Decisin - Tumblr Posts
I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Maya Angelou (via purplebuddhaproject)
I should have faith in my choice and never let others influence my choice.Choosing the path just because others chose it can never make me happy.
And the Earth Shook
Her silhouette emerged from the flat tan background that was the outside world. It might have been day or night, it was impossible to tell. All that was visible through the cave’s yawning maw was the wind dragging sand through the air. She looked more ragged than the last time he had seen her. She was disheveled. She seemed tired. There was a poorly-healed cut over her left eye, and her arms were spotted sickly yellow with healing bruises. The cargo pants she wore were too big for her and had to be rolled up at the ankles, and her green t-shirt was several sizes too large. There was a battered black sweatshirt tied around her waist, and it too appeared to be meant for someone much larger than her. She pulled the black bandana down from over her face and squinted into cave, eyes still adjusting to the darkness. Samuel raised his head from its bed on his paws to acknowledge her, and the movement caught her attention. “Creature,” He greeted in a deep, permeating voice. “It’s been a long time.” “Not so very long, when you think about it.” Creature returned, venturing deeper into the sanctuary to find where he lay against the cave’s far wall. Without invitation she slumped down next to him and fixed her eyes on the tiny holes in the ceiling that allowed small pinpricks of light and grains of sand to sprinkle down onto the dusty floor. “I suppose you’re right.” Samuel chuckled, reflecting. “When you come to be as old as I am a few years hardly matter.” He smiled, to the extent that the contortion of his canine face could be called a smile. “You look well.” “That’s a lie,” Creature said, laughing humorlessly. “I look like shit.” Samuel grunted his assent. “You’re right.” He agreed placidly. His large yellow eyes scoured her face as they lapsed into silence. “What news do you bring from the outside?” He inquired finally. Creature grunted noncommittally, her expression blank. Somehow that was more telling than any words could have been. “I see,” He muttered quietly. Creature ignored his words and shrugged a large leather satchel off of her shoulder. “Do you mind if I eat?” She asked evasively. “Of course not.” Without a second thought she began rummaging through her bag, eventually retrieving a hunk of bread with mold clinging to the heel. She tested it with her teeth and, upon finding it too stale to gnaw on with any measure of success, withdrew a second item: a knife. The blade was not sleek and smooth, as it should have been; it was jagged, craggy, and hooked. A dull white in color, it did not as much as gleam in the light that filtered in. It was a decidedly inefficient tool, but with some difficulty Creature used it to saw off a slice of her bread. She did not think to offer Samuel a piece. She had never seen him eat anything. Samuel regarded the knife incredulously as his companion tore off the first chunk of her meal. “Is that bone?” “Horn, actually,” She replied with her mouth still full. “I thought humanity had developed past the use of such primitive weaponry.” He mused. Creature snorted in affirmation. “We have. I keep this for sentimental purposes. It… belonged to a friend.” She paused to regard the dagger almost sadly before quickly stowing it back in her sack. Another voracious bite obscured any emotions she may have felt. “Sentiments can be a powerful motivator,” Samuel agreed, eying her carefully. “But your behavior tells me that it is not what led you here today. You’ve been thinking about it, haven’t you?” Creature did not respond immediately, but he could hear her chewing stop suddenly. Her eyes glided over to the rocky protrusion jutting out from the center of the cave at an angle. A circle around it, several feet in diameter, was completely clear of dust. Irregular grooves on the ground indicated that there had once been something etched into the stone, but the characters had long faded into nothing more than faint scratch marks. It was an innocuous looking device. Were Samuel not there to explain the contraption there would be no indication of its function, or if it even had a function. But Samuel was always there, to greet each new human that happened upon the mechanism. He had been there the first time Creature had stumbled into the cave, dehydrated and exhausted, looking for a respite from the miles and miles of desert in every direction, and he had been there every time she had returned. The subterranean lair had been his abode since the beginning of time. “How did you know?” She asked. This elicited a throaty laugh. “I am older than you could ever possibly comprehend. I have met many humans before you and I have learned much.” He smirked. “Besides, you are not as mysterious as you would like to be.” Silence blanketed them once more, and both contemplated the protruding lever with due solemnity. It was the most important object that either one of them would ever encounter. All it would take was one little push and it could bring humanity to a screeching halt. It was the device that would bring about the end of the world. “Tell me what it is that weighs so heavy on you.” Samuel requested after a while. Creature sighed and waved her hand in the air as if grasping at answers that floated around her head. “The world has changed.” She admitted. “There’s so much war….” “There has always been war,” Samuel pointed out. A wry, haggard smile cracked her face. “Well maybe that’s the point, isn’t it? I mean, we’ve been on this earth thousands and thousands of years and we still can’t get it right. We just keep killing each other… over stupid things!” A deep “hmmm” rose from Samuel as he considered this, but he made no other comment. This seemed to agitate Creature a bit. She shifted her weight in the sand, drew up her knees, and clenched and unclenched her fists. “I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like the other wars. At first it was kind of exciting, having something to fight for, but now it just seems senseless. What the hell does it even matter anymore? Half of, well, everything is gone. There’s nothing to eat; we razed all of the crops. Even if the war’s moved out of your district you have to deal with starvation. The water’s soured, too. Not many buildings left standing. But we just keep fighting. It used to seem as if for every bad act that was committed there were hundreds of good people ready to prove that this wasn’t what we stood for. But now there’s so much hate…” Samuel replaced his muzzle on his paws, though his ears remained erect. “When we first met you weren’t exactly a shining example of anger management yourself.” He interjected. “This is different!” Creature snapped. She pushed herself to her feet and began pacing. “There’s a difference… between anger and hate. Anger is directed at something, it’s caused by something. And you can stop anger. There’s nothing that stops hate. It’s directionless. You can focus it for a while, but once you’ve destroyed your target it just goes somewhere else. It’s deep and it’s dark and it doesn’t let go unless you make it. But nobody wants to let go of it, because without the hate, what does that say for the things we’ve done? If we stop, all of the horrible things that have happened look meaningless. And they are. But we don’t want to have to face up to that.” She quivered visibly and stopped moving in favor of staring blankly at the tiny rays of sun-or-moonlight that filtered in. “And underneath all of that hate, there’s fear. Everyone’s scared. All anyone sees all day long is death and destruction and disease and it scares the shit out of us. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fighter or a civilian; you’re scared to death all the time. It’s… it’s no way to live. But we just can’t stop….” Suddenly resigned, she returned to Samuel’s side and slid back into a sitting position against the wall. For all the times he had seen her cocky and headstrong, angry and confident, when she looked at him she seemed helpless. “I don’t know what to do.” The look he offered her was sympathetic. “Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what you should do. I have no voice in the decision. Pull the lever, don’t pull the lever. It’s all up to you. You’re the only one that can make the choice.” “That just sucks.” Creature intoned, a hitch entering her voice. “Why should it be my choice? I can’t speak for all of humanity. What right do I have to decide everyone else’s fate? I’m just one person. And not even a good person. Just a person. A regular person who ended up here entirely by accident.” Samuel’s smile was sad. “That’s exactly why it is your choice. You’re just a human; both incredibly unique and incredibly unremarkable. You have the same emotions, the same basic instincts and sensibilities of every other of your kind. This alone qualifies you. Accident or not, you found your way here and now this burden is yours and yours alone, until you die. Then someone else will stumble upon this cavern and the responsibility will become theirs.” There was a pause. “Unless I do it.” “Unless you do it.” Samuel confirmed. To his surprise, she began to laugh, though the strange contractions of her diaphragm could easily have been confused for sobs. “Shit.” She muttered. “What business do I have with this sort of thing? What am I even doing?” Samuel didn’t answer. There was no answer. It was several minutes before Creature recovered enough to speak again. “You know, I was a soldier when this war started. I wanted the exhilaration of fighting for something you believe in. But when I look back… nothing was worth the things we did. It doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong. It doesn’t even matter who wins. All that matters are the friends that died, the families that were broken, the kids who are starving. So… One day I just packed up my stuff and left. I wasn’t the first to do it; I didn’t set any kind of example. I just left. For a while I tried to help out in the towns that were still standing but… what do you do? You can’t just make everything better. You can’t even make a dent in all the pain. So then-“ “You came here.” Samuel finished for her. “Yeah.” She grunted. “I just… I don’t know. I need you to know I’m not some sort of freakin’ saint. I’m not someone who deserves to have the lives of other people in her hands.” Samuel nosed her hand, which had been lying limply in the sand next to him. The fur around his mouth and nose had receded as he aged, leaving flaking red scales in their wake. “You are a human Creature. If you were a saint, you would not be half so human as to speak on behalf of your kind. Saints can set examples, but they cannot know the true nature of humanity.” This seemed to amuse Creature and she reached out a hand to scratch behind his ears. He enjoyed this, and his tail began thumping against the ground, kicking up small clouds of sand. “You’re pretty smart for a talking wolf, you know that?” “I have explained this to you,” Samuel growled, “I am not a wolf. This is merely a form that you feel comfortable with. In my true state I have the body of a man, the wings of a vulture, and four heads: a lion, a bull, a serpent, and a human. My feet are talons. I am much too fearsome to greet wayward travelers.” She guffawed a bit. “I know, I know. The whole ‘four heads’ thing is kind of a difficult detail to forget. I just like getting a rise out of you. You’d think after all of these years you’d have mastered sarcasm.” At this barb Samuel barked to show his displeasure. Creature just giggled and continued to scratch his ears. This placated him and for a while the two merely sat together, staring at the raging sandstorm outside and listening to the wind shrieking. Were it not for the steady motion of Creature’s hand he might have thought she had fallen asleep. But whenever he glanced up he found her eyes wide open, though her mind was far away. He had almost started to drift off himself when she next spoke. “What do you think it would be like? If I pulled the lever that is? I mean, is it going to be all fiery explosions and fissures opening up in the earth? You know, all screaming and blood? Because we’ve kind of got enough of that already.” “I don’t know,” Samuel replied honestly. “I wouldn’t imagine so. If I had to guess, it would just be like turning off the lights. Turn the lever and everything just resets, goes back to the beginning.” Creature seemed to consider this. Her brows furrowed as she sank into thought. “Wouldn’t everything just happen again, then?” “I doubt it. The world as it is now is the result of an infinite amount of arbitrary coincidences. For the universe to reproduce itself in the exact same way a second time seems quite improbable.” This seemed to make sense to her, and she nodded. Once again words ceased to pass between them. Samuel watched the cave’s unwavering shadows and Creature stared up at the ceiling, at the tiny streams of sand that trickled in like stardust. He did not know how long they sat there in the quiet. It must have been a while, but a handful of hours were nothing to a creature like Samuel. Creature seemed too lost in her own mind to notice the passage of time. “Samuel,” She asked suddenly. “Is there a God? I mean, not necessarily one god from one religion, but something that kind of oversees the universe?” Once again, Samuel replied truthfully. “I don’t know. I might have known once, but it was a long time ago. If I did, I seem to have forgotten. It is a comfort to think so, isn’t it?” “Someone had to put you here. And the lever.” Creature pointed out. “Perhaps,” Samuel said pensively. “Or perhaps we too are one of the universe’s many coincidences. As I said, I cannot recall far enough back to know.” Creature chewed the inside of her lip visibly. “Well, do you think there’s an afterlife, then?” “I could not even speculate,” He told her. “I have never died, and perhaps never will. Is that not the only way to gain such knowledge?” “I guess you’re right,” Creature exhaled heavily. “I guess it would be nice if there was but… I think I’d be okay if this was it. Not that I’d be around to complain, I suppose. But I got some time to be the person that I am, and that’s an awful lot to begin with. Not as much as you have, maybe, but what more could you ask for?” Samuel shrugged his shoulders. Creature didn’t seem to require his feedback, and continued. “Even if it ended up like this… We humans have had a pretty good run of it, haven’t we? There’s been a lot of pain, a lot of sorrow. But there’ve been some good things too. Maybe not as many, but enough to make it worth it in the long run. I think that now we’ve lost track of all of the good things, all of the little things that make being alive so enjoyable… We can’t see those things anymore.” And then she stood, with more decisiveness than Samuel had witnessed in her since she entered. “What are you doing?” He asked, voice a bit edgy. Creature was already half-way across the cavern. She turned and smiled back at him. “We’ve had a good run,” She repeated, “But we took it too far. It’s time to give someone else a shot. Maybe they can learn to hold on to all those tiny nuances of life, the ones that justify the whole damn experience. Maybe they can do better.” Her hand was on the lever. “I see.” Samuel said, and he lifted his head to watch. The lever was old, maybe older than Samuel, and was somewhat resistant to movement, having been stationary for eons. But Creature pushed her shoulder against it and, after a considerable amount of grunting and groaning on the part of both parties, managed to push it, rotating the circular slab of stone on which it sat. Nothing happened immediately, but a certain tension had been lifted from the air. “It’s done.” Creature said, and returned to the wall where Samuel was, resituating herself into her previous position. A hand reached over to resume scratching Samuel’s head. “It’s been nice knowing you, buddy.” “It’s been a pleasure,” Samuel agreed. And the earth shook. [Author's Note: So, this is another little short drabble I wrote a while ago. The fact that this is a drabble for me is kind of sad. That fact aside, this is a rather interesting concept that I came across while reading something called "The World's Longest Joke", which I would highly recommend. It's (really) not funny but it's worth a read anyways. The notion kind of festered in my brain for a while and eventually this story was born. On another note, I'm well aware that there are a lot of people won't agree with the decision made in this piece. To be honest, I don't. But the goal is to really think about it. Would you do it? What would the circumstances have to be? Anyways, I hope you folks enjoyed! Comments and critiques are always welcome!]
Our lives are continually full of CHOICES, and the question is what kind of choices will we make?
Most choices are indeed neutral — like choosing to go buy groceries or go for a walk, but as today’s title says when we choose to do things that are contrary to the way God would want us to choose, then that choice always leads to sin.
This is one of the greatest challenges in life, because while we may mean in our heart to not do the wrong thing, our lower human, sinful nature often kicks in and we instead choose to go LEFT, when instead we should have gone RIGHT.
The simplicity of this verse from Psalm 25:12 is a reminder that God is always there to show us the way, and when we heed His direction and not our own, we can always be assured that we will not cross onto the tracks of danger.
As the psalmist said — God Will ALWAYS Show You The Way You Should Choose! Choose His Path, and you will never make a wrong turn.
God Bless Your Day, Jesus Loves You
NotesOnLife.org
To watch, or not.
I'm trying to figure out how to come to terms with wanting to watch a movie because it has several talented, not hugely lucrative actors in it that I very much like; but one very big name actor in it who is a bland overhyped hack who basically plays himself playing a part and can't even learn his damn lines like a professional.
Boycotting it WAS a no brainer but now I keep finding minor characters are talent I enjoy, so I'm not sure which is the lesser of two evils - Ignoring the film and missing out on their performances; or watching it and giving Mr DrunkDumbass another tick on his 'number of views'. In the long run my viewership means nothing, but it's the principal of the thing.
Nunca te habría puesto a elegir entre yo o ella, pero a veces me pregunto, de haberlo hecho, ¿me habrías elegido?
—g
Sometimes I debate about switching colleges. Like I love mine, a lot, but it’s in such a small town, in a very conservative state. I wonder if I want a bigger experience and to possibly be closer to my home in New England. Depending on my career choice, I may be forced to switch as one of my career choices is not offered at my college.
Personas temporales Sentimientos temporales Personalidades temporales Amigos temporales Temores temporales Felicidades temporales Momentos temporales Visiones temporales Cariños temporales Dolores temporales Actividades temporales Decisiones temporales Pasatiempos temporales Atenciones temporales esto ya no tiene sentido.
Caí repentinamente en esto tan profundo, ya no tenia ganas de vivir he intentado pero me vence.