Terrible Movies

There was a time when simply sitting in front of a screen to watch a movie rendered me speechless. Everything I saw on the screen was magical, and I loved every second of it. I don't have any memories of watching a truly terrible movie from when I was smaller. I guess it just comes with childhood.

Often times when I revisit a precious memory from my childhood I notice that it is significantly less charming the second time around. We visit our childish Narnia and find that the fields are smaller and itchier, the trees are less exciting, and the mythical battles which used to be so prevalent seem to have disappeared (This is by no means an insult to Narnia, a suggestion that Narnia is for children, or that adults would find Narnia to be lame. Narnia is a real place and if you're telling me that Narnia isn't real or that it's lame, then life is not worth living anymore....sorry, I had to do that, I'm very protective of C.S.Lewis.)
We can't spend time mourning the death of our childish viewpoint. Although the world looses a lot of its charm as we grow older, it also looses a lot of its fences. We learn as we grow that every single human who is born on this planet gets a chance to make their dreams a reality. Growing up gives us more freedom, and the journey for self-actualization is an exciting one! Although we learn that life can be cruel, we also learn that life can be exhilarating. Those childish lenses were a beautiful and glorious thing! But we can never return to a moment we have already lived. Every point in life is a new stage, and although wonderful things from the past have to die, their place will always be filled by new wonderful things.

I was reading something online a few days ago, and I found this photo which basically summarizes all knowledge in the universe.

This last category, the things that we don't know that we don't know is the single most motivating mystery on planet earth. These things cannot be comprehended. It is our job to find them, and bring them into one of the other categories. When I read this summary of human knowledge, I immediately associated it with stages of life.
We cannot predict what a new stage of life will bring, that's what makes them so terrifying. They are an unknown unknown. Some may argue that they should be a known unknown because we are aware of our own ignorance. However, I would like to suggest that they are an unknown unknown. Although we are aware of our ignorance, it is not the ignorance which brings us terror. It is what lies within the ignorance! It is the actual constancy of this next stage in life. If a terrible car accident will occur in a week from now, and it will leave you paralyzed from the waist down, there is no way that you can have knowledge of this event. It is an unknown unknown. An unknown unknown does not have to be some revolutionary concept like another dimension or a new element, in this case, the unknown unknown simply exists because of time.
We must continue onward, because this is the only way we can bring something that we cannot comprehend into something which we can quantify.
The unknown unknowns are the things which bring us terror, but once we have conquered them, they will also bring us power. Time is not our enemy, it is our puppet-master. whatever we are handed tomorrow, we will have to take without argument. It is simply the way that life as we know it exists.

Some people see the unknown unknowns of life and are paralyzed by them. But the way that I see it is this: if you cannot change what is going to happen to you tomorrow, why should you waste the known knows and the known unknowns of today worrying about the unknown unknowns of tomorrow?

By their very nature unknown unknowns are.....unknown. We cannot be angry about their nature any more than we can be angry about the sky being blue, or gravity holding us down! Enjoy today! Let tomorrow be tomorrow.

Jail the Fortune Tellers!

What would life be like if we could see the future?
Some people wish they could glimpse, just for a moment, their destiny, their path, and their fate.

Tonight I wish I could see what's going to happen.
I, along with others I'm sure, have a chronic case of worrying. Here I am, wide awake at 2:30am playing and replaying scenarios in my head. It doesn't matter that there are only two possible outcomes, just the anxiety over not knowing which will occur is causing me to lose sleep. I toss and turn, worrying and wondering, telling my brain to shut up, and fretting over each hour as it slips by.
It's a miserable way to spend a night. Obviously this problem is not logical, but worry defies logic.

So again, I come back to my original thought: What would life be like if we could see the end result?

Would this revelation put me at ease? Or would I learn things that I wouldn't want to know? Maybe I would see a heartbroken twenty-five year old, rejected from vet school, and forced to ask,
"What now?"
Maybe I would see a line of failed marriages, bitter children, and stress. Maybe I would see an elderly woman, stricken by the realization that for her, it's too late. Her life is coming to a close and despite that hot-headed teenager with big dreams and loud opinions, she has failed.

Some people do fail after all. In a way, the world needs failures, they make up a necessary statistic; so do cancer fatalities, suicides, and homelessness. But who, if they could look into their own future and see that they are fated to fail in their conquests, and loose sight of their dreams, would choose to live another day?

But then again, does the future even exist if we peer into it? Wouldn't I see my shortcomings before they had a chance to swallow me and avoid them altogether? Or maybe simply seeing the future would make it a reality. Like if I saw that in the end I would fail, I would give up completely. Live life as a bitter, useless wreck.

I, for one, despite how awesome a life free of unknowns and variables sounds, would rather lay awake worrying about menial problems than to see the outcome of my life.
I prefer to believe in my dreams, and stubbornly flip the bird to anyone who dares to tell me I won't make it. Even if that person is myself occasionally.
Seeing the future would take away the mystery in life, and I would rather preserve belief and hope, even if it means throwing in failure and heartbreak....
Who knew I was capable of such blind faith?

But for now....I would just settle for some sleep.