Self-Hate & Change

I had gotten it wrong all of my life. It’s so ingrained in me that imagining getting past this toxic habit seems impossible.

Accepting others as they are comes easily for me. So why is it so hard to extend the same courtesy to myself?

Yūgen – 幽玄

Yūgen – 幽玄

(n.) an awareness of the universe that triggers emotional responses too deep and mysterious for words.

There is a japanese term for how I feel!  How amazing.

Adam & Eve

Everyone knows about the story of Adam & Eve.  About how Eve gave Adam the forbidden fruit through which the Original Sin was committed.

Let’s think about it a little more, though.  Why did God ask Adam what he had done, if He already knew the answer?

I think it was just to see what Adam would say.  Does that make God a sort of sadist, giving Adam the rope and then letting him hang himself with it?  Hahaha.  Maybe.  Or maybe more so God assumed the role of the quizzical creator who is amused at his creations’ shenanigans.

But Adam did something truly interesting in response.  He said (paraphrasing), “The wife that YOU gave me… she brought me fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

Wow, Adam’s kind of a dick, right.  But let’s break that down.  Adam did three things.  First, he placed responsibility on God for giving him Eve.  Second, he blamed Eve because she brought him the fruit, making her responsible for the act.  And finally, (plot twist) he claimed ownership of the deed by stating he did in fact do it.

Deconstructed, Adam’s reaction is beautiful:

God, You gave me this woman, and I love her to death, literally.  She disobeyed me by doing this thing You told me we shouldn’t do.  You told me the punishment for this was death.  But You gave her to me, and I’m not going to let go of the greatest gift You ever gave me.  Letting go of her is the same as letting go of You.  So I followed her.  I knew the consequences.  Following her was the only way I knew that You’d save her.

At first glance, you might think Adam is blaming Eve for his being tempted.  But really, he’s implicating God.  Either God made Eve wrong, or Adam had to follow her to death for God to have made them both the way He intended.

In Adam’s self sacrifice, he saves his love.  So for God to sacrifice himself as Jesus Christ, it was Adam’s redemption.  It was God following his own Eve.  Humanity itself.

Beautiful.  To sacrifice yourself for your love is to be divine.

EDIT: 02/27/2014

So I finally finished the post.  It took 6+ months to finally come around to finish.  And I have an addendum!  But it might not make sense, because I don’t want to delay this any longer.

Another way to look at it is that Adam was saving God at the same time:

God, you made this woman.  She failed.  Either that makes you fallible by proxy, or I need to follow her so that you can save us both.

In Adam’s pursuit of love, he was actually following God in order to prove the universal truth that God is Love.  He was giving God the opportunity to show that God, Love, is capable of redeeming something that was broken.  Love isn’t love until it’s been proven.

Or something like that.. I may clean up this edit later down the line.

Life Values

Be nice. Kind.

Perspective.

I want to take these words and drill them into my skull.  I want to be haunted by these values.  I want to go into every situation with understanding and compassion.  Not only to others but, perhaps just as importantly, myself as well.

Beautiful Sadness

Goth Kid: I guess you can join up with us if you want.

Goth Kid 2: Yeah. We’re gonna go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is.

Butters: Uh, uhm no thanks. I love life.

Stan: Huh? But you just got dumped.

Butters: Well yeah, and I’m sad, but at the same time I’m really happy that something could make me feel that sad. It’s like, it makes me feel alive, you know? It makes me feel human. And the only way I could feel this sad now is if I felt somethin’ really good before. So I have to take the bad with the good, so I guess what I’m feelin’ is like a, beautiful sadness. I guess that sounds stupid.

Goth Kid 2: Yeah.

Stan: No. No, Butters, that doesn’t sound stupid at all.

Butters: Well, thanks for offering to let me in your clique, guys, but, to be honest, I’d rather be a crying little pussy than a faggy Goth kid.

– South Park TV Show – Episode: Raisins

Music

I listen to music.  A lot.

But you’ll find me attaching myself to a song and listening to it on repeat for weeks.  Until I get tired of it.

It’s comforting, and I know that the song will bring me satisfaction.

And when I’m done, I go find new music as if it’s a chore.  It drains me to listen and discover new music.  I wonder if I’m the only one.