He is a fool - Shun him.
He is simple - Teach him.
He is asleep - Awaken him.
He is wise - Follow him.
Delicate
A man and wife were sitting on the side of the highway taking a break from a long drive up the coast. It was supposedly a vacation from their normal lives in the city, a breather from reality.
The man was holding a sandwich in one hand and a cigarette in the other. The wife had the same.
Staring out to the clear blue waters, he wondered why he’d spent the better years of his life in a box cramped between traffic and concrete.
He had come from a conservative, republican, god fearin’ family. His father a businessman, and himself a lowly follower. His wife, the same.
Sitting on the pavement, he had hardly realized his coattails collecting dirt, his shoes scuffing.
Suddenly, he realized that this had been the first moment of peace he had experience his entire life. Instead of worrying of the next bill or meeting, he thought of why the clouds moved as fast as they did. Where were they going? How long would they float up there until they rained back to the ground? How high were they?
He had never felt so beautifully in sound with nature. His wife looked satisfied also.
Suddenly one shoe escaped from the grasp of his toes, and as if in limbo slowly fell down the side of the cliff, and disappeared into the embrace of a wave.
Normally, the mans frugality of wealth would have responded for him as always screaming out an unbearing cry along the lines of how much he had paid for those shoes. He hated how this being spoke for him in most cases. If not him, then his wife would have said the same.
But a strange thing happened, instead of a helpless cry, the other shoe slipped off as well. Down and gone for good.
He looked at his wife, awaiting the well known disapproving glare, but a funny thing happened. Her beloved heels, custom designed, were now fleeing towards the water. The man could hardly believe his eyes.
Soon after, against any sense of normalcy, watches, hats, scarves, and soon wallets, were falling away from the couple.
Why at one time were these things so coveted? Like a glutton for food. They are just things, all things. You wouldn’t call a tree or a flower your own, you wouldn’t pay for that. What good is something killed, sewn and sold?
The couple had finally found themselves their place in the world. Beauty of reality had ripped the perverse fallacy of man made society from their heads and replaced it with pure simplicity.
As the couple was pushing the car over the ledge, the man looked up and watched the sky crumble and split, tearing away like a page in a book. He turned over, and looked at his sleeping wife, and shook her slowly.
“Honey, lets go to the sea.” The wife was thinking the same.
I am sorry, tree. You are stuck there, rooted to the ground. Unaware and unknowing of everything great and beautiful around you. You will never know love, happiness, music, or even develop the senses to be conscious of it. You have no free will nor will you ever even know the loveliness of choosing your every action. I have immense guilt for this.
Boy, it is you who is trapped. You are driven by jealousy, not free will. Pride and want rule your life. I only need sunlight and water to survive. I am unchanging but ever growing. Peoples opinions of you shape your every being. Where is the happiness in that? Your awareness of others only creates jugements and competition. I was not blessed with your senses but am also not cursed with the constant reminder of what i cannot be. I need only worry the next sunrise.
Joe: It’s not too late to learn all the math and science you missed in school. Algebra, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Economics, Calculus, Statistics, Finance…
Salman Khan has crated an EXHAUSTIVE collection of videos that teach you all that good stuff and more in short, palatable youtube segments. He is extremely easy to follow and explains things in a way that everyone can understand (lesson 1 for Arithmetic literally starts with “1+1=2”… eventually his math lessons get into Partial Derivatives of Vector-Valued Functions, whatever those are.)
(Updated) Pros and Cons of the Healthcare Reform Bill
My previous list of pros and cons of healthcare reform has gotten a bit dated. I’ve updated it. Once again, I’ve attempted to keep it as simple and non-partisan as I can manage. Let me know if you think I have misrepresented anything or left out anything crucial.
Pros:
- A lot of people who don’t have health insurance will now have health insurance.
- 95% coverage of legal U.S. residents under 65 will be covered. Compare this with 83% and dropping now. This is an increase of 32,000,000 people. (Those over 65 are already covered by Medicare either way.)
- Insurers will not be able to stop paying for people who are sick, even if they lose their jobs.
- People who cannot afford health insurance won’t have to pay as much money for it. If you are particularly poor, insurance will be very cheap or even free.
- People who are already sick will be eligible for healthcare.
- Medicaid availability will expand significantly
- Children will be able to stay on their parents’ insurance plan until they are 26.
- Insurers must spend at least 80% of premiums on actual medical care.
- There will be a federally regulated insurance marketplace that should make health insurance more portable.
- The bill will reduce the deficit.
- Medicare fraud will be cracked down on.
- The prescription drug “donut hole” will be closed. (If you don’t know what that is, you will now never have to worry about it.)
Trapped.
I am in a cage. I can see my captive surroundings.. a huge world waiting to be found and explored by me. But i am held back. I am trapped by paradox in this world. Instead of being able to freely learn, must buy books, buy classes, buy instruction. We put a value on goods and possessions, but also knowledge? I want to know and explore the universe but i am consumed with daily work and chores and redundant human life.
We sit around. We eat. We argue. We bitch.
It is completely ridiculous how we just waste our time and brains here on this earth, arguing over land and food.
Why can we not work together to better humanity?
I am so happy we have finally monopolized our food industry. Its very reassuring to have just one person/company controlling all agriculture. They are enhancing nature with modified genes and cloning and creating hybrid food so we dont have to eat normal natural grown food anymore, because to be honest its really out dated and not in style.
But all in all, im just so glad that our technology level has brought us to the point where we can eat unnatural, mutant food instead of boring traditionally grown food. Its just shows what a jump we have made for humanity. <3
