And We Do Nothing

Myanmar Cyclone: 128,000 Dead and Counting; 2.5 million severely affected (and the government is stealing the relief food)

Chinese Earth Quake: Official Death Toll is at 19,500; 10 million directly affected

Attack in Jaipur, India: 63 Dead, 100 wounded

Khar, Pakistan: Over a dozen dead

What is wrong with the world today? Maybe the real question is: what’s wrong with us for not doing something to help? We are all guilty of seeing these terrible tragedies on the news, think to ourselves how horrible it is for those people to suffer and then we go back to our dinner without giving them a further thought. Its easy to talk about how horrible these things are; its a lot more difficult to actually do something to help. The question is: will you?

Looks like I’m about Ten Years Behind

This article is about a 10 year college sophomore who knows more about quantum mechanics than most people on the planet. I guess being a 20 year old college junior doesn’t cut it anymore. Good for him, though. I’d be interested to see where he ends up at my age.

Just a Short Story Rattling in My Journal

“Today, it seems as though the world is falling apart. A part of my has shriveling and died, blown away like dust in the wind. My soul is bound and broken on the floor and I cannot muster the strength to pick the shattered pieces and tape them back together. Oh, how I wish to be free of these shackles of torment. Nothing can save me now. These will be the last words that I will ever write.”

James stared at his computer, counting the blinks of his cursor. It was mocking him, calling him a coward. He would never go through with it. In fact, on the one hundredth blink, James would hold down the backspace button, until ever single last letter of his pathetic misery was erased. He would then slurp down the cold remains of his watery coffee, kiss his wife goodbye and head off the yet another day of work; whistling through the entire ritual. He was a coward.

Whisk Me Away to Never Never Land

Go on! Go back and grow up! But I’m warnin’ ya: once you’re grown up, you can never come back. Never!

Peter Pan (1953 Film)

To be frank, this growing up thing sucks. I wish it would stop.

Africa

Aid Operations

And covert manipulations

Help or hinder?

You be the decider

Are we feeding the hungry and clothing the naked?

Or starving a culture and stripping its dignity

Rumpled and tossed in a Western hamper

I am my brother’s keeper.

But are you Cain?

Or are you Abel cuz I can’t tell

The difference between the truths and the stereotypes

You create, perpetuate and sell

A saver or a savior? Dare I ask the question:

Are either really needed?

Warnings of misplaced intentions are never heeded

Cuz last time I checked a savior has already died and risen

And He never left the “saved” in a Western media prison

Is rocking out with Bono in your red Gap Ts

Actually about aid or making television scenes

I guess you have to determine if the ends justify the means.

My Bucket List

Here’s a brief list of things I plan to do before I kick the Bucket.

Bucket List

1. Participate in a pie-eating contest

2. Ride a Ferris Wheel for 1 hour

3. Hug a redwood tree

4. Dance on the plains in Kansas

5. Think of a hilarious knock-knock joke

6. Put soap bubbles in a fountain and play in it

7. Sing at the top of my lungs in a crowded bathroom

8. Sleep in a hammock

9. See all of the oceans the world (yes, I realize that its just one big ocean…work w/ me)

10. Paraglide

11. Be fluent in at LEAST four languages

12. Go to India

13. See the Northern Lights

14. Go to a soccer (futbol) game in a Latin American country

15. Learn to surf in Australia

16. Meet an Indian elephant and see if it’s ears are really shaped like India

17. Stand on the Great Wall of China

18. Dance the tango in Argentina

19. Swim with Dolphins

20. Visit every continent

21. Write a book

22. Be a published writer

23. Live somewhere on the Continent of Africa

24. Get a PhD

25. Fall in love (ok, I admit it, I am a hopeless romantic)

26. Hike in Yellowstone

27. Run a full Marathon

28. Visit all 50 states

29. See the Seven Wonders of the World (natural, modern and ancient)

30. Get a Tattoo (seriously.)

31. Go Snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef

32. Go pub hopping in Ireland

33. Raft the Grand Canyon

34. Be an extra in a film

35. Be on Oprah

36. Be on a game show

37. Send a message in a bottle

38. Be someone’s mentor

39. Go wild in Rio during Carnival

40. Learn to Bartend

41. Run to the top of the Statue of Liberty

42. Get lost in the Smithsonian

43. Hike the Appalachia Trail

44. Walk the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

45. Ride a camel to the Pyramids

A Letter to a Friend

The heart. It is simultaneously the worst and best thing to ever happen to humanity. One minute, it has you running around like a giddy little school girl, bursting with elation. And the next minute your heart has torn itself from your chest, lying bruised on the floor. It is the bringer of the happiest and most passionate of times, but it will also betray you and make you feel like hell. It is sentimental, impulsive, passionate, confused, fickle, loyal, distant and affectionate. But it is never weak. It has proven over and over again that it can survive nearly anything. Very rarely does a broken heart not heal itself. It may be full of blemishes and scars, but it will always beat strongly.

Forgive your heart for stumbling because sometimes it’ll make the wrong decision, but maybe the point isn’t the decision but rather what you learn from it. Don’t give up on your heart just yet, eventually it’ll tell you what it wants, all you need is a little patience and perspective. Someone once told me that if you are constantly searching for certain answers you may miss the right choice because you weren’t open to all possibilities. Take your time and go with the flow, eventually your heart will stumble upon the right path. But until then, enjoy the scenery and see where the journey takes you.

Stutterings

Is it possible to stutter something profound?

Stumbling upon greatness

But really? Is anything coincidental?

These thoughts, festering and brewing in your mind

Waiting and waiting and waiting

Building pressure

Ready to pounce

Possessing your tongue

Spewing forth and erupting

Like some kind of volcanic word vomit

A Requiem

This is a video my friend, who is an amazing artist, made. I dedicate it to everyone.

Matter is Neither Created nor Destroyed

There’s some natural law somewhere that says: Matter is neither created nor destroyed. Which begs the question: Does anything finite actually exist?

Is it possible that everything, absolutely everything, in the universe is immortal? Not in the way we think about it, of course – obviously, nothing lives forever in the sense some of us would like it to…but for example: when a building catches fire, the actual atoms that it was made up of are simply transformed into smoke or debris, which eventually mixes into the world around it. When something decomposes, again, it just becomes a part of the world.

I think a lot of times we make ourselves unhappy because we refuse to accept the fact that nothing is finite. Everything changes and evolves; its not necessarily destroyed…just different.

That’s the thing. We get so stuck on defining things and get frustrated when we can’t because a definition assumes a certain finiteness that cannot be attributed. Some questions just can’t be answered. Some things just are. And five minutes later it may be different than what you thought it was…as the Czechs say “The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”

Defining everything is like pinning the wings of a butterfly: you see something beautiful, so you want to examine it further but in doing so, you have destroyed the freedom and beauty that you fell in love with in the first place. For some things, its better to exist in its natural, free state and understanding that they’re beautiful is enough. Do we really need to know why?

Besides, you don’t need a definition to understand something. Just remember to be flexible…because nothing is set in stone.