Godless & Joyful

This morning, I was thinking about my not being socially affiliated with virtually anything. I have never played a sport, never joined a club, and have never participated in some volunteer organization. When I consider it, I truly don't have any desire or ambition to, either. Throughout high school, so many competitive students around me were busy joining as many clubs and participating in as many extracurricular activities as possible just so they could make their transcripts look good for college. My personal extracurricular activities consisted of venturing out into the forest or remote beaches and taking in the epic beauty of the natural world combined with its embellishment by my imagination, or going home and immersing myself in captivating games and music. Either way, I always managed to leave 'reality' in the dust. Thank Anubis I had the option and capability of doing so. I realised just how much I have -not- changed since then, and I am extremely grateful for the fact. Not only did I enjoy myself as much as I possibly could throughout high school without allowing myself to get sucked down into all the BS they cram down our craniums, I'm now in college, making progress and doing well... and I feel I know myself now more than I ever have before. Most of the nostalgia I experience surrounding my high school era is not directly related to high school at all, but instead, the long process I went through of finding myself and determining my identity. I often found that an hour spent wandering through the woods, alone with my mind, spirit, and imagination, was far more educational and enlightening than a day spent walled up in various classrooms, nervously acting like I felt I belonged amongst the crowd, expected to conform to dozens of written rules and hundreds more unwritten ones. No, I cannot help but to be nostalgic towards the times of my discovery of my close kinship with nature, my true place in the world, my spiritual recognition. What really triggers an incommensurably intense sense of nostalgia within me, though, is when I reflect to the times in which I was first discovering beauty--learning to recognize it, learning to open my heart to it, learning to let it permeate my skin and deluge my soul. I underwent a few grand realisations: I do belong in a certain place; there must be someone else out there just like me; my reality can very well be whatever my mind decides to make of it; I am in control of myself and my future, as destiny and God are merely elements in the conventional human fairy tale, which I need not associate myself with for any reason; and the trivial details of life only matter if you make them matter. I discovered the wolf. Such revelations I experienced seemed to transform my character for the best. I became generally much calmer and patient, much more confident and far less anxious and self-defeating. I left my days of horrendous rage attacks and anxiety episodes far behind. Yes, it's hard not to be nostalgic about such times.

On a completely unrelated note, television series depress me. They reflect a sort of lifestyle that makes me grimace... the sort of systematic, rigidly scheduled lifestyle that always involves switching on the television set at a specific time five days a week, so one may continue following the jaw-dropping plot twists of the latest hospital drama or "reality TV" show. As far as "reality TV" goes, the only kind of "reality TV" I'm interested in are nature programs featuring beautiful furry, scaly, and feathered stars of the natural world, as opposed to a bunch of moronic models competing against each other in a series of stupid contests for cash and prizes. Humans just aren't that interesting, especially when driven primarily by greed and hunger for the spotlight. Ah, if only there existed some precise method to calculate how many hours the average television viewer wastes watching commercials about the latest low-carb invention or the newest, hippest chewing gum that's guaranteed to engulf you in some unexpected Arctic blizzard before bringing a promiscuous beauty queen into your dorm room the instant you pop it into your mouth. I'll just sit here and chew on my lame generic store brand chewing gum while all the beauty queens flock to the doorsteps of those cool people who plunk down dollars more for the same product with a label so flashy and shiny it would make your spinning rims jealous. And I'll gladly continue to maintain my moderate-carb diet, thank you, as my cells sort of need carbohydrates to survive, and even they as individual units are probably smart enough to recognize just how idiotic low-carb diets really are. We've got such ridiculous products as low-carb cookies, low-carb candy, low-carb ice cream, and low-carb soda. How about a reduced fat extra lite low-carb axe in the chest?

Today is a beautiful sunny day. I don't consider all sunny days beautiful, by any means, but this afternoon, the snow-white cottony cloud-blemished sky is of a vivid deep blue one can only expect to observe in the tropics, and the flora radiate a rich, effulgent green. I can even see enough of the mountain summit from the back window of my upper-story apartment to notice it still proudly bears a regal crown of ice and snow.

Levin desires some late breakfast, and I haven't masticated on anything today but a slice of cheese, so I shall go appease us both, then amuse myself playing with his lustrous wingspan.