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What is the significance of a single life amongst billions? How do you quantify the value one life brings to the world? When do you realize a life has been extinguished?
We are individuals on this Earth, six billion strong, each possessing a life no more or less great than the any other. Yet over the past several thousand years, we have developed the ability to form connections to one another, connections in the form of families, communities, civilizations. With this ability, we transcend our individuality and spread intricate webs amongst one another.
And with that we have learned love and empathy. We have learned to care for individuals beyond the unconditional and to place another’s well-being before our own. We have become stronger and smarter by coming together and working together. As a species, we have conquered Earth by sharing.
Yet at the center of it all lies our individuality. At this very second, tens of thousands of people are waking up in the morning while thousands others slip into sleep. Several thousand more are eating breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Others are walking, driving, swimming, talking, listening, flying, sailing. Our hearts are beating, our minds are working, our bodies are living.
But everyone is thinking something different. Each individual has his own goals, ambitions and desires. No two individuals share the same set of memories, thoughts, and connections. No two individuals share the same life experience. And so, ultimately, despite the gains we achieve by coming together, we are still individuals, unique in every way.
It really is beautiful. 6.7 billion people on this Earth, yet each of them so starkly unique. Every single person has a story to tell, a picture to paint, a song to sing. Together, every individual heart beat adds to the symphony of human life.
And yet there exists individuals who purposefully extinguish the lives of others. To abruptly and meaninglessly end another’s song and story is beyond cruel. It is unforgivable.
I didn’t know Annie Le, but I now know her story. We all know her story. And as corny as it sounds, she will live on in our hearts. Her killer sought to end her existence, but he only amplified her beyond life. He sought to bury and hide her in the ceiling and in the walls, but he failed.
Tonight, in the light of a thousand flickering candles, Yale showed that Annie will not be forgotten. Her life was extinguished, but her memory will not. And so, her killer has failed.
I only wish that there was peace. What does it take to achieve that?
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What does it take to achieve peace? I don’t think there will ever be peace in this world. People have been killing each other since the beginning of time and nothing, really, has changed. As a matter of fact, I think there is more unrest in the world now than ever before.
It was so sad to hear about Annie Le.
=)
Peace starts with a smile, so keep on smiling, Tim.
the guy that did this must be one pitifully sick, twisted individual
also, i wouldn’t be surprised if the killer suffered from multiple mental ailments
i refuse to believe someone can be so genuinely evil
“And yet there exists individuals who purposefully extinguish the lives of others. To abruptly and meaninglessly end another’s song and story is beyond cruel. It is unforgivable.”
“We have become stronger and smarter by coming together and working together. As a species, we have conquered Earth by sharing. ”
Perhaps it is my pessimism spilling out, but overall, the general well fare of the human race has not particularly improved over the course of our history.
We gawk in amazement at magic tricks but the inner workings of our laptops, cars, or even a bicycle are deemed “too complicated” to be curious about. Things become taken for granted.
We fail to evolve spiritually, the world just changes from a natural world to a technological world, variables like A and B are replaced by alpha and beta, but the end equation remains the same.
How much spiritual guidance and self-improvement is based on the old philosophical teachings of old? Almost all, many of our “realizations” of life have been realized long ago. We think of the ancients as “prehistoric” but their mathematical skills and innovations with what they had and their ponderings of the world were far beyond the typical college student. It is just that in our modern society, the average persons knows some algebra or the like, interesting tidbits of information used to boast when all they are are blurtings of information anyone can repeat after a reading gained only through chance, used for no reason other than to belittle or boast.
People get stuck in the cycles of everyday life, failing to appreciate the wonder of the human mind in that it can constantly grow. We hope that things will get better in the future, and this “hope” is what drives us on. This isn’t the good type of hope though. It’s the hope that makes us think that by not trying we can preserve our integrity. It’s the hope that the winning lotto number is just around the corner and that all our problems will disappear.
We cannot hope to understand the stories of others. What is good and what is bad is completely relative. One situation can serve as evidence for two opposite and opposing beliefs. It all depends on what we see.
“One child is a tragedy, a million is a statistic”
Just as the killer is enveloped in uncontrollable emotion, we too are just as vulnerable. We look at things in wonder, horror, and disbelief, but that it all that the world is made up of. To think any other way sets the self up for failure. Long ago it was called hubris…or so lit. class says.
This is our world, our life. Each of use is the only consciousness we can prove exists, and each of us is the center of “our” world. The rest is subjective. Death is not the specter of the afterlife, the final test, the end of a journey, death shows its face in our from the very beginning. It is just as part of our lives as anything else. And when it comes so close so that you step back startled in surprise, the chill running down your spine, the world takes on a different hue.
We are always growing, spiritually, mentally, physically. (perhaps not the last) Why do some devote themselves to the perfection of life while others stumble downwards, drawing the gazes of scorn, disgust, hate, and contempt; and thus fall even farther? Do we not all have the same potential? Or is it the aspects of the individual, such as “perseverance” and “hard-work” that determine our fates? And what are those determined by? Culture? Enviroment? Genetics? We can look wherever we may, but the answer lies in a realm beyond our understanding. (or so we hope, perhaps one day the human brain can be mechanically developed…just to ask…would you oppose this, or would you be curious?)
When I was in middle and high school, I was considered above intelligence. I was rather scornful of many things. I was sarcastic and arrogant. I liked math and science, and scorned the artists, perhaps because I couldn’t draw worth a damn. In my late high-school days however…I found a joy in drawing, and discovered that the giants of science and math occupied a perch far beyond my wildest imaginations. Arrogance…at any level, is always unwarranted…
Arrogance that makes you feel that people should take their time to understand YOU. Arrogance that makes you feel that you can do whatever you want. Arrogance that makes you feel completely justified in whatever it is you want to do.
Life is full of surprises, the same surprises our ancestors, and our ancestors, and their ancestors had to face. Just with a modern twist, and a few newer evolutions just to confuse us.
My opinion is to try and understand. Not to simply place them aside as an outlier in an effort to hold to our ideology. (which should also change. the religions and beliefs that became strongest at certain times in history always suited the times. Christianity provided meaning for the peasants living oppressed lives, and the ring of Communism could not have been any sweeter than during that time where people were packed into factorys and slaved away for their bosses. Capitalism in itself is a morally flawed ideology, however, it does provide a much more radical environment where “serendipity” can happen. just imo btw. long quote…sry.)
I admire your optimism, it is something I envy. I feel that in almost all respects you surpass me. A comment by definition should deal with the topic at hand but perhaps I have used it as an excuse for my rantings…
Whatever the future may hold I hope that you remember the past…understanding and recall or two different things…doctors and lawyers who take their oaths, lose their morality over time…just as many of use do in our adherence to social norms on how we should live…school, university, marriage, job, children, retirement… whatever…
Also though, look to the future and keep a very open mind. Many things are not what they seem. Many seem far and distant, but in our relatively longs lives (from the perspective of a college student) we will no doubt face them… There and movies and books and stories we cannot appreciate now yet move elders to tears.
Life is poetic in a way. The virtue of Love does not exist without the sin of Hate. Our hearts break in the world of story, as does it as well in reality. I do not have an answer to the meaning of life, but in my humble opinion, there is no meaning, there is only belief.
What is your belief? This is not a question to be answered as it is far too profound and personal to be expressed in the imperfect method of expression known as language, lest it become dogma.
Tim…
Just keep swimming…
- a friend of Nemo
p.s. pardon the lack of coherence