drugs

Yes, yes it does stare back into you.

Staring Into The Abyss

Sticky

For some people, it is simply a culmination of small things, over the years, and it is impossible to pinpoint the one that tipped us over. However we get there, most people, sooner or later, find themselves staring into the abyss. It is a black, bottomless space, without any assurance that there is anything more real than this. You realize that everything you ever had to believe in, everything you counted on as a foundation, was an illusion. You realize that the symbols and trappings of your life are just that: symbols and trappings, nothing more. There is no guarantee that there is a reason, a pattern, a loving creator who will some day tell you why all this was necessary. There are no certainties that “it will all work out OK”, no promises that your loved ones will always be there, not even the comfort of thinking that you, at least, will always try to do the right thing. You are weak, the world is quite possibly a random collection of events, and you know with complete certainty that you are truly and finally alone.

How we deal with this experience has a great deal to do with the people we become. Continue reading

Legalize Marijuana or Hand Over Your Guns

Let’s take just a moment and consider some fundamental paradoxes within the United States’ legal system. We like to think we are the nation of freedom, the nation of get-ahead, the nation of self-made men and women who just have to have a dream in order to thrive. With the Constitution as our founding document, including the Bill of Rights which outlines express guarantees of all sorts of “inalienable” rights such as the freedom to say whatever we want, the freedom to own guns, the freedom to worship whatever god, etc., we like to think of ourselves as a pretty clever nation. Now, nevermind the extent to which those rights have been watered down and whittled away over the years, because what I want to consider is a sort of flaw in our thinking when it comes to what we claim we believe (as opposed to what we actually allow our “servants” to write into law and enforce).
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