| IX625 Annuit Coeptis Two | Surroundings Table of Contents Second Chances Universal Thoughts We've Got You Surrounded Come Out with Your Hands Up! A War of Words Surround the Stranger Great Expectations Love Means Never Having to Say You're Psychotic After the Words One | Metaphors Three | Mechanisms Four | Connections Home Site Map Contact Search Message Board |
Uncomfortably
Numb The Interactive Newsletter You Never Asked For Love Means Never Having to Say You're Psychotic It's so easy to look out at the world and become overwhelmed. It's so easy to resort to "realistic" thinking. "After all," as almost any well-meaning authority figure will assure you, "Out there, it's the real world." A doctor says (to a patient whose unorthodox remedy led to recovery): Sir, it would be better to die according to the rules than to live in contradiction to the faculty of medicine. In this "dog-eat-dog world," does it always seem like you're the one out of mustard? I tried to be the perfect soldier So, what's a hungry dog to do? He stripped off the armor of institutional friendships Of course, that's more easily said than done... Caught between the longing for love / And the struggle for the legal tender Or is it? The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history... Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore and explore... Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread. Is it worth the effort? San Francisco Chronicle sportswriter Joan Ryan thinks so: Isn't there some metaphysical law about endings? You know before you reach the last page that Cinderella will find her prince. You know that Rocky Balboa will raise his fists in triumph before the closing credits. That's the deal: You work hard, you don't give up, and, in the end, you walk into the sunset with hearty cheers ringing in your ears. David Brin, in Startide Rising, reflects on the noble effort: Of what else / Are heroes made I've even written about these so-called quixotic endeavors: Reach for Truth and grasp it—even if it is impossible to grasp. What do you do when your dreams clash with realistic goals? Faith is believing in things when your common sense tells you not to. So, what's realistic? What is real? I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections, the truth of Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not—for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. Thank God for dreamers—whenever, wherever, and however they may dream... Hang onto your dreams / For if dreams die After the Words |