Saturday, May 14, 2005
What a way to disillusion yourself!!
First I watched Hotel Rwanda which brought tears to my eyes. It also renewed my disillusionment with the state of the world and the decadence of western culture. It also renewed my curiousity in joining the Peace Corps and being able to just run off into the world that way after I eventually graduate.
Then I found a page full of liberal comics that were humourous to me, however I'd caution anyone who is conservative, supports Bush, or is content in their lifestyle of ignorance to the world's problems, that they'd probably not much like the comics.
Then an online friend IMs me to announce that at prom last night she gave a random guy a blowjob and got doped up on speed and large quantities of marijuana. I'm sure any regular readers or people that know me know my thoughts on drugs (anti-decadent, pro-entheogenic) and can understand that my thoughts of her story were not exactly supportive. However, despite my distaste, I commenced my investigation only to discover that the majority of people do go decadent on that night. I had always supposed it was only a minority and that the bulk of the people were decent.
I described to some of my sources my own prom story:
I wore a suit I already owned and my mom made the flower things by hand. I got a ride with a friend in his van and the same friend even covered my dinner at his parent's country club. I even got the ticket for free because I was a senior. I didn't even have a date. One of the few "wild" acts that I was involved in was that myself and Kenneth insisted that Matt, who was driving, pull over at a gas station so that we could purchase a deck of cards to try to assuage the inevitable boredom at the dance. At the dance itself, I didn't even play the cards. I walked around, ate some food, and spent large amounts of time in observation of girls I was attracted to in their expensive dresses. The second "wild" act I did was to go up and talk to one girl that I'd been observing from a distance at school for a while (termed by my friends "stalking). I got a few lines of dialogue in before she disappeared and did not come back. The third "wild" thing I did was to get a ride back sitting on the floor of a limo that another set of my friends had rented. At their after-prom "party", I ate chips, watched them play videogames on the computer, and basically got so bored that I nearly fell asleep on the floor.When I asked her about it, Dani told me "its not depravity...just a rite of passage". That makes me think back to the various conversations I've had in the past few years, even at BYU, about somehow getting left behind. I feel like at some point I was on the same vibration as everyone else but at some point, probably as early as middle school, I got off the train and missed some key development stages and rites of passage. I'm not even sure that I can see the train anymore to even know if I want to go where it is and unfortunately this metaphor fails because, even though I call it a train, there are no tracks to follow.
After relating my story to her, Eve, the one that told the initial story, commented "now i understand why you're so bitter you have a shitty and boring life". That made me think of a recent conversation I had with my mother. She told me that I should take time off of school to just go out into the world and figure out what I want and/or that I should take a big trip across the world and just forget about the responsabilities that have been crushing me for a while. Unfortunately, I do not feel like I can do that. There are still too many chains with debts and schooling and other commitments that need to be taken care of. And although I would not call others chains, I do have other responsabilities like my wonderful little animals who I adore.
I'll still hold onto my belief that through my plans and schemes which forever dominate my life, that at some point I'll conquer my chains and be free to just live. Despite this faith in perseverance, I have to wonder, how do so many other people already do it without the struggle?
I'm going to watch Baraka now... maybe it'll make me feel better.