dooms me to be bound by the folly of my fellow man, not because I can't see through it, but because I can't stop caring about it.

In the end, it was my heart, not my mind, that was my weakness.

We all have weaknesses, we all have flaws in our character and in our person that prevents us from achieving the impossible goal of perfection. It's in the nature of being human and they're a part of what make us unique.

However, not all weaknesses are created equal. The same as there are different levels of talent and accolade, there are levels of weakness and mortality.

First we have the minor weaknesses, the things we're not good at but wish we were. It could be something as simple as an inability to balance a checkbook or understand a scientific idea. These are minor things that we can usually overcome with work but we usually just ignore and live with since they're mere annoyances on the grand scale of things.

Then we have our major weaknesses, flaws that are hard-wired into our lives often as trade-offs for the talents we possess and enjoy. Though with time and care we often reduce the impact they have on our lives, we can never completely get rid of them. Like a hermit struggling with people skills or a writer wrestling with math, these are gaping holes in our skill set that can never be completely filled in, no matter how hard we try. Many people spend their entire lives working around these weaknesses or trying to eliminate them, both of which are in vain.

But then there's our mortal weakness. More than just a skill we lack or a something we can't do, this is something that cuts us to the very core of our being. Something that hits us at our most primal. It's a critical, tragic flaw that we all know exists but can do nothing to stop. We can try to control it, to work around it or to somehow deal with it, but it always resurfaces, usually when we least want it, to bring tragedy back into our lives.

The ancient Greeks understood this, that's why, in their tragedies, their leads always had a fatal flaw. Be it arrogance, greed, overzealousness or a terminal lack of foresight, the main character almost always had some mortal weakness and it always brought about his or her downfall, usually in grand fashion.

Though some claim to lack such a weakness, they're blind to their own faults and that will do them more harm than any one weakness could. Knowing thyself and the flaws that we possess is more important than being remotely perfect. I know my mortal weakness, I know most of my major ones and as many minor ones as I can, I acknowledge them openly. Turning a blind eye to your weaknesses is simply giving them the opportunity to sneak up on you and hurt you all the more.

So take a moment and ponder your flaws, try to understand a side of yourself few want to see. Be honest and even brutal. It's the only way you can learn about yourself and determine where your faults rest.

Because even though you can't control your greatest weakness, knowing of it's existence and being prepared for it gives you a measure of control over it. And, if you can't eliminate something that's hurting you, controlling it is the next best thing.

And doing so will prevent you from winding up like the characters in the Greek tragedies we know and love. Because even though you can't guarantee prosperity, you can avoid tragedy and that is more than most people would be able to say if they lived a dozen lifetimes.

No matter where you go, no matter what you do and no matter who you meet, everyone is talking about their rights, perceived, real or desired. Everybody is talking about what they're entitled to, or at least what they feel they're entitled to, and they ramble on, seemingly endlessly, about it.

It's easy to talk about rights and freedoms, they're good things which give us choices and the power to control some element of our lives. That's why politicians harp on them with every breath they can muster, why advocacy groups of all varieties litter their propaganda with visions of freedom and privilege and why most countries offer countless documents testifying to the rights its citizens have.

However, no one talks openly about responsibility. Everyone wants to hear what they can do and what choices they have, no one cares to think about, much less talk about, what they're supposed to do. Even though freedom means nothing without responsibility, humans, on the whole, opt to ignore their obligations and wonder why freedoms get carried too far.

Then we watch, one by one, as the freedoms we once enjoyed get stricken down by laws. We send messages to those in power that we can no longer stand the irresponsible and they, in turn, punish the masses for the actions of a few. It's a vicious cycle that chips away at our rights, many of which were supposedly set down hundreds of years ago, and that denies us the very things we once cherished.

We need to open our eyes and our minds to this cycle, to see that freedom without responsibility is just a destructive as tyranny. Where one simply destroys the rights of man, the other chips away at them, leaving only the illusion of what was once before.

Yes, it isn't easy to talk about responsibility, to make people think that, just perhaps, they need to treat their rights with care and use them wisely. That they need to police and restrain themselves a little bit in order to avoid being policed by laws and courts. It's an obviously small price to pay but, when it comes to issues of freedom, no one seems to want to as much as think about self-restraint. To them, a freedom with any restrain is no freedom at all.

But, as history has sadly shown us, it's freedom without restraint that's the biggest threat to our rights. Time and time again we've been shown that if we can't control ourselves, someone will do it for us and even though you may loathe to hook freedom and responsibility together, it's only by doing so that we can enjoy any of our liberties at all.

And personally, I'd rather have freedoms that I myself reign in than laws to take their place.

I hear it all the time on the news and on the talk shows. Where are all the heroes? Where are all of the role models? Where are the people for our sons and daughters to look up to? Where are the people that the rest of the world can strive to be like?

The answer is as plain as day, we've turned them all into villains.

You see, whenever someone reaches for more, achieves something greater or does something beyond the reach of the normal person, society no longer looks on with starry eyes, but rather, with envy and greed. Instead of figuring out how we can be like them or emulate their success, we look at them, like watching a daredevil on a tightrope, just waiting for them to fall.

This is why we stick our noses in every facet of our heroes lives, why we scrutinize their every move and why we splash their faults and mistakes across the front page of every paper in the nation. We have no interest in their success, only in their downfall because it is so much more entertaining and so much more satisfying.

After all, why should we strive for success when we can make the successful one of us into one of the poor, the miserable, the lonely? Why should anyone be special or great when the rest of us can't?

In a society that breeds conformity it's only natural that we'd struggle so hard against any form of excellence. It should come as no shock that we turn our backs on those that set the very trends we follow and that, like a bloodthirsty mob, we devour those that should be giving us cause to dream.

But equally disturbing as our society of chained eagles is our menagerie of winged snakes. Indeed, I've watched many times as society has worshipped its own slime. From iconifying serial killers to envying wealthy crime leaders, we take the very people who cause us to live in fear and give them the status of royalty, complete with titles, wealth and unbelievable recognizeability.

We worship these villains, we study them, analyze them and follow them. Since they are so destructive, their success is easier for us to deal with. Since they got there by means available to us, just by going down paths we choose not to follow, we find their success a bit more enjoyable.

We see ourselves as better than these people. We call them amoral, deranged, deviant or disturbing. But, at the same time, we deify them, make them holy figures in our pop culture and we never focus on their blemishes or embarrassments like we do with our supposed heroes.

Is it at all shocking that we're a society without heroes? That, outside of our everyday heroes we tip our hats to, that we have no one to learn from or look up to. With such an inversion of excellence and such a skewed view of achievement, is it any wonder why we live in fear and why no one rides to the rescue?

No it is not a mystery. Those that were heroes have long since fallen and those that would rise are too scared, not because of the injustices they seek to fight, but because of the people they want to fight for.

Simply put heroes and villains can only exist in a society that lets them exist. For that to take place, differences must be tolerated, excellence must be appreciated and human flaws must be accepted.

Because, in the end, the fundamental thing about heroes, and villains for that matter, is that they are human. To paint them with a broad brush is to ignore their intricacies and doom them to failure. No one can live up to perfection and the quicker we appreciate that, the quicker we can return to having heroes and role models once again.

And the quicker that happens, the quicker we can find some sense of direction in this darkened sea we call life.

What is it about the written word that draws us to it? What is it that makes so many of us, myself included, dedicate our entire lives to understanding it, to honing it, to refining it like never before. Why is it that, no matter how hard we try, there's just something magical about seeing things in black and white that we can never capture when just talking or even watching.

Simply put, there's just something in the permanence of the medium, something special about being able to hold the words in your hand, to touch them, to feel them, to see them and to be able to preserve them for all time that gives it an added boost, even if just a moral one. That's why we, as a society, separate libel, defaming someone in writing, from slander, doing so orally. It's that inherent "added value" that ones words get when they're put down for all eternity, a value we all understand, even if just subconsciously.

But even then we seem to fail our precious words. So many of us either can't read or simply don't use the knowledge they have, letting the written word and all of its understood power just go to waste. It's heartbreaking to me to see many people, intelligent people, scared to even pick up something as simple as a newspaper or a magazine. We have a whole society of people, too timid or too lazy to visit their library or even the vast volumes of literature on the Internet, instead favoring television, radio and other, more digestible means of entertainment.

Though the spoken word and the visual mediums are powerful in their own right, to let the written word fall by the wayside is a tragedy of the highest order. Without it, we'd have no history, without it, we'd have no unified language and, without it, we'd be hard-pressed to carry on anything like a normal life.

But more than that, the written word opens so many doors. The volumes of literature and knowledge never before converted to visual or audible media lay dormant, waiting to fill the minds of those with the heart and patience to seek it. Volumes of research is waiting for you, encyclopedias of knowledge are at your fingertips and millions upon millions of stories are waiting to be read. They're laying there, waiting for you, challenging you to read them.

And that, my friends, is why so many have shunned the written word. It is the medium of communication that challenges the receiver the most, challenges him or her to take the time to read the words, interpret their meaning, form images within their mind and draw understanding from the simple page. That, in turn, is the hidden beauty of the written word, from mere marks on a page images can be created, characters can be born and new worlds can be given life.

That's why I've never seen myself as a writer as much as I have seen myself as a painter or a creator. With words as my medium, I strive to create images, define characters, convey emotions and tell stories. As any writer will tell you, this process is more than simply placing words on a page the same as creating a work of art is more than flinging paint at a canvas.

This is why we must open ourselves to the importance of the written word, not for myself or for our children, but for the countless men and women that have come before us, meticulously creating words and ideas that were designed to leap off of the page and into our minds. The worlds they have to show us, the things they can tell us about ourselves and the projections they have on the world around us are too valuable to let slide. For them we must thrust books into the hands of children, for them we must pick up our newspapers and magazines and for them we must balance our entertainment, let ourselves be challenged and open ourselves to new ideas.

Because, in doing this for them, the artists of the written medium, we open ourselves up to so many things one can not comprehend. A universe, more vast than all of the galaxies in ours, lies sandwiched between dusty volumes of books. If we that world free, the possibilities for our own are literally limitless.

And that, my friends, is what draws me to the written word. More than the permanence, more than the tangibility and accessibility I crave to discover the lost magic, the magic of creating images from words, ideas from sentences and making something where there once was nothing. I don't know if I'm there yet, but I know I must keep trying until the ideas and characters I pen are just as alive as you and I today. Because in contributing to that dust-covered universe I hope to someday contribute to the one we live in now.

After all, it's my hope that man will eventually answer the challenge of the written word. A hope that I fear will never come to pass…

Sometimes in life we find ourselves so busy with our day-to-day existences that we, as people, forget what the larger picture is really about. We get so enwrapped in getting by and surviving that we forget the reasons we fight so hard to stay alive and we lose sight of the things, the countless, wondrous things, that make life on this planet more than just tolerable, but enjoyable.

You see, the joys of life don't lie in work, in money, or even the pursuit of knowledge, but in the reasons we invest so heavily in those things. All of the skills we have, all of the knowledge we hold and all of the tools we can use are meaningless unless we can use them to make ourselves more happy or make the world around us a better place. If we're not doing that, then we're not living. Instead, we're dying, or rather, just waiting for death to come and put us out of our misery.

I've never looked a man's wealth or a man's mind to determine how he's spent his life, I've looked at his smile. I've looked smiling idiots in the face and wondered, endlessly wondered, what he can teach me, what his secret to life is. For all of my knowledge, for all of my work, I've learned nothing about happiness. I've read hundreds of books, torn through thousands of articles and studied the things we intellects study only to find all of these things bereft of any mention of the word "happiness."

No one, not scholars sitting in their ivory towers or CEOs in their posh offices, can teach you a thing about happiness you can't find within yourself. The true measures of life, the joys we feel and the things we achieve, cannot be learned from anyone or anything. Rather, they come from studying yourself. They come from picking through the rubble of a heartbreak, they come from learning your own skills and abilities, but, most importantly, they come from searching your heart, digging deep within yourself and finding the strength to overcome your obstacles, big and small, and finding the will to be come something greater than the sum of your parts.

Any one can point to a pile of money, any one can spout tomes of knowledge and any one can do the grind just to get by, but only a select few, a rare, beautiful few, have what it takes to search themselves, stare at themselves in the mirror and truly like what they see. Life isn't measured in the mind, the wallet or the back, but in the heart. It's measured in love for oneself, for others and for one's principles. It's measured in the guts to stand up for what one believes, the willingness to take the chance and reach beyond what mortals are supposed to achieve and the strength to challenge one's own demons and slay them all one by one.

Life is truly a beautiful thing, but only if start measuring it the way it was meant to be. If you let society, if you let your family and if you let the world tell you what your goals should be, how you'll be the happiest, then life, the greatest thing you have, will be meaningless, just an existence between birth and death of no value to any one or anything.

That is a fate I will not stand for nor a destiny I will ever beat a path toward. My life is my own and yours is your own. You should live it as such and not let the measuring stick of others be your guide. Others may have more money than you, others may be smarter than you, but, if you control your destiny, follow your dreams and open your heart, no one will ever be happier than you.

Because, even as the money others have saved is spent and the knowledge of the wisest men is turned to dust in the winds of change, the joys you had, the joys you brought others and the joys you left behind will still be thriving strong, echoing, for all time in the universe that surrounds.

If you measure your life accordingly, you'll see what I mean. If you don't, well, all I can do is pity you before I go about my life, which I'm going to continue living the way it was meant to be lead. My way.

We all claim to love freedom. When carried on the lips of the patriotic, the democratic and the lovers of liberty, freedom is the greatest thing on the planet. It is the alpha and the omega of the human existence and pinnacle of human achievement. To many, it's the only thing worth fighting and dying for and to countless others living without it, it's the only thing worth hoping for.

But how quickly we forget the true definition of freedom. We so easily write off the definition of freedom, as to be free or to live in a free country and to being able to do whatever we want whenever we want to. While on the surface that may seem to capture the very essence of freedom, it's a very shallow, self-centered and delusional definition that does more to cripple the notion of freedom than it does to explain or materialize the notion.

Freedom cannot be measured simply by one person's ability to do as they please without fear of reprisal, rather it must be measured by everyone's ability to do as such. Freedom means more than you obtaining permission to do what you will, it means obtaining permission for others to do as they please and it means supporting others rights to do what they will with their minds, their bodies and their words, even if it makes you uncomfortable, so long as it truly harms no other.

Because if all a man wants to do is fish and sleep, he'll find himself living "free" in almost any country of the world. Even though others around him may be getting beaten for reading certain books or holding certain ideals, he himself is as free as any of us would care to be. But that does nothing to justify what is going on around him and even though he might not realize it nor care to think about it, the world he lives in is just as controlled and manipulated as human cruelty will allow. After all, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and even Pol Pot called their countries "free" and from their perspectives they were right, it was just the rest of the populace that had a problem.

That's why, if we're going to live in a free country, we have to stand up for our those who disagree with us once in a while and accept those with different lifestyles and attitudes from us. Despite what others say, freedom is not about one side, even the majority, telling the other what they can and cannot do, but it is about people of all varieties being big enough and confident enough to look at those that they disagree with and allow them to be as they are and do what they will even though they might have the power to crush it.

Because that's the true responsibility we have to maintain freedom, not to be ready to fight and die for it (though it is definitely called for at times), but to be ready to allow it to flourish, even when it isn't easy. Because if we allow ourselves to shut down one freedom on the basis of mere discomfort, we soon find ourselves crushing ten and then a hundred. Over time we find ourselves persecuting one group, then another and then another and after we've whittled away at the rights we hold dear, we find ourselves wondering where our freedom went.

Much like a sculptor who never stopped chiseling at a block of granite, we find ourselves standing over not a beautiful piece of art but a pile of useless gravel that means nothing save to be a sore reminder of what once was and never will be again.

If we as a society are to avoid this fate, we need to realize now that the greatest struggle for freedom takes place inside each and every one of us and, with that in mind, change our definition and open our minds to the world around us. Because in a society where one man, who has done no injustice, isn't free, no one is truly free. And if that happens, the rest of the populace is just waiting until the day the rights they enjoy become mere memories and the freedoms they once defended are nothing but a lesson in a history book.

Many years ago, on the day of atonement, towns would hold ceremonies in which they would place all of their sins into a single goat and then cast it out in the desert, presumably to die of thirst or starvation, in order to purge themselves of their own misdeeds and guilt. While the whole town celebrated being lifted of the burden of sin, one poor goat, which was chosen because he was "without blemish," was forced to die a slow, miserable death in the hot desert just beyond the town's borders.

However, in these modern times, we'd like to think that we've grown beyond that barbaric act, that in the development of our modern culture we've rid ourselves of the need to do something so cruel, so foolish and so useless. But there's a reason that the word "scapegoat" has lingered in our modern vocabulary, dangling over our sense of justice like a storm cloud on a green pasture. Even today we cast our proverbial goats out of the city walls and leave them today just so we can walk away from the ordeal feeling better about ourselves and our own tainted human nature.

Because in this day of television and Internet, we are forever confronted by the vices and grievances of the human animal. While we are probably no more a cruel species than we were hundreds of years ago, it's only now that nearly every element of our dark human nature is thrown squarely in our faces, plastered all over the front page of your daily paper and strewn across images on your television.

But even though our eyes are constantly confronted with the truth about human beings and the way they really work, our minds rarely meet the challenge. It's not enough to realize that human beings are sometimes evil creatures who do bad things for no good reason whatsoever, we must seek out a cause, an invisible enemy, something to pin the fault of our own humanity on.

Indeed, the only thing that's changed since those times hundreds and thousands of years ago is that our targets are no longer animal. While we may no longer cast goats from our city walls, we cast our blame on the media, the government and anything else that we can safely take our frustrations out on. Like a prisoner punching at the walls we seek to destroy the symptoms of our incarceration, not cure the causes.

Yet here we are, as a society, unable to confront our own damnable nature and attacking our own freedoms, our own ideals just to prevent us from looking within ourselves and seeing this world, this messed up, screwed up world, for what it is. We don't live in a world invented by the media, by marketers or by the evils of the corporate elite, we live in a world made up of billions of imperfect beings, unable to look at their own faults for even a second and admit that their human nature is not ideal and their innocence is not perfect.

If you think we live in a violent society, then you need to realize we all have blood on our hands. While murderers may be scoundrels who act on their own accord, we have to realize that the morals and values we hold as a society have an impact and play a major role in determining the types of citizens we breed. At best, video games and action movies are just a mirror of what we project, an example of marketers giving us exactly what we want and pushing things exactly as far as we'll let them go.

Scapegoating, in all its forms, does nothing but dilute the truth. Be it the slow murder of an innocent animal or the blaming of an abstract concept, all you can achieve by blaming something undeservingly is diverting attention from the cold truth and the more time we spend storming castle doors and torching witch's houses, the further and further we get away from addressing the real problems, the problems that lie inside each and everyone one of us.

But even though these are problems that may never be solved, until we confront them without merely passing the blame, we're never going to have the faintest clue as to what we can do about them…

They say that man is a creature of two worlds, the world of the living and the world of the dreaming. In the world of the living, we are all simply people, people roaming the planet doing jobs, paying bills and living our lives. In the world of dreams, we are all writers and musicians who create art, write masterful stories of fantasy and though we may be victims of nightmares at times, we are still able to express ourselves and enjoy ourselves with a kind of child-like freedom never to be found in the waking.

But while these two words are great, each in their own right, neither is the greatest of all. For while reality finds it's beauty in practical things and dreams in unabashed freedom there is a third word, an in-between world if you will, that has found a way to master the beauty of both.

This in-between world exists neither in sleeping nor waking but in the giant chasm between the two worlds. As we humans drift aimlessly through the night we are caught, even if only briefly, in this wonderful space. It's the only place where the two worlds touch, the only place where you can talk your problems over with a unicorn, practice your dance moves with a dragon or discuss how your friends treat you with a Cyclops.

It's the only place where ideas flow as free as water, where the limit to the answers one can grasp is limited only by the reaches of one's imagination and it's the only place where man is still sober enough to remember his problems, but still drunk enough off of the wine of dreams to answer them with super-human creativity.

It is truly the most perfect place imaginable. But it is never a place you can go to. Because unlike dreams or reality, it is not a destination, but rather a corridor. We are nothing but passengers through this strange land. All we can do is look out the windows of our carriage and watch as the two words collide and their fringes mingle to become a patchwork quilt made up of the fibers of both our worlds.

That is why we never spend more than a few precious moments here, a few moments as we go from awake to asleep at night and back again in the morning. If we as mortals set foot in this land, we would taint it like we have our others. This land is pure and pristine still and any nightmares or troubles occurring here are reflections we bring with us from our trips beyond, not a problem with the land itself.

So as I fall asleep tonight, I fall asleep neither for the comfort of dreaming or the thrill of awaking the next morning, but rather for the few precious moments in between. I know that without those moments the ideas I cherish and the creativity I so need would never be mine.

Much like the air we breathe or wood to a fire, these few precious moments are what fuel me and propel me forward. Without them I would stall and die, but with too many of them I would rocket into oblivion, pushed far beyond the edges of insanity, and never be heard from again.

That is a risk I will never take my friends, not in a thousand years of questioning nor a million years of answering. So no matter how much I love my trip through this place. I could never slow my trip through it; to do so would be fatal. Fatal to my mind, fatal to my body and fatal to my soul.

Because you and I dear reader are mortals, and this world was not made for us. It is our corridor, our passageway and nothing more. If you respect that it will yield you many great things. If you don't, it may kill you.

It's really that simple my friends.

For many of us, when we find happiness, we are quick to learn that in society there is a hierarchy of happiness, an arbitrary order that places some forms of self-fulfillment as being greater than others. Where the world calls one kind of happiness "real" or "perfect" it calls another "hollow" or "empty" as if to say that a person riding high on one type of wave is not as truly happy as the man standing next to him, riding a separate, but higher, one.

One might even say that society uses this very hierarchy to prevent people from doing what it considers wrong. It places achievement ahead of drugs calling it more "real" and it places love ahead of the Internet calling it more "profound." Even though two people sitting in a room might be just as happy and just as content with life, one is somehow better off than the other; one is smiling for "real" and "true" reasons even though the joy they feel is just tangible and just as real to both of them.

As one of those people only satisfied by the "higher" forms of happiness, I would like to believe in this hierarchy. But even I have to wonder if perhaps I've been played as the patsy. Perhaps, due to the way I was raised or due to my own human nature, I am incapable of enjoying the most easily traveled paths to happiness, perhaps I missed the boat and I'm forever doomed to work twice as heard for the same amount of joy as the person next to me.

Perhaps, but somehow I doubt it.

Because one thing that I've learned about happiness is that like any other emotion it isn't permanent. At some point it's going to leave, at some point you're going to feel pain and at some point you're going to look back on those better times, back when your life was good and you were at peace with the world. When looking back on better times, everyone hopes and prays that those days will return soon. Some, those who earned their happiness and worked for it, look back and smile, enjoying the memories of the times gone by. No matter how much they long for those days, they're comforted by the memories and cherish them like gold.

But those who chose the easy way, look back on these memories and cry. They cry because it becomes obvious what addictions and egos are when it comes to happiness. They are not hollow forms of the real thing, they are not less-tangible or less-perfect stand-ins for true contentment, but rather, they are deceptions. It's happiness that isn't even there, just a means by which the mind tricks itself into thinking otherwise and whenever the pill has worn off, the lust-object is gone, the ego is smashed or whatever mirage that was used is faded, the mind can see clearly again and it sees the trickery for what it was, just a scam.

But the mind invariably wants more, more happiness, even if it means trickery and deception. Denial is a powerful force, but it's also easily shattered by the winds of change and those seeking true fulfillment, those seeking a more complete happiness, a more real feeling of contentment, do not fear it, for it can not hurt them. They'll at least have their memories to enjoy, unlike the guy behind them in line.

So my friends, perhaps I am a dupe, perhaps I am the idiot and perhaps I'm stuck doing things the hard way for all eternity. But even though my victories may be smaller, even though they may be fewer and even though they may be less impressive, they will always be cherished. I'll look back upon my life and see mountains and valleys, highs and lows, good times and bad, but even though my life may be checkered with dark times, at least I'll know none of my good times were mirages.

Because when you remove the mirages from the easy path, much like removing the white squares from a chessboard, you're left with nothing but a sea of black staring at you, an ocean of pain that can no longer be hidden and a life of unfulfilled potential.

That is not the life I want to lead and I will not let myself fall into it, no matter how easy the path may be…

Questions will always be more powerful than statements. Questions will always linger longer than declarations. But most importantly, questions will always change the world long after their answers have been forgotten.

Because a questions, a good one at least, does more than say "Here I am" and take a seat in oblivion. A question is a challenge, it demands to be answered, it begs to be dealt with and it commands the attention that only a threat to the status quo can deliver.

It doesn't matter if the question is "Why must life be this way?" or "What is the capital of Colombia?" a question challenges the recipient to answer it, it challenges someone to think.

In the best case, the question is answered satisfactorily and forgotten. It then becomes a whole statement, just like any other and takes it's place in the rows of facts in the mind where it is destined to be forgotten or at least unused.

Other questions aren't so easily answered not because we don't know the truth, but because we don't like it. These questions are usually silences before they are spoken for they draw attention to the unpleasant and force everyone to think about what they have forcibly pushed aside. There are many words for asking these types of questions, none of which are pleasant, but the truth is that every great leader, big and small, has had the guts to ask them and challenge the world below.

But still more questions have no answers at all. These questions are the ones that linger. With these questions, the challenge goes out, but is never answered. Like spotlights, these questions highlight what we do not know and often times what we will never know. They accent our limitations as people and as human beings. Because when we realize we don't know the answer or, worse yet, that there is no right answer, we realize what it means to be mortal, to not know everything, to have limitations.

But despite all of this, we have to ask questions, we have to challenge the world to think for it is the only way to grow. As a species, it is our mind that sets us apart and if we do not constantly expand our knowledge by challenging the envelope, then we are no greater than the countless species we have the courage to call inferior.

So my challenge to you, my question for you dear reader is to question everything. Ask the hard questions, ask the ones that people shy away from, ask the ones people dare not think about or would never ponder willingly. Because while expanding the envelope will always bring about a little pain, anything worth doing, anything worth saying, will always hurt someone. But that doesn't mean it would be best left unspoken…

Time never stops, it never slows down, it never takes a breath. Life goes on. Just because we're fond of sayings like "The day the earth stood still" or "Time froze for a second" doesn't mean they're true.

Just ask a doctor in a emergency room. The sick and wounded come in every hour of every day, 365 days a year. There is no holiday for their field, there is no break and there is no respite, for their field is the field of preserving life, the measuring stick of time, and life, as they quickly discover, is always happening. Always.

Through all of the big events of our lives, father time has stood there watching, doing what he does best, counting the minutes and seconds off as he always has. Through births and deaths, tragedies and triumphs and everything in between he's been there, watching, counting.

He won't slow down for us, nor anyone else. He doesn't care about the plight of mortals. He's just an impersonal force, personified solely for our comfort, constantly pushing the universe forward, spinning the planets and making everything work.

But yet we try to stop time. We hide its effects. We bury the lessons it teaches us and do everything we can to forget its existence and hold on to the precious moments it gives us. Invariably, we fail. Like a fool wielding a book of arcane magic we try to wield powers we know nothing about, could never hope to attain or even think about reaching. To him, we're merely mice clawing at the wall of our cage, trying futilely to break down barriers we don't even understand.

But it's probably a good thing that we fail so pathetically. Who knows what would happen if the clock ever did stop? Who knows what effect that would have on the universe, on ourselves and our lives.

For time is not our realm my friends, though it is a cruel master, impersonal to the core and careless to say the least. The father of eternity is best left to his own devices. We need to leave him to his own path, the path he's been cutting all along, straight a head… one second at a time…

Nothing that I have done up to now has brought me any closer to discovering what I want out of life, much less any closer to achieving it. I can't begin to count the days I've spent wondering the desert of human existence monitoring my happiness and trying to figure out what brought me joy and what brought me pain.

Even now when I sit up in the dark, the questions dart through my minds like hummingbirds fighting. What does it all mean? What's the point really? Does anything make a difference? How would things change if I perished tomorrow?

The answers never come.

It's not that I hate my life, or that I'm miserable with my existence. But there's a void there, a void that God, love, hate, sex nor writing has been able to fill. Like an arcane knowledge written on an ancient tome it's kept just beyond my reach and I find my self doing circles in life, getting nowhere, all the while skirting the issue at hand.

To this day I can't think of anything that has made me feel fulfilled, something that has made me whole. I have a sense of purpose, yes, this is true and it's probably the only thing that keeps me breathing, but I feel as if I have nothing else.

So I merely survive, one day to the next, one battle to the next, one wound to the next and wait in vain for the day in which it all comes to be too much, the day in which the camel drops it's load in the sand.

Ever since the day I was born I've had a huge burden placed on my shoulders. Even after the initial burden was lifted I sought out other weights, even heavier than before until I found myself carrying the world on my shoulders. Somehow, these weights, these burdens have made me feel more complete, but like most ties that bind they've kept me from my goals and dreams and now I'm so far away I don't even remember what they were.

I don't have any dreams anymore; anyone who says otherwise doesn't know me.

I'm useless, I'm a tool, and I'm a sponge for information and nothing more. All that my 21 years of existence have amounted to was filling a large grade book. But I should have been filling my biography.

Instead, now I'm lost and confused. I'm adrift at sea with no hopes of finding my way home. I don't remember where I went wrong. I just know I did. Now nothing brings me happiness, now no one makes me smile and I don't even know which way to head to get my soul back.

So if you happen to read this message in a bottle, perchance pick it up on some sandy beach in a faraway land, don't bother looking for me, for I can't be found, don't bother comforting me, for it can't be done and don't bother hating me, for comfort means nothing at all.

Just heed my warnings and heed them well. Live each day and each hour as if it were your last. Lest you wind up like me, the man who has it all, but still just an empty shell…

As I stare over the plain of humanity, I see a populace filled to the brim with idiots, buffoons and sheep. There is no safe haven for people like me, no place to go to get away from the idiocy of the planet. Every restaurant it seems is filled with morons, every movie theater littered with cretins and every place where humans are allowed to walk, there are jerks.

To Hell with them all…

Even though they have taken quite an interest in me, I have absolutely none in them. I don’t desire to speak, interact, touch, smell or be around any of them. They disgust me to the very core of my existence, they make me nauseous and I have an eternal fear that their idiocy might somehow be contagious.

It’s a society of cell phones and prostitutes, of diamond rings and false engagements. Nothing has a use, nothing has value. Hearts are broken for dollar bills while souls are sold for pennies on the dollar. Why should I care about one of them when they have shown not an inkling of concern for me?

To Hell with them all…

Is it any wonder why when I sit I sit alone, why I pull up a chair in the darkest corner of the room to eat my meal? Is it at all odd that I’d rather listen to my music than the incessant babbling of the humanoids around me as I walk from A to B? Is there any reason why I shouldn’t stand apart from the world and watch it damn itself for all eternity?

Because ever since evolution stopped working, ever since man first called itself civilized, it has been a much more brutal creature than the animals I call friend, the most savage beast on the planet. Just because we kill with guns and words rather than fangs and teeth does not make us more civilized, it just means we have rules and laws to justify our brutality.

Because as I stare out over the plain of humanity, I see a society of wolves and sheep, a society of slaves pretending to be masters and masters pretending to be civilized. There’s enough pretense in the world to fill a million books and enough stupidity to flood the cosmos. The people I seek to avoid, the people I seek to destroy taint the very world, offend the very concept of life itself and trash everything I hold dear.

To Hell with them all…

I don't know what it is that draws me to the night. All I know is that my soul seems to come alive when the sun goes down and my mind opens up the most during the blackest of nights.

I live in a world of headlights and 24-hour diners. When the streetlights come on and moon rises up above the trees, I finally am able to be myself as I truly am. I was born this way, I will die this way.

There's nothing for me in the daytime, just crowded streets, ringing phones and that hot, blaring sun beating down on me. I'd much rather move about when the world is quiet and nothing but the cool night air surrounds me. It sets me at peace.

At night, my body is quicker and stronger and my mind is sharper and clearer It's as if the blurring haze of the world has been removed. That's why I let the lights of the city be my guide and my keen understanding of the world keep me safe.

But for now at least I am forced to live the life of a day-dweller. Though the very blood in my veins craves my natural habitat, to eat and survive I must move about in daylight and try to put my mind to rest at night.

I get little sleep and less time to work. I feel as if I am forever dulled and wounded by this grave injustice. But somehow I shuffle awake in the morning and go about my business, just like everyone else.

But the time will come and soon when the natural flow of my life will reign supreme. I will set the times that are right for me and do what I must do to keep myself at 100%. I will do this because I have to, for my own sanity.

You see, I am a creature of the night and to do anything else would be a horrible mistake. Much like dulling the knife that cuts your steak, forcing me out in the daytime destroys the thing that makes me work and the thing that makes me so valuable, my mind.

Remember that future friends and companions, remember it well. If you wish to call on me, make it late, and if you want to know me as I truly am, meet me underneath the glowing streetlight, I'll be there when the moon is at it's highest.

"You don't need to do that, what you have is good enough," they say. I disagree. Our society is all about the bare minimum, just getting by. I, on the other hand, am about excelling, going one step further and ignoring the when it's time to stop.

Whatever happened to striving for excellence, to going the extra mile? When did it become satisfactory to come home, feed your cats, eat dinner and go to bed? When did life become about simply surviving?

Well, I don't care, because mine isn't. I hunger for excellence, for one step beyond the norm and nothing, nothing is going to stand between me and achieving just that.

Others have tried, oh yes, they have tried to bring me down to their mediocrity, but I have broken free and through trial and error, surrounded myself with those who seek excellence with the same fervor I do.

In a society of bare minimums, all rights and good enoughs, I intend to break through the glass ceiling of mediocrity and knowing that my friends and companions will be there beside me, smashing the same barriers, gives me the courage to fight on, even when things get tough.

You see, nature favors those that get up after being knocked down, those that refuse to stop once the acceptable level has been reached. The man that does just enough is much like a cog in a machine, playing his part, but he who does more sets the pace for all the other cogs and laughs as the machine breaks as it tries fruitlessly to keep up.

So if you've done what's necessary to complete something, why not pick it back up and go one step farther? Why not push it just a little bit harder? The extra mile may be the hardest to run, but it is definitely the most rewarding.

Separate yourself through excellence, make yourself great through hard work and perseverance because if you don't, people like myself and my friends will quickly leave you behind…

Think about this before you go, many have completed a 26 mile marathon, but how many could go 27? It's that extra mile that makes all the difference in the world that is.