Leave it to my neighbours to make Friday nights exciting.
Just over the hill from my house, a man died in front of his house, presumably shot gang-style while trying to drive away in his car.
At least, we think, Tiger Woods was luckier — a golf club is potentially a lot less deadly at long range than a gun!!!
A good storyteller gives readers what they want, but not always in the order they expect.
For instance, I walked up to the microwave oven just now and saw a little credit-card sized pocketable inspirational note that has sat there for I don’t know how long and I never really paid much attention to it until today.
What did it say? Basically, this:
Jeremiah 29:11-13 [New International Version (NIV)]
11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. 13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
My wife and I don’t keep a household where Bible verses are stamped onto various forms and shapes, hung on the walls, in hallways and nailed onto doors.
However, we have received a few and given/regifted a few as presents to friends and family through the years.
I am one of those people who don’t read the Bible every minute of the day but I do have access to electronic copies, physical books and enough tomes like “Social Aspects of Early Christianity” to keep me as occupied on the subject of religious writing as I desire.
We even have a copy or two of church hymnals containing the song, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”
In this parallel storyline, I contemplate two storylines, one in which our species goes to war with itself on a massive scale, using weapons that have never seen battle, millions wiped out in wave after wave of clashes, turning peaceful boroughs all over the planet into scarred battlefields, no place safe; the second in which we continue the merging of multiple subcultures, every situation a win-win one, where we as a species, though in constant disagreement about the details, work out the general outline for thousands of years of thriving, prospering, voluntarily sharing our wealth with each other, reaching out beyond the solar system as our technology progresses sufficiently for low-risk exploration of the cosmos.
Always, always, always, taking into account the benefits and positive contributions of every language, every person, every subculture, no matter what is going on, good or bad, in global socioeconomic headlines.
I am tired of monitoring drug wars, billionaire backyard brawls and political detente for profittaking’s sake.
I am a man in the latter decades of his life who wants to see us, as a species, specific subculture(s) less important, establishing colonies of living beings on nonEarth celestial bodies.
If I end up in one of those colonies, I would feel most comfortable with aspects of my subcultural upbringing brought along.
If someone else ends up in one of the colonies instead of me, I know that person would feel most comfortable with aspects of familiar subcultural upbringing(s) brought along, too.
No matter where the colonies are built and who occupies them, it’s a success for our species and for Earth, especially for those subcultures that look past petty quarrels and set their sights far into the future.
Thirteen point six three five 1,000-day increments to go until we complete one of the major steps.
Over the past couple of years, I have met with people who’ve asked me to reconsider the subcultural training of my youth in what I see as an attempt to keep me in the fold or bring me back in, depending on their views.
I met my wife at a summer church camp when we were 12, we married in her hometown church when we were 24 and, 26+ years later, we’re still married so I haven’t cut ties from my childhood subculture in any hard, abrupt, total sense.
Over the New Year’s Day extended holiday weekend, a good friend, medical doctor by trade, who with colleagues bought a primary school for a church congregation that has expanded from a few people to over 2000 since 2009, loaned me the following books to read:
Before I read them, I shall provide for myself and the reader a snippet of a review of each book.
For recent Christmas gifts, I received two other books:
I contemplate my individual future, compare it to our species’ future, determine where we share goals and plot a true course that benefits us both.
Two data points for the day:
For years, I thought an intellectual conversation had to include dissecting the meaning of the universe and debating the [non]purpose of life.
Then, at the suggestion of a friend, I checked a few books out of the library, books written by or about David Foster Wallace.
After reading the material, I came to the conclusion there’s no reason to read his writings anymore because DFW committed suicide, which in itself is the logical conclusion of all the arguments and observations he made in his writing.
Thus, as I have thought before but never articulated, an intellectual conversation can emphatically state or totally ignore the meaning of the universe and the [non]purpose of life.
I won’t go as far as saying that the writing/artwork/music/biographies of people who committed suicide should be banned, burned and/or buried.
I do suggest that we take into serious consideration the conclusion the suicidal people reached in their thoughts, less so for those within a short, miserable ending of a terminal illness, whatever we may [not] wish to call a terminal disease.
If a person created anything — a bridge, a computer, a spaceship, a novel, a quilt, a child — and then later committed suicide, the creations are part and parcel of the suicidal thoughts, are they not?
It is one thing to muse on the futility of our individual lives, and quite another thing to end our lives, regardless of our auspicious or suspicious beginnings.
What, next, about career suicide or similar forms of cutting off oneself from societal ties?
There are no failures. There are no successes. There is only what we choose to do next.
For me, there are 13,637 days until the next big step, despite momentary distractions that loom large in temporary comparison.
If a person ends his life, there is no “next” left.
DFW’s writings are absent from my future because he chose to absent himself from the present — I respect his right to say goodbye to my life. I say goodbye to his.
Within every group, we repeatedly find at least one person who is not happy with the majority of belief-based practices the group purports to perpetuate.
“It is well with my soul.”
“Be still my soul.”
The previous two sentences may or may not be familiar to you.
I can quickly associate them with song titles and melodies.
For every one of us, familiarity is comforting yet can breed contempt.
Inconsistency disrupts the smooth mood of happy contentedness.
We, as sets of states of energy, have paths we follow to reinforce our selves, our sense of being.
The paths may be well-rutted or invisible.
We may walk in line with others or trailblaze the path ourselves.
Our contempt may drive us from one subculture and into the waiting arms of Sirens in a different subculture.
Our comfortable life in one subculture may deafen us to the other subculture’s Sirens, instead.
As a parent, do you want your children to have a comfortable life or have to fight tooth-and-nail for a life they’ve build on their own?
Do you want your subculture to provide easy-to-follow character/trait-building exercises?
Do you want your children to form a new subculture from scratch?
We are all children, gifts to the world from parents who may or may not have wanted us in the first place.
Regardless of the intention of our conception, we are here.
Our subcultures may be just what we want or don’t exactly fit us comfortably.
Subcultures often have to work out which members are the best fit and create exit strategies for those who will never fit.
Sometimes, like religious systems and youth-training programs, there is confusion at the top of the subcultural ranks about how to protect the image of the subculture while figuring out how to remove ill-fitting members quietly, which takes a lot longer than admitting the fit was never right and publicly excommunicating the members immediately.
We like it when people like us, even if they aren’t like us.
We feel complimented when someone wants to join our subculture, no matter how much we know our Sirens are blaring subliminally/overtly attractive messages of invitation.
Thus, when the ill-fitting members become poisonous to the health of the subculture, we hesitate.
Do we admit our vanity got in the way of our sanity?
After all, didn’t we convert that person to our way of life? What if we just try a little harder, maybe we’ll completely correct the bad behaviour of that person and heal the subculture at the same time?
Surely we’re not capable of making mistakes in judging people who want to be just like us, because we love our subculture wholeheartedly, with undying love and devotion?
When the subculture has exorcised its demons, reluctantly admitting its mistakes in hiding its problem people before finally removing them, can those who left the subculture because of contempt ever find it in their thoughts to forgive the subculture and return to the comfort of familiarity they once enjoyed?
Can I?
Can I admit I have horribilised the tiny human errors of my subculture and return to it in my middle years?
What if I’m simply following the wellworn path of people my age who, slightly dissatisfied with the closed-in feeling of any one subculture, in this case my parents’, explored the world, sought out something, anything, that gave me a feeling of escape for a while, only to discover that the subculture that my parents shared with me wasn’t bad after all, that every subculture has its faults, its members who are ill-fitting and don’t belong who made me uncomfortable and were eventually pushed out, giving us room and safety to return, no longer fearing that the worst of us still lurks in the dark corners?
I don’t need to prop the world on my shoulders.
I tell the world that I’m happy if we all enjoy ourselves, celebrate who we are and where we came from, no matter how much our parents did or did not want us, embracing a subculture (or mix of subcultures) in which we feel most comfortable, even if we don’t like all of it.
Sometimes, I forget that I don’t have to like everyone. I don’t have to compromise my beliefs to validate yours which directly conflicts with mine. We can agree to disagree and go on our way, positively acting to promote our subculture rather than negatively talking about denigrating someone else’s.
“Be Thou My Vision,” for instance.
While the fear and fury surrounding the recent violent death of schoolchildren slowly subsides, I ponder the past, look at my childhood surroundings and find an easy-to-reach piece of low-hanging fruit:
The SRO at my high school alma mater, who stepped up and performed her duty well, preventing the slaughter of schoolchildren because she and the school administration had prepared and practiced for a random act of violence at the school.
One difference in events two years apart — handguns vs. assault rifles, the handgun holder more of a barking dog, the assault rifle user more of a dog that bit.
treetrunkdings 