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A conversation between friends -- sort of. |
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(Just a note before I begin, anything in blue is what my friend said. Anything in Indigo is what I said, and anything left in black is narration, and transitions. Also i'm sorry for any grammatical errors. I did my best to fix them up.)
It started with my friend asking for help on an English assignment. She said “I need some kind of statement on how the heart no longer matters to most people. Like how people no longer consider anyone else’s feelings. Something very simple that conveys the message. In a poetic way im hoping.”
I told her I’d try to come up with something to give her an idea. While I wrote she posted various phrases like ” What is love in a world so cruel?” “ what is love in a world so unforgiving?”
I said to her “ it’s more than that though people are too busy worrying about themselves in the perspective of others that they forget to take in consideration everyone around them. Every single person wants everyone else to accept them for whom they are but yet everyone focuses too much on the physical aspects of life that they forget that everyone is just like them, trying to make it in the world the same way. “
She agreed and told me that she needed all of that said in 20 words or less. SO I went and knocked it down to 18 words saying: “everyone wants to be accepted; it’s because we focus on ourselves and physical things that others are forgotten. “
She like it but wanted something more poetic. I told her something like this was too broad a topic to find some simple poetic phrase that said it all.
She then said “so basically we’re questioning love. Love in the world in general. We are saying that the world is cold and withdrawn. Selfish. So first we need to say what love is or we could say what it’s not.”
“You’d have to know what it si to know what it’s not. Also, there are many types of love: romantic, friendship, motherly, fatherly, brotherly, etc.”
“Love is love”
“ I don’t love my family the same way I love my boyfriend.”
“Sure you do, you love them the same way. Would you die for them? Would you do anything you could to protect them or their feelings? Would you do everything you could to help them? That’s love”
“Well yes but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with my parents or my sister. “
“That isn’t love, that’s commitment. “
“Which is part of love”
“Yes, but it isn’t love”
“It’s relative therefore it is”
“It’s connected. That’s like saying the fries come with the cheeseburger so the fries ARE the cheeseburger; The child branches from the mother, therefore the child IS the mother. Not the same. Love is love. “
I tried countering by saying I wouldn’t commit myself to someone that way if I didn’t love them. She got me on most of the stuff. She didn’t see my point of the differences between the love and commitment I have toward my boyfriend, and the love and commitment I have for my family.
We started debating further she’d come a long way from earlier debates; far less cursing and yelling and she was actually reading what I’d been saying.
“Okay so you know what love is. Fine. How is the world cruel and cold toward people? The thing is that’s a stereotype. I’m not cruel and cold toward the world. I want to help it. So you can’t say everyone’s like that and generalize it.”
“The world is Cruel, Not you.”
“I’m part of the world though; because I’m here my actions effect this world. “
“So your saying the world favors everybody? That ti’s all peaches and cream? Everybody’s happy in every aspect?”
“I never said that. There are those who make this world a living hell, and there are those who are the victims of such people, but there are those who help those victims recover. Nobody’s ever happy in every aspect; If that were true it would mean we’ve achieved perfection, but we haven’t. “
“Well I think that with all the suffering going on, all the hungry people right now, everyone freezing outside with no home to go to, everyone that’s lost, everyone that has no friends, everyone that’s sick and dying this very second. The world can be classified as cold. Did you know about 30 people just died, now about 50, a baby just died, someone was murdered, a bomb just went off, someone was just stabbed, someone just found out they have terminal cancer and have six months left to live? “
“ A religious person would say to you one word: Sin”
“Yes the world is full of sin”
“That is the reason for suffering”
“Yes. Do you think that everyone sins?”
“[ I don’t think, I know everyone sins]”
“okay”
“those who say they don’t are in denial”
“So if everyone sins then everyone will have a bad moment in their life right? The moment they sin?”
She didn’t quite get it. What I meant when I said sin.
“No, no, no. Because of the first sin there is suffering. Adam and Eve. Eve was deceived by the devil, she ate fruit of the forbidden tree. I’m sure I don’t have to repeat the story. “
“So the rest of the sins don’t count?”
“I’m not finished.”
She went on to say so if I sin right now it won’t matter? I never really got a chance to answer that. But now if I could, I would have said.
“Of course it matters. Everything you do and don’t do affect the world no matter how small it may be for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” I go deeper into that without actually saying it later on so let’s continue.
“Thou shalt not kill. That’s pretty important”
“All of the commandments are important. But what about non-Christians? They’d laugh in your face.”
“All I’m trying to prove here is that the world is cold. “
“Everyone sins this is true. But not everyone is cruel. Mother Theresa, Princess Diana, they dedicated their lives to helping people”
“Helping who? The suffering!”
“Yes but they didn’t cause the suffering of those people”
We kept going in circles. She didn’t understand that yes the world is cruel. Yes it is cold, but not everyone is to blame for that. I said to her “ Not all humans. Those who covet earthly possessions, power and all the works” I was trying to show her that it is not black and white.
She then said “ but you must agree that the world is harsh to a lot of people”
Trying to clarify what exactly she meant by “the world” I asked her what she meant. Technically speaking the world had done nothing. The people in it however have.
“The world is everything on Earth, every human, every feeling, every life.”
Apparently we were including animals in it too. I said to her.
“With everything being the world we go back to not everyone is that way. I’ve been a victim to the harshness and cruelty that reside in people, so don’t get me wrong. I’m constantly tormented by how I should be. The fact that I’m large and not thin. My fashion style isn’t up to standards. I have what I have and I survive. But I know there are people out there that want to help foundations, charities are examples of this.
Yes it’s true nobody does anything out of the kindness of their hearts anymore; most only do so when it benefits them. This is an example of the cruelty.
Suicides are 100% preventable. All suicidal people at one point in that stage tell the person, the friend, they trust most that they’re planning to kill themselves. But these “Friends” usually take it as a joke not a cry for help and then are surprised when that person ends their life.
Wars could be prevented if people weren’t’ so addicted to power. However sometimes war can be used for a good thing. Look at WWI or WWII and Japan and Pearl Harbor.
The US had no intention of entering WWII it didn’t “effect” them so it wasn’t their problem. But then Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. The US then entered the war it was now their problem as well. We won our freedom because of that. What would have happened if Pearl Harbor hadn’t been attacked? Would the US have joined after Germany had conquered most of the world? Would those who had allied against Germany come out with a miraculous victory? Or would we be under Nazi rule?
If that had happened and we were under Nazi rule, Jews would not exist, Homosexuals would not exist, disabled, my mother, my father, my sister, myself, anyone who didn’t match the standards Adolf Hitler wanted for his German Empire. All of us would not exist.
Do I think war in general is a good thing? No, but sometimes it’s the only thing left.
Do I like the fact that in Iraq innocents are being killed? NO! Do I like the fact that everywhere in the world innocents are being killed? NO! I hate it! I hate this world! But I have faith that people will realize that things need to change and will work toward making the world a better place. Yes I’m an idealist, always have been, always will. It’s like a balance really. If we only had good, would we know what bad was?”
It was here that she said I was “deep” I was rather confused. I didn’t understand how I was. I still don’t re-reading this now.
I had stepped away from my computer for a moment and a thought occurred to me. “ If the world were truly a cold and cruel place, would we know what kindness and love was? Would we know any different?” I told her this and she said I raised a good point. I explained to here that this is where balancing comes in. You can’t have good without bad. Yin and Yang, Sun and moon, male and female etc. are all examples of this. If you only have one of the set, you wouldn’t know the other.
She said to me “ I guess all we have is hope. Hope that there is true love and kindness, freedom, respect, truth, and beauty. “
Our conversation ended shortly after. She had to go, as did I. I Just hope my points were understood.
Please comment on this. I’d like to hear your thoughts and opinions on issues addressed in here
 Kahara Michiyo · Wed Jan 31, 2007 @ 09:14pm · 2 Comments |
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