Puer Aeternus

I had another epiphany today. It was a simple and humble epiphany in which I finally figured out how to curl my hair. Most epiphanies I have are very provocative and motivating but usually end up taking me no where. Like revving up your car only to run into another brick wall and all of a sudden you need to get another shitty car to run into another wall. By now I'm very sure no insurance company is gonna give me coverage. But I don't need it.

The more I think about it the less I feel I need others to cover me when I'm down or to lift me up when I'm happy. I've drawn most of my energies from self-contemplation and meditation, which don't really involve others. Don't get me wrong, I'm no loner, I love spending time with others, but when it comes to spiritual fulfillment I feel the self is best.

Yet despite all of these ideas and revelations that I can find happiness in my own solitude, I feel as if my tires are still spinning and I'm getting no where. I don't work hard like I should. I suffer from Puer Aeternus.

My 2 years of Latin have taught me a few things, and I can tell you Puer Aeternus means eternal boy. Think of Peter Pan, think of Tuck Everlasting, think of yourself.

"As soon as I get out of high school, my life will start"

"I can't wait to get into the real world"

"Someday everything will fall into place"

If you're thinking these, you're thinking puer aeternus. The concept that life won't really begin, it hasn't really begun, is so dangerous. As high schoolers there might not be any greater plague than this because it creates a disconnect between our life and our dreams. Instead of "My good grades will get me into college" we should be thinking, "My life experiences are important". It's not about what we do today to make tomorrow better, it's about what we do now to make today better.

If everything we do and everything we think is a great fantasy of when we will become what we're meant to, we'll never become what we're meant to. We'll be stuck on Neverland our entire lives.

How can we escape?

Well, it depends. I plan to start doing more things for the now. Things that will not only help my future plans, but also improve myself today. I need to become the best I can and it can't wait until the day I graduate, the day I get a job, the day I get married. Today is the day I am the best I can be.

"Today we're younger than we ever gonna be"

"Oh Captain, my Captain"

“A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.” 

An Analysis of the Flash Experience "I Think I'll Be Okay"

I Think I'll be Okay is a flash experience (I would use game but it's really not a game at all) that follows the author's expressions and emotions while dealing with depression, isolation, and a toxic familial setting. It plays in a similar fashion to a choose your own adventure type book and has more reader input than a simple novel or short story, yet it still follows a progression that cannot be changed.

The author uses beautiful imagery and diction to create a somber and deeply provoking setting. I would not suggest playing this if you are going through some depression or even an existential crisis at the moment as, coming from experience, these kinds of things can really be quite the trigger into worsening things, so precede with caution.

However, if you find yourself to be a pretty emotionally stable person, it's not really gonna have it's full effect on you. The nature of this type of narrative is most effective in portraying emotion to those who have some sort of depressive history, as this will allow the reader to better understand and relate to the situation.

All warnings aside, the rest of this post will contain spoilers, so I would suggest playing the story before continuing.

Coming from a very empathetic person, this story was very very touching for me. It really displays how a situation is all that you  make it. The narrator is trapped in a hostile situation and feels constantly isolated, and the blur of time yet mild comprehension of a timeline is a fantastic measure of creating the feeling of being stuck to the reader. Yet despite this, the narrator finds a happiness in their life through the jars of rain. Although overall the entire piece is a somber story, the final part is a tad more uplifting, and I even cried a little while reading it. This ending created a feeling a hope near the end, and is inspiring towards those who might be going through a similar situation. 

Although the story also partakes in the "my situation is tough but this person has it worse" guilt effect. Nothing feels worse than this guilt. Like, who the heck wants to think "Yeah I failed this test but this person fails every test". It brings up the topic of how belittling feelings is sometimes even worse than the feelings themselves. No one should ever have to be told "your feelings are irrelevant" as all we do as humans is seek relevance. The narrator in this story is struggling with this very same thing, relevance. They feel no companionship and it is isolating. There is no one to confirm that their feelings are justified, so they feel guilty for having them.

Within this lack of justification, we can see why it is so helpful for people who are going through personal struggles to get help from a third party. They can tell them that it's okay to feel this way and help them move on, while without this the person's emotions will only fester. This third party can be many many things. It can be a friend, a therapist, a family member, or a god. In my opinion, this is one of the only useful things about theology in modern society, personal comfort and security. This security is how people are so fervent in their faith, and it is totally understandable. It's uncomfortable to face difficult life questions, and sometimes faith lets us slide by with answers that aren't fully supported by anything other than "you just gotta believe". Yet if faith is what makes you happy, then that's alright.

The narrator in the story uses faith as a comfort as well, as they pray to the rain. "Pray to the rain?" The Abrahamic religions say, "That's paganism." Yes, yes it is, but is that so bad? Who's to say that the idea that everything is god versus god is everything is not the more modern theological idea.

However, this is a different discussion for a different day. 

Maybe..... next time?

A Dreamer and A Do-er

I have found myself more times than not recently drifting into the realm of the unproductive sink. I spend most of my time either playing Pokemon Fire Red hacks or looking up info and dreaming about someday making and owning a tiny house.

and this is the room where I'll do all my procrastinating

With this lack of productivity, nothing could possibly make me feel worse than the beauty that is my Psych book that currently is preaching to me about productivity and how motivated people are the most successful people.

So here I am moping about and wallowing in this fact, doing nothing productive but thinking


and dreaming


and doodling


and hoping.

Yet I realize that it is in these moments, the moments in which I am imagining and doodling that I am happiest. Oh how I wish and hope that one day I could have my tiny house and if it were possible for me to be a writer or an artist (but my calling is for science) and all of these things. That moment of pure bliss extends beyond for me that which I feel when I get a great grade on a test, and it is more provocative than the moments where I forget to do my damn psych sim for the 3rd time and I'm probably going to fail my psych class.

But what can come out of being a dreamer? Where can I find my motivations and ambitions?

The answer is not so simple, in fact I really don't know it for sure yet.

My best guess is that I just have to keep dreaming and apply my dreams to become what might potentially be reality. So I dream of a tiny house, what do I need to achieve that? I want to build it myself so maybe a building class of some sort might be good. Yeah I'll do that.

But I can't make a life off of tiny house so what else? I want to go into science, it's my calling, so what field?

It's this sort of self-inquiry that will bring the dreamers to be do-ers. We  have to search ourselves and find what it takes to make our dreams come true, and then go after it. If the motivation does not exist for something even after all of this, maybe it's just not meant to be.

In short, we just gotta find our dreams, find what we need to achieve them, and do it.