Scattered Thoughts

 As I listen to Building Steam With a Grain of Salt in my room with my eyes closed, the beginning of the song reminds me of a ticking clock, as if time was running out. But as the song continues to play, I hear a voice in my head telling me to move forward and reach out. The piano playing makes me feel as if I was inside of a dream in which I’m walking towards the light. I see it; it’s there, but as I try to hold it, it begins to fade away. All the while, I can’t make out what I’m reaching out for. I just know that I’m walking and sometimes running trying to reach it so that I can embrace it, as if I was trying to fill a void in my chest.

The spoken words part of the song makes me reflect on what I want to perfect in my life. I think of all my emotions and feelings inside of me that I wish I could describe with words and make a poem out of them and give to all my loved ones, as a token of my affection and disappointments. I wish I could perfect what feeling courageous is like.

I also think of a number of skills I want to perfect in my life such as my painting skills, cooking skills, writing skills, etc…

 I want to work on my laugh so that it can become an infectious laugh, and on my joke telling abilities.

I want to allow and give myself permission to trust those around me because I feel that time is running out. I would hate to go one day into the great beyond and leave the people behind me feeling as if they felt I did not love them. 

With Hardship Comes Appreciation

            In the movie “Groundhog Day”, Phil, a self-centered individual finds himself reliving the same day over and over again. He is trapped in what seems to be a never-ending spiral. He eventually escapes from living the same day over and over, but he must first become enlighten. What this movie tells me about the path towards enlightenment is that it is a hard one to travel through, and the transition from a self-centered individual to a more compassionate, empathetic individual can be difficult to endure.

             

            The path towards enlightenment is never an easy one. We must become broken before we can become empathetic towards the ones around us. Life has a very interesting and peculiar way of showing us the path towards enlightenment. I find that the path towards enlightenment is a thorny one that stings and, more often than not, cuts you. We must bleed a lot before we can heal and value life; we learn to appreciate life because we treasure the good moments.

            When we escape, our torments, doubts, insecurities, selfishness, etc… we learn that life has two faces, a pretty one and an ugly one. We learn that there are things that we can control while there are others we can’t. We learn that death is a natural part of life, and one day we, too, will die. We learn that all the people around us have a story; some people have better ones than others, and we are all unique in our own way.

            We become humble, not by choice, but because life has made it its personal business to makes us humble. Often, we have no choice but to feel thankful and grateful that the storm and turbulence in our life has passed. We learn to value the peace and tranquility because we know how ugly it can be. The best part about being enlighten is that we learn that the hard moments in our life will soon pass; consequently, we become strong and are not easily broken. 

The Truth about what I did not believe in...

Plato’s Cave reminds me of my own cave. I am trapped in my own mind, and trying to make sense of what is real and make-believe is sometimes difficult to sort out. My mind is constantly coming under attack by the external world. I am constantly bombarded by rules, policies, morals, ethics, customs, traditions, and so forth that tell me how I should behave, what I should believe in, and more importantly, distract me from discovering the truth. What truth you may ask? Well, I have no answer because I have yet to discover it, but what I do know is that if I don’t feel right about it, then maybe it's wrong.

            In my first blog, I wrote about detaching from the Catholic Church because of different beliefs. I explained that I must stay true to myself and not be part of something that I do not believe in. The decision to leave the Catholic Church was not an easy one. I had been contemplating whether or not to leave the church for sometime, but I was always afraid to do so because I felt scared to face what is outside of what I have always known. I was afraid to leave (what Plato would call my "Cave"), and then find out that I had made a mistake. Why I felt like this I do not know. All I knew at the time of my decision was that I had had enough.

            Religion, in a sense, had turned into a tradition in my life, something to do on Sunday with my family and not question it. I had been brought up to believe that if I did not attend Mass on Sunday, God would be upset with me. In addition, I was raised to believe that if I did something bad, whether morally, ethically, culturally, etc… and I did not confess it to a priest, who through the power vested in him by god can absolve me from my sins, when I die, I will go to hell. Through out my childhood and teenage years, I believed everything I was raised to believe and not question it.

            I don’t fully understand what precisely triggered my decision to leave the Catholic Church, but when I begin to dig into my memory disk, I think of events that occurred sporadically that contributed to my decision to detach from the Catholic Church. One event that led to my decision to leave the church happened when I was 14 years old. I had been an altar girl for a year when a new priest was assigned to replace the old one. This new priest had a different view of what an altar helper should look like. To make the story short, I was not allowed to be an altar girl anymore because I was not a boy. The explanation I received was that God had only apostles, who were all men, and not women; therefore, only boys were allowed to be altar helpers.            

            Another event that occurred that contributed to my decision to leave the Catholic Church was during a Eucharist celebration, a new song was introduced for the congregation to sing along to that I did not like one bit. The song talked about women and how impure they are when they are on their periods. The song continued by emphasizing that anything a woman touched while on her period was impure. I was furious and felt so hurt and disappointed by this song. But what upset me the most was not the song and its oppressive lyrics, but how young girls sang along without even questioning it, as if the lyrics of the song spoke only of truth.

            After Eucharist was over, I went home and vented to my parents about this song, especially to my mother. I told them that I had had enough and I no longer wanted to be part of it. I told them that I had been raised by them to believe that women are strong, powerful, beautiful and equal to men, though sometimes treated unfairly by others who feel superior. But that in the end, we are all sons and daughters of God and he loves us equally without exceptions. My parents told me that the decision to attend Mass was up to me, and up to me only; consequently, I decided to detach, and I have not attended since I left.