Good Friday

Just how heavy was that load on the way to Golgatha?

"See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
Or thorns compose so rich a crown?"

Heavier than we could ever imagine.

John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty"

An extract from the section "Of Individuality..." which really struck me as I sit in Panera's trying to catch up on readings for my philosophy class.

But society has no fairly got the better of individuality... In our times, from the highest class of society down to the lowest, everyone lives as under the eye of a hostile and dreaded censorship. Not only in what concerns others, but in what concerns only themselves- what do I prefer? or, what would suit my character and disposition or, what would allow the best and highest in me to have fair play, and enable it to grow and thrive? They ask themselves, what is suitable to my position? what is usually done by persons of my station and pecuniary circumstances? or (worse still) what is usually done by persons of a station and circumstances superior to mine? I do not mean that they choose what is customary in preference to what suits their own inclination. It does not occur to them to have any inclination, except for what is customary. Thus the mind itself is bowed to the yoke: even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they like crowds; they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have no nature to follow: their human capacities are withered and stared: they become incapable of any strong wishes or native pleasures, and are generally without either opinions or feelings of home growth, or properly their own. Now is this, or is it not, the desirable condition of human nature? ...

"the world is both round and flat,"

says the ultimate frisbee player.

It's funny to notice how all the crises that have been occurring in the past few years have been increasingly drawing the scattered independence of the nations of the world together. Globalization as a result of earthquakes, floods, economic crises, revolutions, murders, and more? Yet even as the aid pours out [of the fraying pockets] of well-meaning nations, the disasters don't seem to cease; there is a new crisis on the other side of the globe that desperately needs attention. And then for some, the world may be as flat as it was in the pre-Socratic era of history. There is nothing past the horizon, and they remain wrapped up in their own personal affairs, oblivious (some consciously) to the plights of nations around them. Am I beginning to sound like a cynic? It's difficult not to. 

Study Break

So I haven't updated this blog in about a year and a half; as short of a time that is in the span of life, it is a huge amount of time in all that has happened since I waved goodbye to my classmate shortly before posting my grief online. In the time that has passed since then, I have experienced different heartbreaks, different joys, added to my collection of memories so much - finished high school, begun college, and am now almost finished with my first year of college. So much has changed, yet so little is different. The circle of life is more like the slinky, or the spring of life - there are so many circles, not just one, that keep coming back around again and again, wanted or not.