It's interesting to look back and see how things have shaped us in to what we are. Sometimes it makes me cry, sometimes it makes me smile with pride.
When Alex decided she wasn't in to me, that pretty much set the gears in motion for 8 years of love-shyness. The machinery was in place, but that served as fuel. I'm still recovering from the illness.
When I got my first job, I learned about the world. I learned about people, more about money, and what the Everyman goes through. I learned how to do things for myself, and be a man...an adult. I learned more than college could ever teach.
I had a very bitter period when I truly realized that the machinations of society around us are a lie, and that through media and faux-culture, and engineered ideologies, people are controlled to do exactly what the powers-that-be decide needs to happen. And it works FANTASTICALLY. And all strife and disagreements from the proletariat are directed at their own under the incredible illusion of two separate political ideologies. The rich get richer, corruption festers and spreads, and everyone else just gets dumber and dumber. Lady GaGa and petty arguments dominate the headlines, and anyone who suggests there might be something more important, or questions to be asked, is decried as a conspiracy theorist or a radical. It's hip to be dumb.
I am ok with that now, because the willfully weak deserve to be controlled and shepherded if they will not be master of themselves. And ultimately, I came to the realization of the concept of oblivion, and our ultimate insignificance. We live and die within the blink of an eye, and everything we have ever known is on a pinpoint of light in the panorama of existence. Everything that happens in the world is irrelevant, and whether it's in 2012 or 2050 or ten thousand years from now, the suffering and enslavement will end in due time.
Might as well enjoy my own ride, though. It's what we're here for.
Somewhat recently, entering college part-time and full-time employment at a place with a bunch of other people, I've learned that I'm not actually some default social pariah. Through taking chances I (and all of us) can actually talk to people my own age or older, and relate to them. Through hard work, intelligence and insight I can be respected and appreciated, and a part of a team, and together we can do anything.
As of late, I discovered something ancient within myself, more of a remembrance. And I discovered people of a similar mindset. Except instead of fluffy runes-and-mead reconstructionists, we're actually building a very powerful method of self-improvement, acknowledging that everything in the myths of old are, quite plainly, reflections of that which is within us, and around us. And with it, I feel unstoppable.
Look out, world. Brian doesn't live in chains any more.
), I find it odd now that it never occured to me previously that I was always so much happier taking care of sick animals and such things.
