Sometimes I ask myself why I blog or keep my Facebook account or have a hard time deleting emails and would rather just archive them or store them away in folders. I've been actually thinking a lot about my Facebook account and updating my status, reading other people's. It's seems like an invasion sometimes and it scares me how much I want people to know what I'm doing. People, sometimes, that I haven't seen in a long long time. Or ever. I guess it's the way of life now. But I'm still thinking about it and trying to double check myself before I post anything. Why am I doing it? Is it for specific people? Is it for the attention? It's a sticky road!
Funny how the more things develop, the more complicated life seems to get, yes?
Anyway, in a way I'm glad because sometimes I like to go back through the archives or read the 'Older Posts' and remember. How life is an ebb and flow of emotions and twists and turns. Anything can happen. And there will be bad days when you don't think you can make it through and it's just terrible and inexplicable and you can't understand why, if there is a God, does He let bad things happen? But you do come through. And most of the times you come through stronger. And things do get better and you can't even really recall what the bad times felt like.
Like in the movie Amazing Grace when William Wilberforce is narrating his (until then) failed battle against the slave trade to Barbara Spooner in the wee hours of the morning. And then she asks him...
Barbara: Is that that the end of your story?
William: You think not?
Barbara: No!
William: Why not?
Barbara: Because after night, comes day!
Gaw, I love this movie on so many levels. And this shot is one of my favourites. It's from the last scene of the movie and Wilberforce is being applauded in parliament and he hesitantly stands up with tears in his eyes and looks up at his wife sitting in the balcony and smiles.
"it scares me how much I want people to know what I'm doing!" This is an interesting thought. I think I really get it, because I've wondered the same thing (on numerous occasions). All this self-analyzing gets uncomfortable sometimes doesn't it??
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm glad you share here. And one day you are going to be so glad that you wrote it all down(whatever the motivation might be)!
Hi Tina! Love the new layout of your blog, soft and sweet:)
ReplyDeleteI think FB for me is slowly fazing on me as it gets more widely open, what I mean, is like you have 211 friends. It's doesn't seem personal anymore. And sure, I like seeing all the pictures, LOL! I'll just stick to blogging more and check FB less. Yeah, it's a sticky road!!
I need to watch Amazing Grace again as I love that movie too!
You know what? The last scene of this movie reminds me of the last scene in Schindler's List. For obvious reasons :)
ReplyDeleteAnd I can't tell you just how much I love your new header. Is it...Bombay? :)
@Jill: Oh yeah, I'm glad that I write it all down and I don't think I'll stop doing that!
ReplyDelete@Ping: Yeah, FB has totally lost its charm on me so I don't check it as obsessively as I used to and the gaps between my status updates are also getting longer and longer and I'm happy with that!
@Sharan: Yup, BOMBAY! A picture I took from Monisha's terrace. I love it too! :)
@Sharan: Also, that's my handwriting! :P Cool, right?
ReplyDeleteYES IT IS!!!! Oh my God, how did you do that?!
ReplyDeleteAlso, I came back, really, to type in a quote: "The night is always darkest before dawn" -- from The Dark Knight.
:)
@S: Haha! Well, I wrote it on a piece of paper and took a photo of it and then messed around with the colour and stuff on Photoshop! ;)
ReplyDeleteYes, there are actually a lot of quotes on this theme, no? I think there's one in the proverbs that says, "though the tears last through the night, joy comes in the morning" or something to that effect :P
Globalized culture has a vast array of tools for separating people. These tools are both causes and effects, often of themselves. The real question is what generates them and why?
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right, life is emotionally shifting. Happiness, Anger, even Disappointment can consume you so fully one minute and be totally foreign to you the next. But buried there under all of that, each life is going somewhere, to some destination to some purpose which will be realized on an eternal scale. Purpose in everything, I believe, is a logical imperative to the existence of anything.
@ Ajay:
ReplyDeleteDon't you think existence precedes essence? Or, what you call 'purpose'? Existence is imperative to everything else, the way I see it.
yes, I see what you're saying, and you're right! Something can't have a purpose if it does not exist. My point is this: without an uncaused beginning cause which exists within and without the principle of existence nothing can exist. And even if such a cause or being existed, it would require a compelling reason (a cause generated by itself and nothing other) to create existence. And I do mean CREATE, as in deity. to my mind, which is easily confused and befuddled(mostly by beer and Jim Beam) , it's impossible for anything to exist otherwise.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, conclusion: purpose drove a creating being to conceptualize then actualize everything in existence: essence before existence.
The deciding factor of essence v. existence is whether there is a creator or not. And like I said, I can't see how it works without one. Nevermind about, if god exists why is he such an asshole? I think that's an unrelated argument. (I don't think god is an asshole), it's just a common jump people make when discussing creationism. Without sounding like too much of a pretentious jerk, I believe it's a "fallacious" argument.
By the way, as always, this is what I think, not necessarily what I'm claiming to be true. So if you disagree, pull me back to center! Nothing gets in the way of truth more than us trying to prove it.
The deciding factor of essence v. existence is whether there is a creator or not.
ReplyDeleteI think you hit the crux of the argument there. I was making an essentially non-Christian existentialist argument (I'm not sure about the Christian existentialists yet, because I have never fully understood them) where "existence precedes essence" without an inexplicable beginning. In Satre's words, "Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world – and defines himself afterwards", because I don't consider God to be the "uncaused beginning cause" that, well, began everything. I suppose that is where our arguments take different paths, because our premises are no longer the same.
And as always, there is no ONE truth or lie, your belief is just as true in your world as my belief is true in mine :) So the question of "God being an asshole" doesn't come up at all, for me. We disagree -- as we should, here -- because our core arguments are different. And you're already at the center of yours, as I am, at mine :)
Ps: Tina, sorry I decided to pick on Ajay on your blog and ended up spamming you, as usual :P
ReplyDeleteHaha! Oh, totally fine by me. Superficially, it looks like I got a lot of comments so by all means, please continue :P
ReplyDeleteHAHA, gotta love it! I Do believe in ultimate truth and that God (who is ultimately indistinguishable from Love also called Jesus) is the source of it. I can't be honest and call myself a Christian because I'm not part of that organization. I believe in Jesus and that he is exactly who he claimed to be. Leave out all the rest, because all those silly little doctrines just separate people and that's not what Jesus was about.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you believe? (and don't worry-I'm not going to try and 'convert' you because I don't even have a religion to convert you to!) I'm really interested from the depth of what you've said in the past to hear your take on God and existence!
Haha, that's pretty interesting! I mean, the fact that you don't want to label yourself or your beliefs but that you still believe in Jesus -- as who He said He was. That's a hard distinction to make.
ReplyDeleteAs for my views...well, here's the thing. I believe in divinity. By that I mean that I believe -- and I know, for me -- that there is some...inexplicable force in the universe. Probably something that explains the divine proportion, or even the fact that Earth is the only known planet so far that hosts life, as we know it. Things like that. But I don't believe that this force has: a) created us with some predetermined purpose or that b) it's going to chart my life with signs. I understand how that belief works, because I used to be there a long, long time ago but I don't believe in it anymore. For me, life -- as we know it, as a JOURNEY that stretches out for all "living things" -- is Absurd by definition. Nothing makes sense unless YOU make it make sense for you. Everything works only if YOU make a choice. YOU choose to get out of bed in the morning, YOU choose to make coffee, and YOU choose to, i don't know, go to college, fall in love, cut down trees or plant them, light a lamp or kill a person. If you step back and think, and wait for life to pan itself out into a series of meaningful incidents, it won't happen. Not unless YOU see whatever happening as meaningful -- or alternatively, NOT.
It's a fine line for me too. Because while I believe, like I said, that life as a JOURNEY makes no predetermined sense, the very EXISTENCE of that...flame of life -- what is it? is it our hearts beating? Our bodies pumping blood? Breathing? What keeps us ALIVE? -- is Magical, or Divine, for me. It's presence itself is miraculous, but what we choose to do with it, is not.
So, yes, I think there is an unexplained power. I feel it in certain people, in certain very selected places, in certain thoughts and in certain things that exist -- events, objects, I don't know. But what that power really is -- God, Allah, Jesus, Krishna, call it what you want -- I don't know. And the way I see it, i don't want to label it.
But I'll tell you this: I'm pretty sure Jesus WAS who he said he was. I'm not one of those people who thinks that religion is DENIAL in the sense that everything is a lie. It's not. Jesus existed, and Moses did too. They say that the Mahabharata was an actual war that took place on the grounds of Kurukshetra, and if you give me proof of that war, I'll believe it too. I don't have questions factually, it's just what one does WITH those beliefs, that I have questions about. I cannot find it easy to settle with answers, to go on blind faith -- even though i once used to be a blind faith person myself -- now.
Oh wow, I don't even want to read through what I've written -- I'm pretty sure I've sufficiently worn you out :D Thoughts?
Yeah, very interesting. I agree mostly with your view on blind faith. It's used as a religious catch all to support asinine and self-contradictory beliefs. However, faith in what you can't see is an essential part of understanding and experiencing anything. Take for example Love. Say two people are in love, it's impossible to prove Love (think about it) yet it is sooo relevant and important. It takes faith to be in Love. It also takes faith to know God in that way.
ReplyDeleteAnd your comments on inexplicable divinity. I ALMOST agree, haha! Exceptionally few people in the world have even a basic understanding of who or what God is. I wouldn't necessarily even count myself as one. God is very difficult to understand. I could have an equal meaning and say Ultimate truth and Love are very difficult to understand. A person has to see through everything they know to understand. The only thing I have going for me in my pursuit of God is that I know what His voice sounds like. You may at this point freely call me insane-and be right. But If a person listens, they can hear it. I'm not talking about some audible thing, it's really more like inspiration and knowledge.
And you're right in that nothing will happen in your life unless YOU make it happen. This is 100% correct. But I differ in that I believe:
premise
1) existence is impossible without an outside uncaused being to cause it
2) everything within caused existence has a subsequent cause and effect.
Therefore:
Every human life has an ultimate cause and destination
Also human beings have choice.
This really sucks, I have like 30 seconds left of my lunch break, and this argument is really unedited, I'll come back to it tonight.
I got off work at 11:30 last night, so my thought is pretty well lost. Question for S, (hell, anybody): In your view, is the inexplicable divinity the same cause that caused (not created) the universe? Or is it a subsequent part of a random (unplanned) existence?
ReplyDeleteBottom line, I don't understand how the universe can exist without a god to create it. How do you understand it, if you care to discuss it still!
By the Way does anybody know if Natasha is still in Indiana? I'm driving through there later in the summer.
Thanks for email, Tina! Raleigh is 800 miles out of the way, so that's not really an option. Although I've already got 1800 miles planned for this trip. Hah, just need Jagz to come and drive 500 miles an hour for me. God I miss that guy.
ReplyDeletefun-fact, I'm living in a camper that has wifi, which is neat.