The state of things.

I could be angry about what's going on in this country, or I could be apathetic and pretend that the impending issues that are tearing down our way of life piece by piece don't exist, but I'll choose to do what I can when I can to save that which can be saved.

I've seen a lot of disturbing things happen lately. There is a bill that has passed that allows the government to drag its citizens from their homes under suspicion of treason, and the entire senate except for a few signed off on this. However, that's not what I want to talk to you about today. Ron Paul is.... he is more than likely going to be running against Obama in the Presidential election. Yes, there are several others just like him, but most are canon fodder, he has the best chance, and when you look at the things that he stands for, it paints a very bleak picture of what is truly possible if he is elected.

These are not my words, but they're true nonetheless. Make judgments for yourself.

"All of his legislative agendas, economic policies, overturnings, repealings, etc. pass. What exactly do you think would happen, Ron Paul supporters? Why do you think that would be a good thing?
Let's start with his economic plan.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/
First of all, he completely kills the departments of energy, housing and urban development, commerce, interior, and education. That's 146,916 employees fired, plus more than 93,000 contractors.
Second of all, his cuts to government spending amount to about $1 trillion in the first year, which is 1/14th of the GDP. For reference, this is more GDP than we lost from the 2007-2009 recession.
Third of all, about 900 billion of that comes straight in the form of cuts to Medicaid, food stamps, S-CHIP, child nutrition, etc., which is to say the programs that have the largest economic impact for poor people. He's also cutting juvenile assistance programs from the Justice Department, substance abuse and mental health care from HHS, eliminating the SNAP program, and so on.

I mean, who would want to live in America in this world? And if you live in another country, fuck you too, he wants to withdraw from the United Nations, he wants to zero out foreign aid, and basically flip a giant middle finger to everyone.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/second-amendment/

This is just scratching the surface. Let's talk about how the world works when he dismantles the EPA and regulations have to be handled by 50 different state EPAs, because, you know, Texas air is different from California air.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/energy/
Oil company wants to drill directly into a polar bear's ass? That's OK by Paul's rules! Fuck polar bears anyway, if they wanted to stay unextinct they would have, as the great Milton Friedman once said, "fuckin' got a goddamn job and let the free market take care of everything".

How about when he repeals Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley? Now investment bankers can go back to raping minorities and poor people with absolutely no oversight. He's repealing Obamacare in addition to all those other cuts for poor people and children, so you're basically fucked on medical care if you can't afford it. Pre-existing condition? Fuck you, free market says you need to die.

And his tax plan is equally stupid.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/taxes/
Cut the corporate tax rates, extend the Bush tax cuts, repeal the estate tax, repeal the income tax, repeal capital gains tax, repealing Social Security tax, literally closing the IRS. Who the fuck does all of that help? Rich people, not poor people.

He also basically wants to abolish unions.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/right-to-work/
Because if a company wants to discriminate against black people, the free market will allow people to not go there. But if the workers want to unionize, fuck that, we need government to stop that shit.

I mean Jesus Christ, he even wants to stop the FDA from putting warning labels on snake oil.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/health-care/"

Slightly illuminated.

I'm slightly illuminated, and in effect, my surroundings have become painfully apparent to me. Past, present, and future... but especially past. I have become temporarily fixated on this concept of the past when i should be looking toward the future. However, this very action asks a very important question. Why do I make the mistakes that I do and am I in some way destined to make them? Furthermore, if destiny and fate exist within this universe in the way that we define them, then is there as much free will as I believe?

Let me explain myself. This may sound weird, but if time is a self-engulfing circle--one event replaying itself on end for what we would consider "eternity", then are the choices that we have chosen already made? Are we damned before we begin--or are our choices more complex in their nature than those that make them? To be honest though, I think that it's a lot simpler than that. Maybe if the complexities of time had anything to do with decision making.... well then the complexities of time would have something to do with decision making, but really I think that I should be thankful for my free will and make choices. Like I am intended to.

I want to look back at this.

Consider this an experiment in causality of sorts. I'm going to type out what happened today and then come back and read this long after the events of this day have long become the past.

Today, everything went wrong as far as I can see. My financial aid was supposed to come in today, and I was informed that instead of being $300.00 or something similar, it was instead $60.00. The dilemma is not that I could not buy the little unimportant things that caught my eye, but that I was unable to afford the tools needed to further my education--my books. It is my understanding that most schools would have provided the financial aid before everyone was three weeks into the semester, but this is Northern Kentucky University, and to my knowledge, most schools do not behave this way.

I might have been okay with making due with what I had, if I in fact had it. I then found out that NKU had not only raised the rates, but that they had also not put the money into my account yet. To make things worse, I had a test in my online class and I needed that money in my account in order to buy the $99.00 user ID and password in order to take the test and interact with any aspects of the class.

Afterward, my father was called by my mother, and he was willing to put enough money into my account in order to buy the books that I needed, but the man isn't made of money, and quite frankly, I've already asked so much from him. It really isn't fair for me to ask this much. I could blame a lot of things. I could blame previous administrations, I could blame the school that I go to, I could blame something as broad as greedy dishonest organizations... but I'm done with blaming people. My hands are full and tied; and right now I feel like a candle in a hurricane--and as much as it destroys me to say, unable to affect the goings on around me this time. All I can do is watch and hope. I've been doing a lot of that lately. Watching and hoping. All I really want to do is help the world, but how can I do that when I'm having trouble helping myself? I'm in a very bad place right now, but this isn't the first time and it won't be the last time. So I will make the choices available to me right now to the best I am able and fight as hard as I can can to do what I need to until the day comes that I look back at all of this difficulty and see a pattern and laugh. Until then, I will watch when it's easier to just look away, I will fight even when it looks as if I may lose, and I will hope even when the world says that there is none. That, I've discovered, is what it means to live.

We are not the sum of our experiences

We are not the sum of our experiences, we are the sum of what we choose to be.

It has occurred to me that I've been looking at things in completely the wrong way. We assume that wisdom comes from experiencing the good and the bad and triumphs and the failures that we experience in life, and that somehow that brings enlightenment... but how can that be true when all of the people who I have come across that have claimed wisdom and enlightenment and have had the most and sometimes the worst experiences are never truly as happy as the "enlightened" should be?

Let's raise a purely hypothetical question. What if society is lying to you? What if all of this business about purposefully making mistakes and putting yourself in situations that you know are not good for you and drinking, smoking and partying your life away were not in fact a fundamental part of the learning experience that we associate with life? What if those that perpetuate these trends were just doing so because they themselves were already in so deep that they didn't really want to be the only ones? After all, misery does love company doesn't it?

Now that the hypothetical part is over and done with, why not ask a question directly pertaining to you. That's right, you, the person who's reading this. The one who probably found this on stumbleupon and decided to skim, right? Well, hey, when were you last actually happy? Yesterday? The day before that?

I'm done with the questions, so now on to the statements. For a while, I was into the party scene. Mostly when I was at Western Kentucky University, but these days it seems that everywhere is a party scene regardless of where you are. There is nothing wrong with having fun, and when I say that, I mean what I say--but are you really having fun? Are you really happy? It seems to me that people use drugs and alcohol as an escape--as a tool for fast action enlightenment, and as a medicine to psychologically and socially heal themselves. It's odd though, that prescriptions are called drugs and the substance used to clean a wound is called alcohol, but the fact is that if you pour whiskey on the wound, the wound is still a wound, and if you take drugs to alter reality, reality stays the same and your perceptions change for only a fleeting moment. It seems like this is a very popular medicine, but are you happy, or are you convincing yourself that you are? If in fact this fills you, then why do you feel empty enough to go back for more?

My point is this: I am Truman. I am my own person and I make my own choices. I have that right and it will remain my own long after the concept loses it's value in the face of all that remains. That is the only thing that I can take with me no matter where I go; but if I am to be empty, if I am to be lonely, if I am to be troubled, then I will be all of these things on my own terms, not society's or my friends'. Just my own. So if I am expected to act or react in a certain way in a feeble attempt to impress or cater to those around me, then I'll do the right thing regardless of what that implies, because I make my own choices and walk my own path, and maybe you should too. If you choose to.

I'm Done Wandering.

It's funny how life is so much like a puzzle. I once heard from my best friend something that she heard from her best friend. She said that sometimes, you have to move backwards in order to move forward. My best friend said that sometimes life is like a destination that has many paths to one point--that sometimes we miss our turns and end up having to travel the road again. All of these things are true of me right now. I need revelation. More importantly, I need to find myself again.

It used to be that I honestly didn't care what anyone thought. I didn't care what anyone thought of me or the things that I did. My principles were my own and my actions were my own. However, something horrible changed. It wasn't one thing that changed, it was a culmination of things-- instead of holding fiercely to the principles of which I was made, I chose to let people and their opinions into my way of thinking. I became too accepting. To the point in which I allowed myself to join the rest of the world. I know I sound like a hermit saying all of these things, I may sound peculiar and odd as well, but the fact is that that is why I am writing this note. Because I do not care about the opinions of others. That is the very action that put me in this situation. I feel a burden on my heart to tell everyone not to care about what anyone thinks of you and regardless of how much you are mocked or jested at, stay true to your principles and never change. If you know right from wrong, let it be known and practice it. If you see your friend is about to fall, catch them, but if they try to pull you down, then let them go. We are living in a time of great revelations, discoveries and wonders the likes of which I can scarcely share with you, and in this time of rapid change, none of us can afford to lose the things of which we are composed. If we lose our principles, then we lose ourselves.

I said previously that sometimes we have to move backward in order to move forward, and what I meant was that if we don't travel the life roads correctly, sometimes we need to retrace our steps. That we sometimes need to look at not just the points in which we were our strongest, but also the point in which we were not, and compare the two and see what was done right and vice-versa. I feel as if I am making myself new. I will be a good listener, but not permissive of every opinion thrown my way. I will be kind, but by no means a permissive. I will be a fighter, but not an instigator. I will be passionate, but not full of rage. I will be convicted, but not blind.

I once thought that all who wander were not lost, but now I know that I was wandering and lost, but now I'm retracing my steps and the way is becoming clearer, and if I keep on the path, then the path to my purpose will be made known. Perhaps you should do the same.

What do I want?

The question was asked of me on a site "Would you prefer to find someone who will shake your life up or make it more peaceful?..." and it occurred to me that the question is more complicated than I thought. It seems simple-- peace or turbulence, right? I want peace, but I also want interest, and I think that most people are like this. I just be being egocentric, but is it true? Do none of us truly know what we want? I want a girl that I can feel at peace with, but also fight the good fight with. Does that seem odd? How about you?

Boy with a coin.

I lost the battery cover to my mp3 player about three or four days ago and just yesterday I was walking back home from my class, and happened to look down and see it in the grass. At first I didn't really think much about it, but I've been having some interesting things happen to me lately. I also founds my missing hoodie just today, which had been missing for a week... it was in my backpack.

I'm in one of those sort of lower points. It's not that everything isn't going right for me, because I have many blessings to count, but there are some things that are not going as I would want them to go. Dissapointments that I have felt before, but for some reason have the hardest time learning from or discovering how to remedy. Relationship issues, restlessness for the state of the world, that sort of thing-- but then again that's just me being me I suppose... but just recently, I was thinking about the mp3 battery cover that I found that had been missing for days, and the hoodie, and realized that both of these things were in plain sight, but I never saw them because I was so concerned with other things... but the ironic thing was that I was looking for both of them. I came to the conclusion that God was trying to tell me something. Maybe the things that we believe to be lost aren't lost at all, perhaps they have just yet to be revealed.