Mend the pen only after the sheep are all gone

[oriental_hornet]

It seems like death is touching inhabitants in the building more heavily than usual...or is it just that I am only seeing it now. I can not flip through the newspapers without seeing death and worse, so I think it may be the latter

Comments

[secondhandsplit]

When it comes right down to it, life's one certainty is death. We all know it and are aware of it on some level. Is there a hell of a lot of unneccessary death? Yeah, of course there is. But most of the situations behind it are in no way affected by what we do. A civil war in the middle of an african jungle is completely out of our sphere of influence. And yeah, that sucks, but its a situation where it might even be better if we just don't get involved.

...yeah, I don't know where I'm going with this. I guess my point that being conscious of it is better than ignoring it, and acting when you have the opportunity to is better than waiting for someone else to. Some of us just happen to get more opportunities to act, and as such as more exposed to failure. Even if that failure is in no way our fault. So stay informed and don't let it overwhelm you? There's no point to trying to prevent death, it'll just keep you from living.

I feel like I'm lecturing on morality or some shit, sorry. It's just been a long day.

[oriental_hornet]

Yes...yes. It is just that sometimes I feel myself brushing all that away turning away and forgetting when I should remember. I have known too many people willing to let these things pass simply because they do not experience these things and I am loath to become one of these.

And yet I am glad that these moods only come upon me infrequently. I agree living is for the most part its own reward.

Worry not, your words were a great help.

Most days are.

[secondhandsplit]

Its not necessarily a willingness to let things pass, so much as a realisation of ones limitations. We all die eventually, be it naturally or by accident. It happens. Current pop-culture has pounded it into our brains that this is a bad thing and that we should be terrified of dying and spend every living moment figuring out a way to fight it off, both in terms of our own life and those of others. But its all wasted time and energy.

Rather than worrying about death, I'd recommend putting your time, effort, thoughts and money into finding ways to improve the world's quality of life. Because that's really where help should be directed and where it would be most appreciated and impactful.

[oriental_hornet]

Death? No, my mind rarely touches on death, and when it does I do not find myself paralyzed with fear. It is not that I am not frightened of the idea of it in truth, or because I believe strongly in something beyond, in some sort of pleasant afterlife. I am simply too proud to accept that I will die now, before I have finished all I wish to.

In my work there is always that potential to do good, though if one listened to the mean-spirited comments, it would be as if the purpose of lawyers were the precise opposite.

[hentaigasuki]

You definitely notice things more when they are closer to home. I know I never noticed all of the terrorism going on around the world and the awful wars going on the Middle East until 9-11 happened...

What is there to do in Lysgar to help with the heat? All you can really do is save yourself by buying fans and covering up the windows to keep the sun out.

The most you could do is offer water to those people who are without shelter from the scorching heat, be wary of your elderly neighbors.

[oriental_hornet]

Hm. I can not say I was as hard hit by the fall of the towers as those here. At that point I dwelled in China, and not everyone there are avid fans of America in the first place. But yes, here such a thing must have opened eyes.

Yes, this heat is a monster of a thing. I will be unwilling to take next winter for granted.

I have never been particularly frightened of my elders. I believe they deserve respect for whatever they have lived through, because few lives are easy. Respect differs from fear.

[hentaigasuki]

I actually meant wary in terms of watchful, more out of respect than fright. The elderly succumb more easily to the heat.

[oriental_hornet]

Maybe if children paid more heed to the dilemma of their parents, the elderly would not be faced with the heat.

But even so, I doubt we can afford to house more people in this apartment.

[status_terminal]

I don't know what to tell you without the risk of sounding like one giant fortune cookie.

It's human nature to want to do something, to have the need to make a difference.

It's also human nature to believe none of it will ever matter.

And, truly, there's no way one can ever really know if one's made a difference or not, because most of the time it's so little, it can hardly be detected. But that's the rub, isn't it? It's the little things that count the most. Chaos theory-- butterfly's wings flap in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe. Or something like that.

Point is one can only hope and try.

At least then one can sleep easier.

[oriental_hornet]

Try, and half-believing that one will fail, most likely subsequently fail, most due to said half-hearted believing.

Human nature is tragic, but sleep is necessary.

[status_terminal]

The sad truth.

But there are always the sometimes and those should be more than enough to make up for the most likely.

[oriental_hornet]

One can only hope that those sometimes are not shot down before their time, then.

[laconic_agate]

Death and things of a more negative nature make tv ratings and newspaper sales go up. There might not be more of them actually occurring, but the media is certainly going to focus on that and hype it up.

Take the 'war on terrorism' for instance - how many times has it been reported on how many people have been killed? Compare it to how many lives have been saved.

How many pictures of dead bodies do you see? And how many of soldiers playing with children?

The media biased. Mind what you read and watch, it's all just propaganda in the end.

[oriental_hornet]

So ten living and one dead means you can brush away that one death? Lives are not islands, and one cut strand may cause the collapse of many others. There is no balance when it comes to lives ended, no certain number where murder is evened out.

Yes, media can be bought and packaged and they can lie, but these things do happen.