Life endures. People drop away one by one but we find new ones. We are pack animals, nothing more, nothing less. But we are gifted in a way no other animal is - we are sentient in quite an unique way. We are alone in the fact that we have a concept of our own mortality - this leads us to false gods and the ability to kill arbitrarily. Is this a good thing? In the infinite universe such a thing was inevitable but improbable. Just as the big bang was inevitable but improbable. What came before time is immesurable, therefore the improbable had to happen. Time did not exist before there was anything to measure it any more than light existed before anything could observe it. If something is possible in an infinity then it has to happen. But what of us? The galaxy is not infinitely old so how did life start? Is this an argument for the existance of the godhead? Some would say so - but Occam’s Razor would disagree. Who is correct? Is there any evidence that our path is being guided by anything other than ourselves? They say that 0.01% of prayers get answered - and they also proved recently that the human mind can affect a random machine in around 1 in 10,000 instances - small but statistically relevant. What does this prove? Well, it proves the power of the human mind and nothing else. They are the same thing, the same statistic. No god. So why do we lie to ourselves? Our awareness of mortality and our unwillingness to accept it forces us to believe in such things as “luck” and “god” and “good” and “evil”. And it skews us. It skews us so badly that we’re where we are today. We are isolated from each other, insulated. We don’t trust. We know our friends will make mistakes but we give them enough “trust” to use up and then we choose to lose them. We remain quiet when others are affected by pain because it doesn’t concern us. We walk past the homeless because dealing with them in our world view would bring it crashing down around our ears. And we hide away our dead - death is all around us but no-one sees it because we don’t want to admit it to ourselves that we will die. We smoke, we drink, we do many things that will make our lives shorter all because we don’t truly believe we will end, we believe in second chances. Heaven, reincarnation, whatever. We need a goal in life or it all becomes pointless. But, the goal to help others doesn’t fit in with our way of life so we make up goals. We invent Heaven all around us. It’s incorrect and leads to suffering. Suffering, The Buddha taught us, is our inability to deal with pain and struggle. He was part right. Suffering, the Jesu taught us, is preventable. Love thy neighbour. He was part right. As time goes on, more pieces of the puzzle show themselves, but we have insulated ourselves against them too. It’s wrong. It leads to emptiness. It leads to loneliness. It leads to sorrow. The future is being born all around us - every living moment a piece of us. It is inside us. We spend so much time giving away our freedom that we don’t even understand what that freedom is any more. Open your mind and you will see the ties that lay tight across your life. Open your mind and endure the struggle and the suffering. Open your mind and you can be truly free. And you don’t have to do it alone. In other news, I got drunk on Friday, Hungover on Saturday and thoughtful on Sunday. David moved out, the flat became tidier, shinyness returned for at least an evening and Warren amused me for much of Sunday evening. Bad conversation with Joao, but kinda inevitable. And kinda distracting when trying to argue a point and Warren is telling me off for my mood, which he can see. Empathy is fun to play with. “You feel less stressed now” "yeah, he just blocked me" “oh...” Again my choices are broadening. I can see more possibilities in front of me than I could this time last week. And I could see more this time last week than the week before. I have some interesting choices ahead in this