On Tangentialism

A number of weeks ago, i walked into latin class.
I forget what i did, but it was something in accordance with my usual style of going about things, which is "out of the ordinary" for most people.
My latin teacher looked at me and said, "Peter, your life really is just a tangent."
I laughed, looked around, and heartily agreed.
Then i sat down and thought about what that meant.

From geometry and trigonometry, we say that a line is Tangent to a curve if it is perpendicular to that curve and sharing a single point with it.
The classic example being: you have a circle, and you draw a line next to and touching the edge of the circle.
That line shares a single point with the circle.
If you were to follow that line, you would realize that it quickly goes away from the shape. The only time the line is actually near the circle is where it's right next to it.
Everywhere else, it's just another line.

I'd like to think that the world would be a much more interesting place if everyone lived their lives like "tangents" to the world around them.
If we could all learn not to take ourselves seriously.
If we could all understand that the world is impermanent.
If we could all realize that what we do here doesn't mean hardly anything in the long scheme of 'history'.

I think that's how Christ would have us think of our lives.
You have the world, caught up in all of itself.
And then you have Eternity.
Eternity has almost nothing to do with the world.
It's this line that briefly, for a single point, is connected with it.
And that single point is all the time we have to do everything we're here to do.
As soon as the line moves on, we're gone from here, on to bigger and better things.

Jesus said, "my kingdom is not of this world."
And so, i believe, neither should our lives.
But we're here now, and we have work to do.

On Changing

As i was sitting in my room tonight i started thinking about all of the junk that has accumulated in it over the years.
I currently live my life without much interaction with my room; I come home, sleep, do homework, and that's about it.
But i have various trinkets that at one time were interesting or "cool", books galore which are mostly unread, and mounds of dust.
None of this gets any attention on a day to day basis.
My eyes fell on my Somersworth High School Class of 2006 yearbook.
Freshman year.
As I flipped though i realized that i barely knew anyone in it.
Now, this makes perfect sense because i only spent one year there and wasn't social at all. But it troubled me in a more-than-on-the-surface sort of way.
Here were all these people that I never had a chance to have an impact on. Here were all these people who i never got to get to know, be friends with, or be part of.
And then there were the people i actually recognized.
Kids i had classes with, other freshmen.
The most obvious thing is how much everyone looks like children.
You look at pictures on facebook of people you haven't seen in 3 years, and they look completely different. Towards the end of the pictures was my photo.
I laughed and cried.
I had no idea that they were taking school pictures on the day they did.
As such i wore an ugly black polo. and my hair looks rather awkward.
And i look so young.
I dug up my freshman id card so i could have a juxtaposition for you:



There is a marked difference.

Then my thoughts turned to all the people on facebook with "somersworth highschool" as their network.
I guess you could say that there's some "buyers remorse" from me not staying at somersworth. There are kids that i can barely remember the names of who i wish i could have gotten to know. It's like this intense feeling of failure.
Sure, i might have a better chance of getting into college now.
But what about the people?

Approaching the far edge of highschool has me thinking about how much i've changed in the past 3.5 years. And it has me thinking about how much everyone else has changed as well.
A lot of the time, we change with our surroundings.
Easy example: You notice when one of your friends gets a haircut.
You don't notice when, every day, their hair gets micrometers longer, because you get used to the hair growing out. Your perception of their hair changes ever so slowly with the passing of time.

So i can say that i've 'grown up' with my friends at berwick; i've known them for the past 3 years, most of them much longer, and i've grown with them. We've impacted each other, shaped each other's personalities and thoughts, what we think is funny. We've created inside jokes, not payed attention in any math class of any sort, and still manage to survive.
This is a good feeling.

However, much worse feeling is how much i've missed all those people i've had just glancing friendships with.
This question keeps me up at night, seriously: What about the people who I could have been friends with?
I have forever missed the chance to be a part of their time growing up.
I can't start inside jokes with them, can't not learn precalc with them, and i will never see almost all of them ever again.

It's just another thought in the infinitely useful mantra: "Life is complicated. Living is simple."

On Accidents, or lack thereof

With the new semester starting this past week, i got a new course in my senior schedule: Humanities.
This class isn't "humanities" in the traditional sense. It's not a history class, or even much of an english class. It's more of a religion and philosophy course, covering all the bases but starting with a focus on eastern religion.

As such, this week we started reading the short novel Siddhartha, which is about a young Hindu who goes out into the world to seek "truth".
Anyway, in reading this book our teacher has tried to explain some of Hinduism to us. The main picture that i'm walking away with is that hinduism is inherently enormous in the complexity of beliefs. But there are some key concepts that i find very interesting that Hindus and other easterners take to heart.
One that caugt me unprepared was this: There are No Accidents.

Sure, events can happen that aren't intended.
But someone is always responsible. It is related to the concept of Karma.

I for some reason was on Miley Cirus' wikipedia article over the weekend, and i was thinking about the kind of persona that "stars" have, and the sort of idle time-wasting connotations that are associated with them.
Thanks to the media, we have this idea, and i'm sure it's usually correct, that when people in the entertainment industry aren't earning big bucks, they're out partying all night.

On Monday, my Latin teacher brought ancient Rome into modernity. We are translating parts of the Satyricon, the first novel written. He noted how back then, as in modern times, the wives of famous people didn't have much to do. Sure, they'd sit around, give press releases, and donate money to charity.
But there wasn't much else to do.
So they started these sort of cult clubs.
All the wives of famous politicians and generals would hang out together and have this massive party consisting very much of drinking and debauchery. But they had elaborate cover-up schemes: they were "actually" devotions to different roman gods and godesses. Men weren't allowed around, so no one ever knew. They just thought that their wives were paying respects and devotion to their gods. But in reality they were partying it up.

In our world, nothing is a secret to consumers thanks to the media.
We know which celebrities hang out together, who's dating whom, who's planning on dating whom, who just broke up with whom, and all this stuff.
And then every now and then a celrbtiy will post an apology, either official or unofficial, or in the form of a song, for something that they did. Like when Miley Cirus had her photoshoot that wasn't exactly what parents would want their middle school kids aspiring to.
But here's the point: no celebrity, or celebrity's wife, ever has any valid excuse. There are no accidents in that industry. Stars get out of jail sentences all the time because they can afford good lawyers. But the united states legal system is one of the worst judges of character in this country.
When famous people do drugs and waste their lives, or pay innordinate ammounts of money for religious safegaurd, yes, we can blame them, because no, it's not an accident.

Here's a great quote from Paul in Galations 1:10:
"Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ."

You think about celebrities, and you realize that their entire fortune is centered around making consumers happy. Entertainment is, by defenition, the business of making men (people) happy. They give us what we want to see and hear, and in exchange we give them money and allow them to live their prolific lives.
Then we sit here and complain about how rich people get away with everything and do whatever they want, but keep out of sight the concept that entertainment wouldn't exist if people didn't pay for it. But that's a different story.

Here's the point.
Paul wouldn't have made a good movie actor.
At least, not a successful one.
He wasn't at all interested in satisfying people; all he lived to do was spread God's word and bring all men the truth.
When people didn't like what he had to say, it was tough luck for their hard headedness.
And nothing he did was an accident.