Unloading

Going into this with no expectations, however I just need to let a few things flow through these hands out of my brain and into some viewable form. Something about the tangibility of my thoughts makes them more concrete. I just wish there were a place other than this blog that I could share them because they still feel unsafe. See, right now, I'm have a crisis inside my brain about why the hell I am even writing this in the first place because first of all, I probably won't read it ever again and second, I don't want anyone to read it anyways. Maybe I just want someone to talk to...
     I can honestly say that I do not have anyone with whom I feel like I can be 100% myself around. My closest friends or those I trust the most would probably have to be Mckenzie, Samantha, Isaac, Jacob, Stokes, and Josh. Besides these people, I probably don't reveal 75% of the true me. Isaac is the only person I have told everything to but just the influence of his religion keeps me from saying certain things around him. Mckenzie is probably my most understandable friend. Why am I so scared of myself? I don't trust others so how can I trust myself? I suppose I should learn to trust myself. Supposing is so much more intelligent and thoughtful than guessing. I guess. See what I mean? (rhetorical question to myself... what the hell do I do now?)
     While I continue to whine and complain about everything that is wrong with me, I hope that if I'm reading this in the future, I'll have solved many of the problems that have arisen in my measly 17 years of life that seem such a big deal to my psyche. I could not have a job. I could not have parents. I could not have instantaneous access to my friends. I could have no shelter. I could have no food. I could have no self esteem. I could be overweight. Putting life into perspective is one of the hardest things for me to integrate into my life. I would definitely consider myself blessed. Blessed by whom? No idea. I would just love, absolutely to believe that God has chosen me to be blessed in the ways that I am, but I cannot accept that answer. It's like trying to analyze The Scarlet Letter with an illiterate Spanish-speaker. I love the passion and forgiveness and openness that religion and faith brings upon people, I see it in Isaac and Mckenzie and Samantha and many other of my friends but I just cannot assume a faithful position on life. I've tried. Two weeks ago today, I tried to accept Jesus into my heart with Isaac. What happened to that? You can change your life right now if you want to... was it a lack of determination? Am I too ill-spirited and undetermined enough that I cannot even give Jesus a chance? That's pathetic. You're better than that and I want to give myself that chance but I just do not know how to do it. Sympatico...
     I am unsure of my position on social networking. I mean, I'm definitely a victim of Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and they have become such an integral part of my life that I'm not sure that I could honestly survive and nurture friendships without them... It's just like writing this blog, I want everyone to know everything about me, all the time. An impossible goal, yes? But with the Big Three Social Networking sites, they make it seem like a damn good idea to try. Like just then, I seamlessly transitioned from typing this to scrolling down my FB newsfeed without even thinking about the fact that my attention span in dwindling down to zero every time I allow myself to flit back and forth from my current task to some social network. I feel our generation should be Generation Multitask because honestly, our brains were only designed to take on one task at a time and people sure as hell drive while eating and talking on their phones nearly every day.
      I'm having an extremely helpless moment right now. I just read something that I wrote in the Notes section of my phone a couple days ago and it says "Helplessness is humbling." hmmm... ya don't say? Once you've gotten to the point where you've always known exactly what you want and gotten most of the things you've wanted and then you come to a crossroads and each fork has it's perks, yet you can't for the life of you decide which fork to take, it's a humbling experience. When I imagine the word 'humbling', I see a person covering themselves in a fetal position on the ground in some sort of struggle to protect themselves. Not every humbling experience is an embarrassing one, but often times it feels like you're trying to protect yourself from something, be it a loss of reputation or some other social judgement. Right now, my hidden feelings for someone are definitely the thing I'm letting beat me down. It's unexplainable. I love having them as my friend and having them guide me down the right path, but at the same time, I can not help myself from becoming more and more attached to them. It's absolutely the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, hands down. (weird expression) I'm almost even uncomfortable putting it down as something that I can read because it's just not something that I've allowed myself to accept. It just seems, the more that I repress it, the more it manifests itself. It's not something that I should allow myself to live with. Either come out with it, or stop hanging out with them. Bottom line. In the end, you're only hurting both you and them (woah, this took a weird turn from first person to some omniscient third person therapist) by the fact that you are leading them on in a friendship that is based off of a need a be around that person. Why are you so damn creepy? haha.
     Well, I suppose these things are at the forefront of Joey Meyers' mind tonight and who knows, maybe one day none of this bullsheet will matter. But for now, I'm out.

All the Small Things

     Just had an interesting dialogue with my mom about religion and her lack of faith. For background, she has been a "closeted agnostic" since she was a teenager. Understanding this thirty year gap helped me to really focus on what was really the issue; the fact that she has been so stuck on the idea of not believing for so long that she has lost her willingness to open herself up to new ideas.
     I was stuck in an interesting situation as I have struggled with my faith until an awesome chat with a great friend whose belief and faith in Christ is evident in everything he does. That happened two days ago, however I did not want my own personal confusion to allow my mom to leave the conversation unsatisfied and unfulfilled. I decided instead of trying to answer her questions, I would allow her to speak her mind and then remind her that without an open mind, no belief will ever change. I knew I was stepping into uncomfortable territory with some of the things that I brought up, however I hope that it really made her think about the way that she reacts to others' beliefs because one simply cannot let a thought rush through them in they keep their mind sealed.
     I myself often struggle with the big questions about religion, but when I step back and think about my honest beliefs, it's not about finding the answers to those big questions for me. Seeing people who are filled with God's presence that radiates from them with every word they speak convinces me that it is not the big ideas that matter, but all of the small miracles and people who make up the impact of the church that define my belief in religion. Some may find religion an excuse for comfort and explanation while I now see it as a purpose to grow and find meaning. A life lived for Jesus is a wholesome and generous life. There are those without religion who have done great, selfless things: but the power and compassion of a doer of the Lord's will has an army of faith behind them. I know I have a long way to go and will most likely never reach the end of my faith journey, but it's a promising road and a road that I would love to accept.
     It seems as though we, humans, tend to want to make things important. Such as other people's opinions of us, something inside of us wants to preserve a good reputation with all other people. I find myself compromising my own beliefs for the acceptance of others and I am challenging myself to question whether I am okay with this. Should I be okay with this? Probably not. Maybe I've unintentionally given this blog a purpose just now. To determine what I believe in so that when the time comes I can know exactly what to say at the right time... if only it were that simple. On the surface it may be that, or just a general hope of prolonging a time in my life by saving it onto the World Wide Web. I think it is safe to assume that there is no clear cut purpose I had in making this blog, however it's almost comforting to see a hard copy of my thoughts projected through this blog. It is public, but would it matter if people read this who had no relation to me whatsoever? This definitely feels like personal, question-and-answer bullshit but it's connections and past experiences that will determine the effect and reach of this blog. I hope at least some people are as weird/think the same way as I do. (psh UR SEW BORING ME)

Something Personal

"How do you decide what is important?"

This has been the question that has been running through my mind all day. How does anyone decide what is important to them or more specifically; How do I decide what is important to me? This thought first popped into my head on Sunday night when I was helping a friend prepare for a calculus exam and I found out that Krispy Kreme remained open until 12. Okay... So what? I realized, I am neither the one closing this Krispy Kreme nor the one opening this Krispy Kreme in the mornings, does that make this place unimportant to me? Do I care about the upkeep of the ovens and the technicalities of the glazer? All of the parts that make this Krispy Kreme work day in and day out have nothing to do with me, yet here I am, studying math at this very place. Is it important to me?

So many processes and systems and random events take place on Earth every day that it is almost mind-boggling to consider, yet our brains seem to phase all of that out and focus on this things that we deem the most important to remember. Do I remember exactly what grade I made on the Chapter 6 test for 4th grade math? Who cares? And that is exactly the point. My mind seems to have erased that memory because it's relevance was considered unsubstantial and just erased that connection. Besides memories, how do we decide what we care about, what we are passionate about in the present?

On a side note, I think that all of my friends are bad influences on me. What if I, myself, am the bad influence though? That scares me. How can I expect anyone to understand me when I can not understand myself? And why can I not understand myself? I realize I am asking a lot of supposedly rhetorical questions and not providing any answers but the truth it, cliché enough, I do not have them. I watched the movie Prometheus tonight with my friends, they were high of course, and I strangely connected my search to understand myself with the story of Prometheus. In the movie, humans were in search of their ultimate creator and once they finally found them, it attempted to destroy them, albeit with failure. If I were finally to understand myself, or accept a version of myself enough so wholeheartedly that I could truly know myself, would it destory me? Would I be the person I am, right now, writing this entry from my bed in my home? One just can not know. For once you know the truth, thepast lies seem irrelevant. Perhaps I am merely a bundle of lies, gift wrapped so ironically to discover and be horrified with what I discover, so for now, I will be content with myself as I am in the present and move on in search of something, for all of life seems to be a search for something greater, something of meaning, something to live for. A purpose.

"What are you living for today? Why is it important to you?"

Figuring This All Out

Do you think that you have ever had an original thought?

Yes, it seems like the probability of all of the random events and circumstances in the world eventually engage every person in a completely original thought. It seems like they must be innumerable.

What does innumerable even mean to you?

I attempt to visualize it, even though that defeats the purpose of the idea of an uncountable amount of numbers. I imagine a number line starting with zero and counting by ones until ten that extends out of my frame of reference. Zooming out, the line itself does not shrink but the intervals between the numbers slide closer together as new intervals of tens and hundreds and millions begin to pop up. The intervals continue to slide together until the number line abruptly stops. What comes after this break? Unable to comprehend any larger such entity than already included in the number line, perhaps it you were to zoom out until the number line were near a dot on the page, it would appear to be just one point of ink on a much larger number line that is also numbered from zero to ten by ones. As you continue to zoom out on this impossibly immense piece of paper going through an impossibly immense printer spitting out an infinitely long and fractal-like number line, perhaps at somepoint you will run out of ink and arrive at some number or entity at the end of the line that can be considered innumerable.

Are innumerable and infinity the same thing?

I would venture to say yes, but as I think more, my above description sounds like an attempt to comprehend infinity, rather than innumerability. Innumerable in a sense seems like a human fault, like an inability to count the entirety of some system while infinity is a natural occurence. If a person were asked to count the number of teaspoons of water in a bathtub full of water, albeit tediously, the task could be accomplished and an approximate answer could be found. However, if a person were asked to count the number of teaspoons of water found in Lake Erie, the chances of such an event occuring and producing a correct answer can be assumed to be zero. The person would rather assume the number of teaspoons present in Lake Erie are innumerable rather than an infinite number of teaspoons.

So, is there a difference between innumerability and impossiblity?

Going back to the issue to approximating Lake Erie's volume of water in teaspoons seems to be an impossibility... I'm going to have to think about this one more. 

Who Am I?

--Singular Self Socratic Dialouge--

We'll start with your name.

Joey Meyers.

And how old are you?

17. This feels like a FB note.

What interests you?

I would say math, human relationships, music, neuroscience, and philosophy.

What are you passionate about?

The pursuit of pleasing others.

Do you consider yourself completely selfless then?

Of course not, I just believe that I am more aware of those around me than many other poeple are. It is almost an innate quality and one that I do not control.

How would you describe selflessness?

An emptiness of personal desire and an abundance of willingness to help.

What about recognition? Can you consider a person who commits only selfless acts a selfless person if they gain no recognition for their acts?

Of course. If a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? It may not make an audible sound, but it does make an impact, and that impact is the result of the willingness of the selfless to help without recognition.

Should the selfless seek to, in effect, be as unrecognized as possible then?

It is my belief that the most fulfilling acts are selfless acts that go unclaimed. If one commits a selfless act and never knows whether or not that act has benefited someone or something or not, then why can one not assume that it has? It's like Schrödinger's cat; once the cat is in the box, you cannot know whether or not the cat is alive or dead until you open the box and discover the truth, but discovering the truth destroys the meaning of selflessness. The goal of selflessness should not then be to bask in the recognition of your act, but to enjoy the assumption that your act may have impacted someone in an unknown and beneficial way.

....tbc....