Circular Reasoning

   Ever talk to yourself? If you said no, think again. I'm pretty sure we all talk to ourselves sometimes, even just mentally. Even as children, we set up alter egos of ourselves and called them "imaginary friends". I do it a lot. It helps me to think through things. I even set up mental debates sometimes, with two extremes of whatever I am thinking of, and then I work out as many angles of the issue as I can see. It really doesn't offer a second insight, but it does sometimes take me down avenues I wouldn't normally travel.
   Well, today I just had a conversation with the air. This was just me, pacing for about forty-five minutes, ranting to the air about the logical pointlessness of pretty much everything. I did it because when I am emotionally unstable (which is more often than I like), this tends to be as an issue I cannot overcome. I figured that if I discussed it while level-headed, I could aide my future self in this aspect. Turns out it felt really good right now, too.
   So after a long path of one thing leading to another, I concluded that yes, life is mostly pointless, but life is better than the lack of it, happiness better than sorrow, and religion better than atheism. Not only is religion better than atheism, though, Christianity is better than other religions, and Jesus is better than Christianity (sorry if I just lost anyone...). It is better to be alive and do whatever it is God has decided for you, because it could possibly make someone's life out there a little less pointless to them. There really may not be any feasible reason to life while we live it, but we can't see the wheels of a car while we drive, either. We only know why the car rolls because we have stood outside it. We could try to figure it out while in the car if we had never been outside it, but we probably would come up with a number of conclusions (without other cars to look at out the windows, of course). It would be ridiculous for any grown human to think that the car moves because the road moves us to where we want, but how would we know otherwise if we had lived in the car our whole lives and never seen the outside. But say someone managed to figure out the car indeed had wheels, would it be illogical for him to conclude that they moved by magic, or by little mice running in wheels, or some equally ridiculous means?
   So no, I do not think we will find the "meaning of life" in its entirety. Because we are not God, and we cannot see all of time and all of humanity that ever was, is, or will be. Because no one has ever come back from death to say, "Hey! I found the meaning of life!" and they probably never will. But talking to yourself about it might help you get a little closer to finding it :)

Growing up

   For almost as long as I can remember, I have been trying to grow up faster. I had a tendency to be rather precocious when I was younger, and wanted nothing more than to get this "growing up" business over and done with. It seemed like a time when you are not taken seriously even though sometimes you have something good to say, and that frustrated me. So, I started a quest for learning. I love to learn, and love to share what I have learned with everyone. The words, "Did you know that..." have been my close, constant companion, along with all those lovely question words. I find that Rudyard Kipling summed it up quite well;

"I keep six honest serving-men

  (They taught me all I knew);

Their names are What and Why and When

  And How and Where and Who."

    And yet now as I get a little older, and am now having a bit more freedom, I am finding myself yearning for childhood. I want to just go have fun, to dance under the moonlight. I want to listen to my music loudly and I want to run, jump, and just generally be an idiot before I am expected to be confined by adulthood. I am finding myself wishing for health when I do not have it consistently, and each day I find myself in a state of almost tense resignation of another "episode." I worry about little things, and find that my precocious nature when I was younger has robbed me of, well, I am not quite sure, but there is something lost from it.
    God put this experience of "growing up" in our lives for a reason, though, even if I find my own lacking. I guess the world needs some people to grow up fast, but can I never be a child again? Even the adults with the most childish natures, I discover often have a much darker, deep-thinking side that they hide under the simplicity of childhood. Maybe the whole point of childhood is God showing us what he wants from us; that the world really isn't as big and complicated as we say it is, that some fears are silly, and that the best messages are often the simplest and most direct. That, devotion, is with one's whole heart given with a smile.
    But do I really want to go back to that state? I look back and find myself hopelessly naive, easily impressed upon, easily pricked to emotion, and oh, so stubborn. Perhaps it is good that I have grown up, but then again, perhaps it is good that I have not fully yet.
    And, did anyone ever notice that the years before 18 are oft described as "the best of one's life" and that we should enjoy them, and not waste our precious youth, and yet no one ever seems to want to go relive high school once beyond it? Ah, the irony...