pathos:hilarity

I am unsure of whether its okay to post the nonhilarious on my blog. Silly, because its my own damn blog and i can do whatever the fuck i want with it. But its personal with me.

I mask a lot of shit with the funny. Obviously everybody does this a little. But my good friend emily and I have been discussing what these online journals mean. We don't treat them exactly like our diaries. Even Emily, who makes no show of telling hilarious stories, but always tries to speak from the heart, purposefully excludes some things. So what do we decide to include?

I wish that the things I call "funny" would read as somewhat sad and truthful. But isn't this because I want somebody out there to understand me? I want someone to think "gosh, that strikes me. This "sooz" has touched me today." I want the pathetic and human and strange behavior around me to read as somewhat universal and beautiful; not just funny.

The problem is I don't really know who is reading this. I can't see their faces. Its not like an audience, where they're sitting in the same room as me. If I could see their faces I would be able to gauge what their reactions are. I would thus be responsible for what I am dishing out. But in this imaginary web space, there is no way to own what you say. So it is safer to try and laugh at things.

Last night I had a very long discussion with my roommate about religion vs. faith. I arrived at a question about "fate" and "predetermined plan." Many people make the statement "It was meant to be." But this ignores time. To say that type of butterfly was meant to change its colors over hundreds of years, is to act like this current stage of the butterfly is the final one. You are not acknowledging where the butterfly will be in 200 years. Roomie said we could imagine God as a constant gardener, always with his fingers in the dirt, always making things work the way they do. Not like a creationist viewpoint. Not like God created the beginning and then just sat back to watch what we would make of things.

I find "God" in everything, but especially science. I find it spiritually exciting that there is an explanation for most things, even the suspicious and "supernatural." I just wish there was a better name for God. Nature? I think the best thing is the action, the drive forward of the universe. And the endlessness of it. Even if it blows up, it was meant to be. Because it was. And that simplest explanation is the most Godly one.

Politically, it is so fucking frustrating when people use their faith to separate the "right" and "wrong." As soon as they take a position of "this should be forgiven" and "this shouldn't be" they are "playing" God. When you leave the Goddening to God, you show your real faith.

Here is one more thought about faith: If you choose to have faith, then are you not admitting that the thing which you have faith in, is not actually there? Faith seems like the biggest choice a person can make. But it is a double-edged sword, b/c by making the choice of faith, you are acknowledging it is a choice. You are saying "I want to believe in this. I don't have any evidence it exists, but I want to believe in it." Its a beautiful thing to do, and humans are so lucky that we have the capacity to think such things, but it also acknowledges that the Jesus, Buddha, etc. is no more "there" than a ghost. I think we see what we want to see or are ready to see; that the volition comes from our brains.