"They say an end can be a start." So they say. But of what? It was foretold by an internet sage that I would need to burn myself down to ashes, and maybe a sapling of something good inside me would spring forth once sunlight finally shines through the clouds of smoke. Am I so broken that total immolation is the only way forward? Maybe not total. That remains to be seen. But I know for a fact that my political self is committing suicide. Whether that brings great dishonor or not is of no more concern to me. I am not voting anymore. I am not fighting for what I believe in anymore. I have absolutely surrendered, resigning myself and the fate of the world in those who still want to waste their time fighting gravity. I've had too many "debates" with people that have gone absolutely nowhere, my vote doesn't matter, the paradigm is flawed because the pre-determined options are not options at all. Elephant or donkey, I am neither. I do not think highly of my future for these reasons. But I'm not going to burden my heart and conscience with a futile battle any longer. No songs would be written about it otherwise. Nobody would give a fuck if I took the path of the martyr. There's nobody to be a martyr for anyway. I'm not that important, and neither are you. So I will let nature freely run its course. The real pain, of course, is burning the future I have imagined to the ground, for whatever shitty, lackluster one that actually awaits me. Made shitty by way over half of the electorate, I dare say at the expense of sounding like a megalomaniac. This is the same fate that the concept of relationships met within me. One of pure abdication. It was clear that I was not born to be a victor in either the political or partnering realm; I could not bring myself to compete with other dancing monkeys for the affections and attention of a woman, because the very action, the very thought itself strips me of any self-worth. Martyrs are overrated. Death before surrender? Suicide, maybe. But I'm not going to die fighting for your stupid cause. As I've said before, thinking for myself has brought me no happiness. Instead, I find myself a man who is a Christian, but doesn't believe in sex before marriage. I'm a staunch advocate of the family unit, of faithful marriage. But I will probably never find love, never be married, never have my own family, and my faith is like a leaf in the wind rather than the tree from which it came from. Just a walking set of contradictions, puzzle-piece edges that are impossible to match with anybody else, let alone society. To put it as succinctly as possible, I would much prefer to know when to quit. When to give up. I like being able to say "it just wasn't in the cards" for the following two reasons. First: I no longer have to waste my time on a pointless endeavour. Second: I do not have to worry that, if I just keep holding on a little more, that things will work out. Example: Due to a life-saving operation when I was young, I am blind in one eye. Entirely. The retinal nerve is disconnected. Therefore, even though it was something I'd strongly considered, I have no future in the United States military. I am literally precluded from joining. I don't have to sit here and wonder for the next 50 years, "Maybe, just maybe if I tried a little harder, if I did this, if I did that, I could've joined." Nope. No fucking "wondering"; just a very clear, cut-and-dry fortune. I cannot. And oh, how fucking easy it is to move on. Both of those anxieties are thoroughly thwarted by "knowing". I neither have to waste more time trying, nor have to live the rest of my life ruminating on how I might have succeeded if I'd just kept trying or some bullshit. Sometimes knowledge increaseth sorrow, but here, it only increases security. Instead, I have a lifelong haunting to look forward to. Never really being sure whether or not things could have magically worked out if I kept trying. And trying to reassure myself that, no, it would have been a lifetime wasted on something that could never be real. This is my existential crisis. It is clear to me that none of you have any sort of answer. I do not mean that as a jab. I mean that as an impersonal description of how things are. I'm not implying that any of you could have an answer. Because if you've been following, and if you're of a mediocre intellectual calibre or higher, it should be plain to see that only God could resolve this. Only God could know the future. And he probably drinks to forget, because what a Hellish existence that would be. The only "answer" I have found is, in essence, the same kind of relief that an omnipotent omniscient being would take. And that would be to induce a state of forgetfulness. Of absence. Unconsciousness. For somebody like myself, the worst thing you could tell me to do is to not give-up. You're telling me to go on thinking about it, trying to rationalize a way for it to work. Let me tell you: there are VERY FEW ways a given thing can work, and a NIGH-INFINITE manner of ways in which something will fail. I would even go as far as to say that it is unnatural for things to "work-out" as we might describe them in terms of our human existence. A relationship between myself and another person should never work out. It assumes our personalities wouldn't clash. It assumes that we're even attracted to one another and not already tied-up with somebody else. It assumes that we even meet in the first place. It assumes that we're both "ready", whether that be financially, or done with school, or emotionally, or what have you. There are a trillion factors involved and, to me, it all suggests that the whole thing is a bunch of bullshit for people who don't fucking use their brain. That is to say, more politely: Sure! The less you think about it, along with a complete absence of standards or expectations, the more likely it is to "happen"! But maybe it isn't such a good thing for it to just "happen" then, if you're so desperate for it to happen that you'll lick shit off the bottoms of their boots. This is why the penis is such a force to be reckoned with. It tries to induce that incomprehensible alcoholic stupor in which you don't give a flying fuck about your decisions, and before you know it, you're in a relationship with somebody with no pre-nup signed, you could lose the kids and the house at any moment, half of your earnings even though you earned all of it yourself. You discover you had very little in common except genitalia that were designed to fit one another and that's it. That's my description of a family member of mine. That's the extent of your glorious relationship, because the penis decided "only pussies over-think it". I see what was meant by ignorance is bliss. If you had the chance, would you *really* want to wake-up other people from the matrix? Would you be doing it out of your own selfish desire to not be alone, and only convincing yourself that you're some kind of hero of the truth? Are you doing it because you're resentful of losing the scales that once covered your eyes, and you are jealous of those who are still blind? If I had it my way, I would've preferred to have never been shown a mirror. Another voice speaks forth. It says, that this is all a clever means of avoiding how weak, how scared I am. It is a phony intellectual cover-up for the fact that I hate risks. Capriciousness is written off as producing impossibility. But I don't think that's entirely fair. There is some value in detecting and calculating risk. It isn't surprising that people who are either more stupid or courageous than myself are bound to succeed in relationships, because simply getting into them ironically requires one to be dumb. That's why we have all these words like "love-stricken", smitten. That's why there are siren songs. Anesthesia. And I have insomnia, the antithesis.
In some sense, I think it's fair to say that a valuable lesson can be learned. I can more easily sympathize with people who feel how I feel now. There's probably not many worse feelings, than the feeling that you don't belong in the world because of who you are. What you love, what you stand for, what you believe in, your sense of justice, are all spit upon. While it might be the case that there are still some old people who I share common ground with, soon they will be gone, and when I am 40 or 50, assuming I make it, I will largely be alone. This increasingly uncompromising world needs its winners and losers. As a loser, I see the winners cheering as they drive off a cliff. I'm sure that feeling would've been mutual. It isn't as if my feelings are facts. Well, I suppose it is a fact to say "I feel this way" or "I feel that way", but beyond that they are only feelings; whether they are based in reality, representative of the world, and how they will be treated, are separate matters. I envision a future in which I do not belong. That could be wrong, obviously, but nobody really knows. This, too, is based off of how I genuinely feel. My generation, and especially the generation closely following me, do not love what I love, stand for what I stand for, believe in what I believe, or share my sense of justice. Therefore, I do not think it unreasonable to hypothesize that as the older generations pass away with time, and as the newer generations take over, that I will increasingly find myself an outcast. I was born too late. Nothing can really be done about that. Somebody might coldly say to just get with the times. That person must be a psychopath who picks beliefs based on what will get them ahead. Not because they actually believe in anything deeper than that. It's just a game to them. Or, it might be easy for somebody to say because they either never knew or have forgotten how it feels to not belong. The feeling is rather easy to deal with in its microcosms: at a party, at a family gathering, at work or some confined environment. The feeling might be more troublesome if that environment is something you experience daily, because it can seem inescapable. The problematic environment(s) take-up more of your subjective world, and so too does the feeling of being a pariah consume your identity. I have not enough disappointment to go around to complain about everything that I'd like to complain about. Nor would I expect most people to have enough patience for that. I would assume that if this society had more in common, that these feelings would be less pronounced. Disagreements on matters would be more minor and less consequential, to put it vaguely. It is easier to compromise on a solution when you both agree what the problem is. It is easier to compromise with somebody who shares the same vision of the future as you. Here, we do not agree what the problems are. We do not share a common vision. There are two different countries in the same borders. I don't know what to make of that. It isn't as if I would say all this and then expect the other side to give-up what they love, what they believe, this that or the other. I'm not really sure what resolution there is for that, except one side will inevitably have to lose. I see myself as belonging to "that side". Save your woo-woo about accepting change or whatever. I don't want to hear it, since I've heard it a thousand times before, and it assumes that my own values and beliefs are about as important to me as what fucking brand of toilet paper I wipe my ass with. There was a man on an island who thought the Second World War was still underway several decades after the peace talks. He was the last soldier to surrender. I wonder how that must have felt for him. I wonder how he felt all those years where he was left in the dark. What doubts must have clawed his mind at night, turning the wrinkles of his brain into the trenches of a battlefield, fighting his hope that they were winning, or that they hadn't lost yet. Did he feel relief when it was over? Was he appalled at what had become of his country during that time? I do not see beauty in the future of the real world. I see its degradation and eventual erasure. And what I'm about to say in no way should be taken as approval, so let me make *that* very clear, but I must admit that it at least makes sense to me how a charismatic but evil person like Hitler could sell a utopian dream to a society of people that must have felt something like this. Again, that's not justification or me agreeing with that specific vision, but only an understanding of how something so horrible like that can occur. It's easy to sell anything to a person who desperately wants to cling onto life, but there seems no point in doing so. There's no future to hold onto. Their vision or dreams have been destroyed. Being true to themselves has become an impossibility. They're depressed, defeated, and further humiliated. And because they refuse to assimilate, but since their will to fight has been burned to ashes, they are simply left behind. Discarded. Ignored. Or I guess in some countries, those who refuse to be re-educated in the camps will die. So what do you do? You sell them hope. You sell them a new dream with the fervor and virility that they had lost. You give them a purpose in bringing about that vision. You give them meaning in helping it come to fruition. And these dejected, rejected people will do anything, including a holocaust, to bring that about. They have nothing to lose. I have very little to lose. And depending on how you look at it, the future would suggest I've actually already lost everything. I've already died, too. All I can really say now is that I haven't been where I'm at mentally in a long time. For a little while, things were looking up, but I couldn't shake this shadow of a doubt that it was a false-hope. A delay of the inevitable. The thought of a dying soldier that maybe they were winning the war that they had already lost thirty years ago. Just another Battle of the Bulge before the end. Now my identity as a pariah will manifest one company on-board training program at a time. It will manifest one Hollywood-gatekeeper-approved film at a time. It will manifest one piece of legislation at a time. It will manifest with every time I hold my tongue, and every time I let go of my tongue to tell a lie. It will manifest when I graduate from an indoctrinational institution and program that is working to bring about the future that has replaced mine. The things that I hold dear will lose their value one monument at a time, and their memory will be forgotten one person at a time. And that will be my life. I had hoped I could've spent it building something wonderful. That is, I would've loved to have been part of a cause that I believe in. Instead, it will be spent watching a fall into ruin, and I can only hope but to keep retreating to the least ruinous places in the overlooked corners of the world, and maybe die in a place that isn't too bad, although it could use some renovations. And so too I can die with a secret, suppressed hope that maybe that will be the phoenix. The place for the vision I believe in to be reborn. But it will just burn after I am gone. The ashes of a cathedral will be bulldozed away, and a stripmall will be built in its stead. Until that day I can only pray for sanity. There isn't a point in marrying anybody and bringing a child into this world. There is no future for such a child here. Not because of global warming, but because the ideological vision of the coming future is a wretched one. And so the only safe place there can be for me is alone with God. I will try to pray to Him every night. I will try to thank Him for another day. I will ask him why I am still here, since there is nothing to build for Him here. I will say to him that I do not understand my purpose being in a place where I have been actively made a pariah. He probably won't respond. Sometimes, he does, in His way. But I will go on suffering in silence in a place that He has seemingly abandoned. It's been said that life is what it is, and that what matters is how you respond to that fact. The only option I have is to lose myself in delusions of grandeur and dreams. Maybe every night, even if only for a brief moment, I can live in a different reality. A better one.
Here he comes. Around the final bend. The end is in sight. Within reach. The pack of inner demons are hot on his heels. Can he keep his lead? Will he falter? Remains to be seen. My semester ends in just a few weeks. I have A's and B's in all my courses, but will I fail a couple of them retroactively because of poor attendance? Possibly, depending on how some of my professors feel. Insomnia has been very bad lately. Wake up at 3:30 PM. Wake up at noon. Wake just before noon. Wake at 6PM. Too random to repeat. Miss classes, make it to others; there's no way to predict it. All I can do is what's in my control. It sucks to say that my sleep schedule, a significant part of body and mind, are out of control. But that's how it is. I just keep up with the school work and that's it. I don't ask for deadline extensions or anything like that. I just ask for my absences to be excused. If an assignment is due on a certain time at a certain date, that's when it's due. No ifs ands or buts to my professors. And with very few exceptions this whole semester, I've turned in everything. I've barely missed an assignment. Rarely turned something in late. But my body and mind are apparently not mine, whoever "mine" is. What a frustrating thing. Melatonin makes me feel awful. Alcohol helps me pass out but my quality of sleep is terrible. Strattera gives me nightmares the likes of which I haven't seen before. Caffeine wreaks havoc on my digestive system. I've quit nicotine for nearly three weeks now. I lean over from my gaming chair and lift the Coor's box, deflated. Flimsy, empty cardboard. The last beer stands like a Dark Soul's boss on the glass desk. I type these words between the sips. Somehow, coherent. Recently I've sometimes experienced some aches and pains in the abdominal region but I have no idea what they mean. In my experience, I go to the doctor for aches and pains and nothing comes of it. Just prescribe me some over-the-counter painkillers and send me on my way. It's no wonder people think doctors are quacks. General physicians. Snake-oil salesmen. At some level they're still all the same, despite all the "progress" we've made. A toothache is either an early sign of mouth cancer or just a placebo. Oh, so advanced are we. I'm not the kind of guy that my dick wishes I was. My dick wishes I would have gone down a very different life path. Star quarterback; consistent, infallible life-of-the-party. Personification of confidence. Line of bitches waiting to ride. But life just didn't work out that way. Instead, part of me is fearful of losing this free-time; playing video games, going to bed and waking up whenever; deciding what to do when and how I want to do it. Another part, geographically south of my waist, reads a lot of literature on hedonistic philosophy. Objectification. Am I sane? Too. It would take delusion to remove me from what I'm convinced is reality. Oh, blessed be thy man who finds a woman to share genuine common interest. I don't feel right. I've never felt right. I'll never feel right. I lay down to sleep. Or perhaps to die. I wouldn't mind. An angel it would take, to save me from myself. For I cannot reach myself. It's too far gone. I turn off the lights. I pull my knees close to my chest and lean against the bedroom door. Christ judges me from his wooden cross hanging on my wall. And with my face in my hands I pray. For what, I do not know. I cannot trust my own desires. The words do not come. How could I have possibly been born in His image? I look nothing like Him. I am nothing more than the damned shadow of envy, lust, doubt, shame and embarrassment that His glorious perfect image casts. I can only go through the motions, and hope the intention is true. So I pray... For salvation, I guess.
"Mike Tyson could be a history teacher and football coach who teaches at a school in a rough neighborhood, Jennifer Aniston could be an art teacher at a more affluent school but in the same district..." I didn't get much farther than that. My group-mates and I were trying to figure out what to do for our class project. Basically, we were doing a two-page ad (there's an actual term for it but it escapes me... a "spread"?) in a fake magazine for an imaginary movie about teachers. Well, you've got to cast for a movie, even if it's not real. Nobody else was taking the initiative on that end. So leave it to me! Pretty soon somebody voiced concerns about racism. "I don't see why Mike Tyson has to be the teacher at a rough neighborhood..." Okay, besides just how absurd it is to cast Mike Tyson as a middle-school football coach and history teacher in the first place, which is part of why I did it, I didn't say it had to be him. Just to cover the bases, nor did I say it has to be Mike Tyson because he's black. Paraphrasing this conversation, by the way. Thus it was such, that the moral busybody had jumped to the rescue of their own projected racism. Anyway, admittedly caught off-guard I replied, "Woah woah woah there, I didn't mean it like that. Who else do we want cast?" Finally somebody else spoke up and said, "We should have Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson instead. He's a better actor than Mike Tyson, very charismatic and seems like a good dude." "Okay, so we'll have The Rock instead. That's cool with me. But is it okay, because he *is* black," I said with some emphasis. The person who'd suggested The Rock then laughed. The other girl from before said, "That's not what I meant, but okay." (Mutes her microphone.) Well, I do have a soul. I'm not a psychopath and I have the capability of detecting and deciphering the neuron-firings known as feelings in other entities similar to myself. Or as normal people call it, possessing empathy. I did feel bad, but at the same time, I really couldn't think of anything I needed to apologize for. I wasn't going to make this the hill to die on. This wasn't even a real movie. It's just a stupid class project, for which it's way more important that we get along and work together. But I can't help but acting the contrarian toward this ideology of moral busy-bodying. And I do not take credit for that term; I first encountered its succinct and sharp-witted brilliance from a C.S. Lewis quote: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." I can't be bothered to look-up the precise source. You can if you want. If I recall correctly, I've verified it before. Anyway, having taken our grains of salt now, I must add the caveat that this fellow peer of mine was not "tormenting" me or anybody else. She's really quite a sweet girl by all appearances. We've been in the same group of 5 students for a few weeks now, and it looks like we will be for the remainder of the semester. I'm happy about that, because we all do good work including her. But out of principle, when I encounter this moral busybodying, I can't help but stand fast. After our online class was over for the day, she texted me (we're all in a group-chat so we can communicate outside of class) and apologized if she'd been rude. I said there was nothing to apologize for, and tried to make her feel validated by saying that I understood her concern. Which, I believe to be the truth; I just don't agree with her concern. But I get it. Now, I get that it's reasonable to consider the... appearances of things, and how an action or statement may be misinterpreted. But I put emphasis on reasonable. In no universe do I think it would be reasonable to assume that if Mike Tyson was cast as being a middle-school football coach and history teacher in a lower-income neighborhood, then it *must* be the result of racism. I wouldn't even wonder. Because what does such a ridiculous interpretation entail? I never said that Mike Tyson was from the imaginary neighborhood that he's teaching at. For all she knows, I could've given his character a backstory where he comes from a rich family in the Hollywood Hills. I never said that the demographics of the school were black, but it sounds like she made that assumption herself. (I think we all know the words of wisdom about assumptions and what they make of you and me.) I never said that I'm casting Mike Tyson for this role because he's black. These situations happen more often than you think. And oh how easy would it all have been resolved if she'd simply asked me, "Why Mike Tyson?" And I would've said: "Oh my God, I was watching Mike Tyson's Mysteries the other night on Netflix and it was great. You gotta' watch it." Yet somehow it is the Righteous Crusader herself who makes it all about race. Hmm. Thus we all see how a problem was created where there was no problem. How peculiar. Right now in Hollywood, there's lots of talk from Kathleen Kennedy and her ilk that gender and race play a part in their casting choices. And you know what, I'll steel-man that, if only slightly. Yes, in certain situations I think it is acceptable to make casting decisions based on those characteristics. For example, a director might want a woman to play a *gasp* female character. A director may want to accurately cast for the time, place, setting of a given film. Or it could be a decision to stay true to a character's original design, as in the case of movies based on comic books or something. That's all fine and dandy by me, not that they need to come to me for permission. But when it doesn't matter, in the Star Wars universe, in a galaxy far far away, we're saying the least racist thing you can do is to let race influence your casting. We're saying that the best way to appear as non-racist and diverse, is in fact to discriminate by race and gender to force a certain outcome. "Sorry, we already got enough of your kind for our film. Now scram." Funny, innit? The lesson I learned yesterday on 10/28/20: don't be quick to assume there's a problem where you're not sure there is one, because your very assumption may become the only problem there ultimately is. Rather, akin to "What would Jesus do?", try to remember to ask "Why Mike Tyson?" And in so doing, we can all play our effective parts in rooting out active discrimination or unintentional bias where it is present, instead of putting out fires that we ourselves started. As Freud would have put it, sometimes a Mike Tyson is, in fact, indeed, indubitably, just a Mike Tyson.
Anything said from hereon is just my opinion; my personal feelings and experience. Not scientific research or objective fact. I'm going to word it as carefully and neutrally as I can. Get ready, because this will be a long one. This presidential election will probably be the first and the last that I vote in. Since I first went to high-school, but especially in 2016 when I graduated coinciding with the previous election, I've increasingly felt like I don't belong. Conversations with my peers on the internet or at school, with many friends or acquaintances in real life, act as routine reinforcement to this feeling. Since graduating, I've lost half of my friends. Some reading that I've done, including a basic level political science course, has taught me that politics isn't just a mere opinion like your favorite color or what food tastes good to you. Sit down and have a reasonable conversation with somebody you disagree with on a political issue, and you might dig deep enough to discover that you and this other person fundamentally disagree on a principle, or a value, buried beneath a heap of rubble and a lot of noise. You might also discover that some people are now defining words differently than you, and that their new definitions of these words have been deliberately crafted to suit their own view and arguments. This has happened to me too. We're not even using the same language anymore. This made the constant debates and arguments among my friend-group tedious, often talking past one another, with the conversation quickly fraying into multiple threads that couldn't be put back together; on one, we're disagreeing on what a certain term even means, on another we're disagreeing about what the "facts" are, and on yet another we're disagreeing on a principle or moral value. Hell, that's not even mentioning the other common thread: conflicting feelings. Then we can make feelings more philosophically complicated! Can feelings be wrong? What do I mean by "wrong"? The rabbit hole never stops. I've had enough. Ultimately the friend-group became very toxic. Every day I would wake to find more links from the various talking-head sites on the internet about the latest thing the president or another politician did, or the latest thing about the protests, riots; the headline of the latest dead cop right above or beneath the latest headline about a person killed by police. As I'm sure you're well aware, this only scratches the surface of the iceberg. We could talk about dozens— no, hundreds of other domestic issues for my country, not to mention issues around the world or the impending doom of climate change. Every day I would wake up to find my friends arguing back and forth. Basically, imagine the debate room here. Paragraphs upon paragraphs, and some name calling, and now and again multiple people ganging up on one person who can't hope to respond fast enough to defend themselves or make a case. And for what? What do we hope to accomplish by all this? I could maybe see the point if there were a crowd of truly undecided people. But this was not the case. Eventually it became a circle-jerk (for either team). Words were said, people left the group chat, a new group chat was made named something to the effect of "The non-racists" or something similarly petty. You get the idea. Those guys I no longer talk to. And among my friends who I am still close with, if not a little bit closer, figurative phrases such as "I don't know who they are anymore" have been spoken. Perhaps my ex-friends say the same. That is the jist of how close-to-home this ostracization has hit for me. I thought I knew these people but either I didn't, or they drastically changed to the point that our relationship had to be severed. Everything is becoming politicized to the point where it can hardly be escaped for a single day. Google says it knows what is best for you to see, TV has chosen commercials for you and you've got no say in the matter, ads on YouTube have been targeted for you like heat-seeking missiles... It never ends. And even among friends it has become an inevitability. The solution I came to was to do my best to opt-out, or otherwise tolerate it when I can't. I hardly watch TV anymore. I have a good ad-blocker on most of my devices. I can leave the room if the discussion is about something political. But really all that's happened is I've actually been distancing myself further and further away, leaving rooms more and more often, talking less and less to more and more people. I go to college orientation and feel like I don't belong because of the views and beliefs that are being expressed. But all the hundreds of my same-aged peers around me seem on board. I continue attending college and have to take these online socializing programs that are mandated by the administration, because I guess it wasn't enough to harp on these same views and beliefs at the three-day orientation weekend bonanza. Yet the only complaints on campus from my fellow students is that the administration isn't doing enough to force these ideas down my throat. I continue attending college and end up completely changing majors for a lot of these reasons; I did not like where the journalism industry was, or where it was heading. The director of the campus newspaper (which I worked for) says the ideological phrase to me, "We *ALWAYS* believe her." All I can think, is this place is crazy, and no journalist always believes anything. I changed majors to my one and only back-up, teaching English. I am very adamant with my new advisors that I want to minor in ESL because "I want to keep my options open". That was short-hand for saying "in case high-school English teaching has also been taken over by ideology". It becomes apparent to me that if you control the public education that ~90% of every new generation will attend, then you have a lot of control over what they think. This is social engineering. In my English course this semester, we're only examining literature through lenses that are in accordance to this aforementioned ideology. We are not learning about or utilizing a "Christian lens" or a "traditionalist lens" or a "conservative lens" or a "capitalist lens". Only, and exclusively the opposite. Begin to wonder if I'll be able to give future English students a balanced education. My roommates and I have a few people over, I don't know, maybe a month-and-a-half ago. One of them gets into a vehement disagreement about a hot-button issue with a couple of us. Has not been back over since despite many many opportunities. This person was treated as God's-child by the journalism program, and was specially selected to be the editor-in-chief of the campus newspaper, and post-graduation was assisted in landing a job at a major newspaper in a big city on the east side of the country. Starting to become apparent that "getting with the social engineering program" has its benefits. Watching the last debate the other night on the couch with one of my roommates and his girlfriend. Just like every other girl I've met at college, they are completely under the influence of this ideology. This isn't to say that she is a bad person, or that any of the others are bad people by merely being an advocate of this specific ideology. Not at all. In fact, her and I get along just fine. But the sheer idea of so much as questioning her on these specific beliefs is blasphemy, and elicits a most incredibly emotional, hostile reaction. She can speak her mind from the couch oh-so-freely, to the reveling of all! If only I could do the same. Starting to notice a trend that very beautiful girls like her get with the program to fit in socially. Like, if all these other people bought into it, clearly the product must be righteous. The other "option" would be social suicide to them, and that's not an option. This is assuming that they didn't already believe in this ideology for other reasons that aren't quite as superficial, or practical, for lack of better words. I think fitting in socially is a happy coincidence for many of them. Starting to feel that what I'm experiencing now are only the seeds, and that the future will only be worse. Starting to worry that how ostracized I feel now will only increase. How will it be, working for the rest of my life in a career where from the top-down I am forced to teach kids according to a system of social-engineering that I do not agree with? How will it be working in a career that is predominantly made-up of the same people that I know now? Not at all bad people, but people that I must always painfully maintain a specific distance from because of their beliefs about me, my skin color, or my gender. And so I'm already looking at other countries where this ideology has not yet sunk its teeth and claws into. The best option I can find is Japan. So, I'm taking four semesters of Japanese while at university so that maybe I can have a back-up plan of teaching English there. I'm not suggesting that Japan is a perfect country, or that this ideology doesn't exist there at all. And I'm sure in time, no doubt it will find its way there, and so too one of the few remaining eggs will be put into one basket. I happen to not agree with pretty much anything this new ideology has to offer. I do not find its arguments convincing. I find the way that it views me and other people to be abhorrent. Yet it is becoming more and more mainstream. It is increasingly considered to be virtuous. It will inevitably become the new normal because every generation is being taught to think these things. Social engineering ensures that those who disagree are encouraged to "get with the program", or else be called all sorts of -ists, be outcasted, be ignored. I'm not saying I like it, or that I enjoy it, or that it feels good. But my own beliefs and my own temperament do not allow me to sell-out myself and get with this program. I can't live like that. I've tried...
Not a very big brainstorm. Just one of those wild summer rains that leaves as quickly as it arrives. I've intermittently been thinking about topics that I'd want to cover, should I start making some anime commentary videos on YouTube. So far... Your Name changed my life Anime: Running Away from Reality, or Toward? The Psychology in Monogatari (multi-part series) Violet Evergarden and trying to understand Love The recurring theme of fearing attractive women The appeal of harems I could probably do a lot of content on Monogatari. Philosophies, character-arc analyses...
Recently I've been feeling a bit inspired, although not entirely in the direction of writing. I have a creative urge that's always wanting to be brought to life. It's been said many times before in various ways, but just recently I read a post on here by a fellow member in which it was said that we, as creators, are conduits. We're the means by which these creative energies and ideas that bless or haunt us can take form. I did take part in one of the monthly short-story competitions here and on another forum for the first time in what must be years, and did surprisingly well in both. But because of my past experience on YouTube, I know there are other mediums by which I can do something creative. In the past I've ran a couple different YouTube channels on which I mostly posted gaming content. Over the past few years I've developed a significant interest in anime (can you tell?), and part of that was found through YouTube channels that posted video analyses and commentary on my favorite anime. So I may be using this blog here to explore my thoughts on some of my favorite anime. Whether it's a standard paper or a video analysis, either way you need the words. Formatting might differ, but whether it's an essay structure or a video transcript, it's writing all the same. School and other matters are sapping most of my strength as of late. And I've never been one for spending my time particularly well. But I think I can still find it in me to make some videos and see what happens. I'd hope to get out of it a greater understanding of storytelling, characters, but also discover great themes and ideas along the way that I can shine a light on and share for the benefit of myself and the audience. And to try and put into words, however infinitely imperfect, why these works of art resonate with me. I think such a process is essentially relevant to understanding all creative works, including prose. It's weird, and slightly frustrating, that one of my most treasured forms of media is one that I can't directly do myself. I can't draw, or compose scores. Yet, I could possibly do something transformative with existing content, including my own words. The first roadblock is that I need a computer upgrade, because my current PC is getting up there in age, and I'd like to use the best and newest Adobe software for editing, not to mention I need a blu-ray drive so I can take clips from the anime and use them (which shouldn't be a problem, as I have zero intention of monetizing this). Clearly that will take some time and money to solve. In the meantime maybe I can get my thoughts down and straighten them out here. Anyway. We'll see. That's all for now.
"You should have been past this already." My dad said this in our last conversation a couple nights ago. He was right of course. I know all too well that these mental troubles I have, the ones I've talked about ad infinitum, are things that should've gotten resolved. Why they didn't, I do not know. The question of "why they didn't" isn't quite as important as figuring out how to solve them now. Better late than never. I do not have the energy (nor desire) to try and evaluate the accuracy of what was said. But it boiled down to: you are forcing yourself to do these things because there is a part of you that is resisting them. You are also not in a position in life where the circumstances simply and utterly demand these actions of you; that is to say, you have illusory options. Here the conversation went onto a separate track for a bit that was more about how kids are raised differently today than when my father was my age, and how some of these changes may be detrimental. Most of my generation, and most definitely me personally, were sheltered from the real adult world and how things actually work. You're allowed to live in an illusion for 20 years where everything will be paid for you by mommy and daddy, and when mommy and daddy are gone, the state will come in and be them for you. I was never really exposed to the realities of life until the day I stepped out of high-school. I mean, imagine being a North Korean defector, and North Korea has been your "reality" your entire life. You've been living in this Emerald City with these god like parents, and out of nowhere this is completely swept out from under you. The illusion you knew seems better than the real world, and you want to regress. Crawl back into bed and go to sleep. It seems, to me, only a natural response. Perhaps not the *only* natural response, but a. Nothing can be done about that now, except to wonder how I'd avoid putting my own kids through the same thing. Or to phrase it differently, how I might prepare them better. I wouldn't want to make their childhood miserable or otherwise totally steal it from them, but I don't want to set them up for this existential disappointment. To speak figuratively, I don't want to wait until they're 18, graduating high-school to realize on their own that Santa isn't real. Why do we raise kids this way? It seems so damaging. It was for me, anyway. Maybe I'm weak or defective in some way. The reason for the blog title is that this chapter has dragged on for long enough. Well, more like this sub-plot has gone on for long enough. I've been metaphorically thinking of ways to tie-it-up, to start the next thing. What is the next thing? And how to get there? Early morning ceiling fan thoughts. Because I don't want to be like this anymore. That's vague, but if you've ever had the thought in regards to yourself, then you should get it. Wherever it is that I'm going next—and I have some idea—I could not bring this writing dream with me. I had to let it die. I cannot bring these childhood video games with me. I will soon have to leave that behind. Hopefully the more I try to live in accordance with the way life is, the less I'll have to force myself to do things. I will simply do certain things because there is no other choice, and feelings will have nothing to do with it. Just practicality. Letting go makes much more sense now. I am figuring out what to let go of, and what to bring. "When your mother and I are gone, what will you do?" What will I do?
I appreciate those of you who have welcomed me back, or sent me get-well messages in my inbox. I don't suspect I'll quite be back here in previous capacity. And maybe that's a good thing. I waste too much time on here. I should only be on here as much as I should be... whatever that is. I've quit nicotine for probably the tenth time now lol. I feel like I've made some real progress with my depression. I don't quite trust myself enough to join the 2A club, but for a little while now I can feel that life-force drive. That will to live, and a sense that it's worth it. A deliberate effort in figuring out how to love myself... whatever that means. I've still been struggling with sleep and missing classes but I haven't been drinking anymore than I already was, and I guess I've adjusted enough to stay teetering on the edge of disaster instead of falling into literal disaster. I don't know. There's certainly still times I want to get so blasted into oblivion that I forgot why I was drinking and smoking in the first place. Even though I still consider myself on indefinite hiatus, I've participated in a monthly fiction contest on here for the first time, and I'm also participating in a similar contest on another writing forum for the first time in a couple years. Maybe making university and teaching my focus will let me relax and just enjoy writing again, instead of making it this really stressful thing that I'd been trying to stake everything on with impossible expectations and inevitable disappointment. I've been actively practicing accepting the way that life is, rather than wallowing in how disappointed I am that it's not how I wish it were or how I thought it ought to be. And that's been really hard for somebody who's mind is so adept at being in that dark place. There's still lots of people I wish I could be. Lots of ways I wish I could be. I still slip and fall in there when something reminds me that life's not fair. I would've liked to "roll up rolls royce now"; I would've liked to have been the guy with all the looks and girls and confidence and money in the world. But I'm not. And? So what? Those questions changed my life. Maybe I'm just getting better at picking myself back up again. I don't know if I've really "accepted" this or that, but I'm just working on not hating myself anymore for this or that. Even if I still think I shouldn't be lazy, selfish, awkward, or whatever else, how is HATING and beating myself up over it, losing sleep over it, how does that help? So I realized I need to stop that. It will take time, and I'll relapse just like with smoking, but the realization is half the battle. If therapy taught me anything, it's that nothing else, nobody else can truly save you. Even God has left it up to you, to try and make the most of the second chance you've been blessed with. I can only try and take one day at a time. My father's birthday is coming up within a week, so like some sort of recovering... depressive?... I'm just trying to focus on getting him that card, figuring out what he would like for a gift, and making the necessary arrangements to spend the day with him. I don't know if it's a manic episode but there's this realization that I've only got so much time left with my aging parents, and that I've wasted half of my life in this very dark place that had me wrapped-up and self-absorbed. "You often feel tired, not because you've done too much, but because you've done too little of what sparks a light in you." "It's not finding yourself that's hard; it's facing yourself that is." -Alexander den Heijer At the end of the day, to get real, I just want my parents to feel like it was worth it. I just want to be a good member of my family. I want to be a good friend. I want to be a good teacher, and to maybe even go a little farther and help some kids who need it when it comes to some of the same things I've struggled with since the start of high-school. I'd like a family, and to have a son or a daughter that I can share this crazy, painful, joyful, beautiful, weird adventure of life. I want to be the best I can be, and to act in a way that says "I deserve these things". And at the end of all my days, at the gates, to hear the words, "I forgive you." Because Lord knows I'd never make it in without that.
I've been blogging a lot lately. Went for a spell where I didn't at all. That's how it is. Already spoke a little on expectations in my last post. How they can be ironically limiting when coupled with goals and desires. Paralyzing. Self-sabotaging. When I think about it, all of this comes from a place of wanting people, the world, to fulfill what I see as its potential. And its potential is practically limitless, even if one factors in one's genetics, or the time and place in which one is born. All of my disappointment, all of my criticism that so often boils and ascends into cynicism and nihilism, is the reaction to a failure of moving in the general direction of the strive. Up. Dangerous idealism? Naivety? Mania? Perhaps. We all have different visions of how we'd like the world to be. Lots of overlap, sure, but different all the same. In the worst of times when I can't see anything in myself, I can see the potential in others. It's possible that this is the case for many people. And so it takes somebody on the outside-looking-in to help remind us. That's why I want to teach. While teaching English, I want to do more than only cover grammar, for the humanities presents the perfect opportunity. I don't expect that I'd completely transform anyone, but I would want to have a positive effect. Hopefully a lasting one, however small it may be, on as many people as I can. The lightest kiss on a meteor rocketing through space diverts it from a collision course. This foundation is likely what has led me to become a moderate. I am a conservative because I find the arguments more logically and morally sound, but I too feel the passionate idealism of a dreamer, of a revolutionary. When the em-oceans calm, and the storms clear, the necessity and merits of both come into focus. No progress can be made without conservation. In my country's hyper-focus on hyper-partisanship, I think we lose sight of a deeper sense of right and wrong. We fail, or outright refuse to recognize, that our political opponent is a person. If not a good person, then the chance that they can become one. It's so important to get back down to basics and see one another as a human, no matter how much we might hate their views. Without letting it cloud my final judgment, without flirting anywhere near justification, I dare to see the good in anybody, so long as I think that they are human. Even Hitler, or Stalin. Because not doing so is to remain blind to how a human being can commit such horrible atrocities on their fellow man. Hate the sin. Not the sinner. I like the humanities because I think English class, as I experienced it in high-school, is so much more than learning how to write some stupid essay. Don't get me wrong; communicating is very important. Writing can be a great way to learn how to do it effectively, showing what one knows. But philosophy, psychology, faith and morality, these are the things good people are made of. Yet it's less telling people what to think, than it is helping them think for themselves. Life is as much a discovery of the self as it is of the other, for all things are, in the end, one. The darker the night, the brighter the light. The higher the height, the farther the fall. So it is, that I may be one of the most optimistic pessimists of all.
Aim low, hit low. The world is in perfect order. "Aim low, hit high. Surprise." - somebody who isn't me, but is quite clever in my estimation I play video games competitively but this issue I've had with anxiety, expectations, and "choking" (not on food, but execution) has been prevalent throughout every area of my life, from little league baseball to sex. You properly assess your strengths. You know your capabilities. You've seen it before. Done it before. It wasn't luck, you know. Then you consciously try to call upon those powers, only to be left looking like a complete and utter fool. It is true of guitar. It is true of sports. It is true of video games. It is true even of writing. Perhaps Yoda was onto something. Don't try to be funny. Either be funny, or don't be. A big reason why I think I'm so prone to being jaded, not wanting to care, wanting to quit, giving up, is because actually trying has almost always brought failure. Performance anxiety? Choking. This problem has caused so much self-doubt over the years that it's literally turned my self-confidence to dust. Goals suddenly appear as the first step to failure. The pressure mounts until it's so much you flirt with self-sabotage. Focus on the now, what's in front of you, is the practical advice. Breathe deep. Reset.
It was like being handed a new pair of glasses. You don't even realize the old ones aren't working as well as they should because you've grown so used to them. Your identity is not your emotions. Before reading the Enneagram, I'd never been introduced to this idea. I've come to realize what I've always sort of known, but in a strange, overlooked sense. I have a weak sense of self-identity. For a cynic, a pessimist, a neurotic, negative emotion is more stable than positive emotion. So it seems more real. And you can therefore see the problem if you identify with your emotions, and become exasperated at yourself when they change on you without your approval. It leads one to feeling out of control. I thought everybody identified with their emotions. But identity is so much more complex. It depends on context, partly. It can be occupation. You can consider yourself just a member of the human race. You can consider yourself a good person. You can say you're a Christian, son or daughter of God, or just a son or daughter. You can even check all of the above, and more. As I read more about the Enneagram, I came to realize I am very much a "4". I was introduced to it by a friend on here, who thought as much. I haven't read a lot about the other types as they're described, and it's important to keep in mind that it isn't an exact science. But it definitely wasn't no astrology. In other news, it's almost 8 in the morning. I have to be at work at this time on Monday. That's no fun. School starts in little over a week and I haven't done jack shit to really prepare for it. I see a rude awakening in my near future. Apparently, with 20 thousand students, several thousand of which are international students as well as students from other states, we are still going to attempt in-person classes. Of course, all of our classes are hybrid, already offering an online method of participation. Maybe I forgot how it felt before my first semester here, but I feel unusually racked with anxiety and dread. There's some excitement as well, do not get me wrong. It's not all doom and gloom. I think I'm just most annoyed at how this supposed plague is going to make school inconvenient. So, will teaching English be for me? I'm sure the thought of me teaching anybody anything terrifies you. Rest assured, my online persona is quite different from my real-life one; I put on my Greek comedy mask when I go out in public. Just to reassure you that I'm more than qualified to teach your children, allow me to explain how listening to this song, and living vicariously through anime, is so much more appealing than being in an actual relationship. Yes, that's right. I'd much rather be in the space of a person who'd just broken up from a relationship, which I imagine being like one of the fantastically beautiful ones in a piece of fiction, than actually being in one. I've been in one. Several, in fact. So I would know. You have my permission to go ahead and pity them. (I suspect much of my self-deprecating sarcasm is being lost in translation, here.) Standing on the other side of the red rope at a museum, the great sculptures tower. The great works of art invite one through the walls upon which they hang. And you just want to reach out, and finally touch them. But you can't. That, is what love feels like. Never the real thing. Just an imagining. Just a desired fantasy. At best, a recreated likeness. I need to cut my nicotine from 5% to 2.5%
Living a lie. Been living one. Can a lie ever be better than reality? What is an ideal, but that? Faith taken back. But what's left to put it in, if not that? Is a lie a lie if you remain in ignorant bliss? Is the solution to sorrow to not think too hard? Is a dream a dream if you never wake up? The wake always follows the ship you sail in your sleep. What has my past work been then, but propagating a falsehood? An attempt to immortalize a fleeting psychological projection of naivety? An unattainable aesthetic beauty in flesh as much as spirit? What are stories, other than a means to sleepwalk through a reality that's not good enough? Escapism? All is brought into question. All is doubted. Cynicism. Hope is but a futile attempt to defy gravity. The best storytellers are those who've told themselves reality is something that it isn't without even realizing. The compound word bittersweet is incorrectly structured in its order of operation. A harsh reminder that fiction is fiction. What's captured in art is only imagination. Money, power, resources, hedonism, are what constitute reality. In illogical spite of nihilism I resign myself to a lifetime of disappointment and shortcomings, for this state of affairs is too heavy a burden to not delude myself and play pretend that there's something more. A choice to believe in the impossible. In what was never real, and may never be. Love. Is such a realization a permanent vaccination against it? Can I only ever fake being in it? Is love only possible between two fakes? Or between two people who haven't woken up? To paraphrase Nisioisin, is a fake, a dream, a pretender, a fiction, actually more real than the real thing?
I'm bored, so it's that time again. Inspired by a conversation I've had with somebody, I was thinking about my experience in the dating sphere. As a guy who is far more passive than assertive, I rarely ever approach. That's what men are expected to do, generally speaking. Instead, for most of my life I've relied on circumstance: sitting next to one another in a class, happening to be in the same group for an event or project, working together, or meeting through a mutual friend. I've been approached a few times in my life, by girls I wasn't interested in. There was once where I felt like I made a mistake at the time. Bodies, uh, change a lot in high-school. And by "body" I am actually referring to the face and the sudden absence of braces. Oh, who am I kidding. My mentality also changed, I matured a bit and really started appreciating personality. I like having somebody to talk to. And I mean really talk to. I hadn't known this girl very well at the time that she came up to me and I turned her down. It wasn't until much later that I got to know her better. Live and you learn. You gotta' have an abundance mentality, not a scarcity one. This is just one of many reasons why "The One" narrative is so detrimental. There are numerous reasons why I'm so passive. My place in the male-attractiveness hierarchy (and just to be clear, I am couching a lot of things into "attractiveness" besides superficial looks). A lack of confidence, a lack of faith. I don't handle uncertainty well at all. That's bad enough without the current cultural divide being fostered between the sexes; as someone who isn't a feminist, I basically feel like I might as well fold now. Well, I am a feminist, but definitely not what the third-wave has degenerated it into. Listening to Ben Shapiro talk about marriage, and also having part of my mind constantly thinking about these matters at all times, I understand that values are the most important thing. Next appears to be personalities that blend well. Then comes interests, which for whatever reason are the most focused on, probably because that's usually the way people meet in the first place. And, I suppose to some extent they can vaguely indicate the probability of certain personality traits or values. Of course, having said all that, I'm going to contradict it all and say that it's not a science. "It just happens." That's certainly been more true, even in my limited experience, than anything I've suggested otherwise so far. But as somebody who prides myself on trying to think independently, coming to my own conclusions and trailblazing my own way, it leads to a situation in which compatibility becomes very difficult. Even I know that if you meet the right person, what you're willing to sacrifice will surprise you. I don't expect, nor would I want, to agree on every single little thing. Even if that were possible, which it isn't. But you aim for "generally speaking". And generally speaking, even when trying to maintain an abundance outlook, I find the possibility hard to believe in. Find somebody with Christian values, except I pick and choose, and don't believe in no-sex-before-marriage. Find a free spirited girl and they've likely been conned into being a hardcore feminist by some cultural studies courses at university. Significant value disparities abound. When I say values, I also would like to make very clear that I'm not talking about being a perfectly virtuous person. That's different. We all have our shortcomings, me included. This isn't what I'm talking about. On that subject, I just look for somebody who loves themselves well-enough, but also works on shortcomings that they might find in themselves. I'm more than happy to try and help another person, in any kind of relationship for that matter, work on things like that. I wouldn't be the one to force it on them though. They would have to come to me first, saying, "Hey, I've been trying to quit these addictions I have", or *whatever*. You get the point. It's all much easier to live vicariously through anime. I see this a lot in the anime community. Lots of guys like me who feel like they no longer belong in the society that activist groups on any and all sides of the aisle are "deconstructing", to the point that most Americans really have nothing in common anymore. No common goal or vision. This isn't just exclusive to the dating sphere, but any social sphere. I find that the less I try, the more confidence I have. But the less I try, the more passive I am. I still "put myself out there" in my passive manner; I at least put myself into the various social situations where something might happen. I pay attention for opportunities. Do I act on them? Rarely. Not that I can't, because I've given numbers to girls in the past, met parents, dated, asked girls out to homecoming, prom, and all the rest. So it is by no means whatsoever beyond my capabilities. But I'm not assertive unless pushed. When I'm alone, I can be myself.
"It is the case that all things are predetermined, did you know?" "What?" "The big bang was the mere tap of the first domino, in a series of billions and trillions of billions of trillions of dominoes. Atoms colliding and combining in perfectly predictable order. There is no such thing as chaos. That which humans call chaos, is merely unknown order." "You don't control me." The creature laughed, perched on the moonlit window. That made this situation all the more unsettling. "There is no escaping Laplace's Demon, child. I knew you would say that. I have always known. Right now you're thinking of doing the opposite of what you think you will do, but that will do you no good. Think to do the opposite of the opposite of the thing you were going to not do, and it will still do you no good. Humans may think their choices matter, but their choices are not choices at all, but meaningless output from an input that was made at the start of time." I couldn't move. I couldn't close my eyes. In my bed I lay paralyzed, although somehow I could speak without speaking. "And if I do nothing at all?" "Try again." A sudden wave of dread washed over me. If our choices don't matter, if we are nothing more than puppets, then what is the point of living? "Right now you're thinking why you are here. You are here simply because you are. Whatever reason you have come up with is ultimately meaningless. A veneer. Now, if you decide to kill yourself, that was determined, and you lose. If you decide to keep living, your spite was determined, and you lose." I could feel the tears welling in my eyes. I wanted to cry-out, I wanted to wake-up, or rather I wanted to go back to sleep, but I couldn't. I was trapped. But at that very moment, the woman in white stepped through the door. Her eyes matched her golden hair, and there was something unknowable about the glint in her eye. Her face perfectly proportioned with a playfully mischievous smile, and the light, carefree way she graced the room barefoot. She lay a hand on my forehead, and laid her eyes on the demon. "If this is all true, Laplace, then should the same rules not apply to you?" she asked him teasingly. "I will entertain you. No, for I exist outside and above this universe you inhabit. You are a minor god here, miss. A glorified fool." "Then only two things can be true, as I see it. You either act of free-will, or you act under the control of a greater demon. Is that not so?" The demon's face contorted, although he said nothing. "So you admit it. You haven't any free-will yourself, and I have reminded you of what you've conveniently forgotten. Your own view of the world makes you yourself nothing but a pawn. Begone, demon, and allow this child sleep." He hissed, and like a spider he crawled into the night. "Do not trouble yourself with such talk, child. The demon has had this knowledge bestowed upon him as a punishment, and in resentment he has sought to return it upon humans. The fact of the matter is, even should he be right, and this is all nothing more than a script where improv is impossible, you do not know what tomorrow brings. Thus it is that those who wish to live, wish to live because they want to find out what happens next. Those who wish to die, do not wish to see what happens next. And I see it as my purpose here to ensure that you never feel like you want to die." I felt my eyes getting heavy. "Imperfection is a mercy," she whispered to me. "That demon made a deal with the devil in order to obtain omniscience, and their arrogance destroyed them. Only God may know God's plan. Your necessity for faith, even in your science, is the greatest blessing in disguise. To be able to wonder is wonderful. Do not fear the unknown, sweet child, for it is the not-knowing that is, in fact, the most beautiful gift."