Shortsighted

Everyone has a story. Everyone. No matter how much a person says that they have lived a boring life; no matter how small or insignificant their story might seem to other people; the fact that it meant something to them is what matters. This shortsightedness is why I think that many people are too quick to file for divorce. They base their decisions on what is happening now rather than what brought them together in the first place. They hinge their decisions on the bad rather than the good. They don't go back and remember all the happy times like when they were first dating, the moment of proposal and the wedding day and night. All they can see is the negative aspects of their significant other rather than the positive and think that they are stuck with the negatives rather than telling themselves they can fix it which, most of the time, can be done. If this person really loves the other (which I hope they do) they should be able to understand what is wrong or if they don’t, they can just do whatever they can to help out the situation. People tend to take bad experiences as "a stone in my path I have to move out of the way" rather than an important learning experience.

Back on stories, I like to see life as one giant book. Memories are nothing but stories. After they happen, the most merit from an event come from first-hand experiences. That’s all the past is: stories. The only thing that isn't set in stone is the future. The present is the only thing that we can be sure of and the future is constantly rewritten. One person's impact on the world is so great that any decision a person makes effects the entire world. Essentially, the butterfly effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_Effect) is the biggest factor when someone is feeling like they don't have an impact on the world. It's like this: let's say that one day you decide that you don't feel like going to work. That day, there is a fire at the building because you had a faulty wire in your cubicle that started the fire that could have been easily put out by you. Or, other way around, let’s say that fire was unstoppable by you and if you came into work, you would have died! That's an extreme example, but when you think about it, if you were to go through a day and then go through the exact same day again but before you did anything you waited a minute, the world you would encounter would be completely different. You would come when a different song was on the radio, come in on a different part in a conversation and so on. This might seem to be irrelevant and slight fluctuations in space-time, but I think some of the people who were running late on September 11, 2001 would like a word with you.

Lost in a Contraption Part I

I'm going to continue this but I just couldn't get the opening as good as I wanted. Enjoy this good effort:

As the plane disappeared over the horizon, Charles wondered if he was doing the right thing. Sure, he no longer had money troubles but all he could think about are the people whose lives are going to be ruined. He walked back into his house that was filled by about a million dollars worth of Colombian cocaine and sat down. Not being a drug addict himself, he didn't even drink, he might as well been selling toy trucks. He was trapped in his storehouse nine out of the twelve months in the year and didn't have much to do past counting money or writing letters. All he could think about was his family that he left behind. He sent them weekly packages full of his dirty money and his letters that promised he would be free very soon. He reflected on this one time that he almost got caught. He was in a Colombian post office and was singled out by the drug sniffing dogs. The reason being that the money that filled his package was stained with the cocaine that covered about every bill he received. Although there wasn't enough to bust him, he was taken aside for questioning. After getting his package searched, he was finally released (thanks to using some of that money as a bribe) and had to find a new post office. Being involved in such a risky business, Charles was starting to become more and more paranoid that any shipment would be traced back to him and he would get arrested. He barley slept and any slight noise caused him to jump in fear that they had finally found him. As he sat in the tiny room filled with his livelihood, all he could think about is how he got to this point in his life...

Stalin Was Wrong. Rough Version

In interest of journalistic purity, I am transcribing verbatim something that I wrote and believe in wholeheartedly. There are a million things I want to change but for a good place to start this off, a rough draft sounds good to me. So, without wasting any more time, I present:

Stalin Was Wrong V. 0.1

For a long time I agreed with [Josef] Stalin's statement that "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." Now, I have realized that this is not that case at all. A reason why I was lead to this was when I was contemplating the idea of a million people. Trying to imagine a million of anything, besides dollars, is mind boggling. But to imagine a million people, all who have their own likes, dislikes, and anything else that makes us who we are and to that a million fold and then all snuffed out in incomprehensible. This is all stemming from trying to come to terms with the amount of death that was involved with the Holocaust. Six million, SIX million Jews were executed and SIX million other people were killed as well. The idea of TWELVE MILLION people being killed over a span of about seven years is such a hard concept to grasp. To try to get an idea of how much just one million is, I thought of everyone in my life that I had met and I can't truthfully say I have known more than say, 1,000-1,500 in my life. The idea that everyone I know/ever known would disappear in an instant and then some really puts some perspective to the idea of 12 million deaths. This campus [SUNY Oneonta] has about 7,000+ so, that is not even close to half a million. 12 million is the population of New York City times 1.5 (the population being 8 million.) disappearing forever. You would be hard-pressed to meet just 1 million people in your life, let alone 12. And say you did this feat, having all those people disappear from your life is such an incredible concept to imagine.