Breakdown #1

The first confrontation with my mortality was at age 27, after the sudden death of my uncle. For the first time, I felt the universe to be a very cold and impersonal place. My faith was badly shaken, and I felt very alone and vulnerable. I experienced a breakdown as a result, one that lasted for several weeks, until the pain finally exhausted itself.

Eventually, I recovered a sense of spirituality in my life, as the idea of an impersonal universe was both incomprehensible and intolerable to me.

Flat characters

Social media is not the real world. Rarely does anyone express the full embodiment of their real self over the Internet. At most, you get to know slivers of people here, like the flat characters in a novel. We don’t become rounded, fully inflated human beings until stepping back into the real world.

Bloody art

In the movie Castaway, Chuck Noland, played by actor Tom Hanks, creates an imaginary companion from a Wilson soccer ball, by painting his own bloody handprint into the shape of a face, and then naming him Wilson.

Chuck’s traumatized psyche exploits the resources immediately available to him, to restore some semblance of normalcy and emotional balance, giving him the wherewithal to survive his predicament. The soccer ball and Chuck’s own blood were the most accessible mediums for creating his temporary, anthropomorphic companion – a split off portion of his own psyche, projected onto a red faced soccer ball. If something more human appearing had been available, such as a puppet or doll, he most likely would have chosen that over the bloody soccer ball.

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The validation game

In the era of social media, we are packed together like a billion sardines competing for visibility and validation. There is little space to individually define and express ourselves, without a mob of discontents taking notice and attempting to modify what we want to believe about ourselves and our world.

To be yourself, often comes at the “imagined” expense of how others define or think of themselves, and so these “others” fight back to regain or preserve what they think is being lost or threatened by your existence, including their cherished delusions and comfortable lies. Merely expressing your opinion, will cause “some” virtual strangers to fear being invalidated as to their own opinions and beliefs, and so they will employ any means possible to invalidate you first, or worse.

Reconnaissance dog

We walked down the thicket path to Main street, keeping our heads low, covertly peeking through the clearings of foliage. Old vehicles – some military – were lined up on both sides of Main, one after another, their engines running. Men with assault rifles sat on the bumpers, taking turns patrolling the street, slowly turning their heads in 180 degree arcs, ready to defend the flanks. Some remained on standby inside their vehicles; others were crowded onto the attached flatbeds, sweating profusely and guzzling down beers. A rough looking crowd covered in war tats and wearing mismatched uniform attire, like they were going deer hunting after a weekend military exercise.

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