Sometimes I think my mind is like a study, and there are two characters in it always having a dialogue.  One is an elderly gentleman sitting completely composed in a grand armchair.  He's wearing an immaculately designed three-piece suit, has his legs crossed, and knows all the answers.  He is calm, cool, and collected. 

Then across from him is a man wearing a mismatched suit, frantically pacing around the room screaming "We must live! We must live!"  He is always nervous and running his hands through his hair, leaving the entire thing a collosal mess.  His emphatic hand gestures do the most to communicate his meaning as he screams, "What are all these books? Who cares? We were put into the world to live ourselves, not just read and read the dead words of others!"

Normally the dignified man has a slight grin on his face as a reaction to the antics of the frantic man.  Every now and then he'll throw in the occasional comment as he keeps his fingertips pressed together, "Interesting to hear someone to decry the value of words with a perfectly formed English sentence." 

While it does feel like these two characters are there, it also seems like I must not actually be them if I can talk about them like they are distinct from me.  Am I not on the scene as a third party?  Perhaps I am in-between them, listening to them, trying to counsel the two into some kind of agreement; but unfortunately the two speak different languages, and there is no middle ground between the different universes.

There's that image, or there's the angry parliament version, where after one thought there always comes a roar of dissent and commotion from the surrounding commentators.  And that is the dignified version of the image of my mind as a fight in a bar where different thoughts vie for prominance in a sort of senseless melee.   In those cases I would be the prime minister trying to bring the house to order, or the bartender trying to stop men who are much bigger than me from fighting.

This captures one thing that seems true about our thoughts and living life as a mind: in one sense it seems like our thoughts just happen to us, but in another sense we are there to choose what to do about our thoughts, which ones to listen to, which ones to get rid of.  We are the arbiter between warring factions in a way. 

And if life really is one long dialogue between hope and despair, I think one key result of this realization is to make sure we do not give despair too much air time.  All day long, good things happen, and bad things happen, and it goes back and forth, back and forth.  We are up, we are down; maybe reality will work out after all, oh, but then again, maybe it will not. 

And of course, sometimes it seems like a bad thing happens that has some sort of deadweight, and we are not allowed to be happy anymore.  Despair is being given air time.  It becomes the theme of life; depression settles in.  But maybe, if we really are this central arbiter, we should be much less patient with this nagging hobgoblin, and try to get him to sit down and shutup a bit more often.  I'm sorry, would the representative from Northtownshire please take his seat, his time is up. 

Why not find an opportuniy for a joke, or find someone in need of help, or find the people who are singing to that silent symphony of joy that some people seem to have secretly discovered, and try to pick up the tune.  For despair is a part of life, but if Resurrection really is the wider narrative of the universe, then certainly we ought to go after it with all our might.  Hope and despair dialogue back and forth; what if hope is right?  If we are just in life to see how we will react to it, shouldn't that be who we listen to? 

So as for now .  . .  I'll watch the glint in my eye shine of the spring in my step, and it could be blinding depending on the amount of You that I reflect!

We must not in pursuing the truth leave the life that made us need to find it.

Of two people who posses equal knowledge, the arrogant one will be called the intellectual.

Honesty means being inconsistent, because none of us are smart enough to figure it all out.

There are so many things I want to know what it is like to do.  And there are so many of them I would need another life to do them.  But then if I lived two lives, I would never know what it was like to only live once. 

Sometimes you're the fragile soul, sometimes you're the broken piece of earth.

Everything you say is a subtle argument for your assumptions.

Sometimes I confuse not being in situations where I would need to be sanctified with being already sanctified. 

Fiction is what people write that is intentionally not true, and everyone pays attention to it; philosophy is what people write intentionally to be true, and no one pays attention to it.

There is much studying to do today.  And with that, I am off.  A wonderful day to you all.

Yesterday I was in a bookstore flipping through a book when a scene unfolded right next to me.

With the determined nature of a Napoleon or a Caesar, a young girl stepped into the aisle perpendicular to mine and declared, "So I can buy this one book with this one dollar."  As she mentioned each item she held it up in the air, one in each hand.  She had blonde hair and was perhaps five years old.  Nevertheless, the resoluteness of her edict gave away her status as the empress of many lands.

But it was not to be.  Like rain suddenly invading a sunny day, her agitated mother came out of the background and said sternly, "No, that's not a dollar, that's a penny.  There's a big difference.  We'll talk about this later."  And with that, she whisped away the empress to another part of the store.

I stood in the aisle reflecting on how funny what had just happened was.  Then I drifted into imagining being the father of a child like that someday.  I would sigh heavily and then beckon the child to my knee and begin to give The Talk.  "Actually, Sarah, it's not actually true that the shinier an object, the more valuable it is.  I know it seems that way, I know, but it's not . . ."

As the day went on, the absurd image of the girl holding up a penny and saying emphatically "this dollar for this book" stayed emblazoned in my mind.  It reminded me of a CS Lewis passage about how some of our questions must sound like nonsense to God.  The image seemed to express exactly that.  In so many cases it must seem to God like we stand up unabashedly, hold up the items in our hands, and definitively assert the most ridiculous value equations.  "This charity work for this salvation"  "This extra kindness to Katie for this freebie in lying to Eric"  "This devotional time for this emotional peace from You" 

We are all quite poor students at theological math.  But what is so comforting about following Jesus is noticing how many times he listened to people say the most ridiculous things ("Can we sit next to you in heaven?" "We told a guy driving out demons in your name to stop" "Who will be the greatest in heaven?"), and how he didn't get upset about it.  Thus, while we may be very feeble learners, God is at least a very patient teacher. 

Let's say you are counting your hands.  So you count your left hand first.  That means your other hand is the only one that's left.  But if your other hand is the only one that's left, then you actually don't have the first hand you counted.  And after you count your other hand (the only one that's left) there's nothing left to count, but if you have nothing left to count that means you actually have no hands.  Moral of the story: always start with counting your right hand.  (Person listening responds: "Right.") 

When I am eating steak I pretend that the cow did something really bad in life, and that way there is some justice about the situation.  But then sometimes halfway through the meal I realize the cow was falsely convicted, and I become a vegetarian.

"'Damsel' is a rather fitting word," I said as I had the thought.
"Because it has 'Dam' in it?" she responded instantly.
"Yes," I concurred, "Then the knight can express that he is frustrated at the same time he declares he is going to save the girl.  'What? Gloria is trapped in the alligator pit again? Damsel!'"

Today I pulled up to a stoplight and glanced at the person next to me, and then I thought about how I always do that.  Why though?  It's just so mindless.  Stop.  Glance.  Look back. Green light.  Drive.  What's that all about?  I feel like I should have some sort of rationalization. "Ah, so there's a human driving that car too.  It's confirmed then.  Still no robots driving cars yet.  Maybe at the next light." 

I have always wanted to live in a house-sized castle when I grow up, and this will actually work out quite well for my wedding, because then right after we put on the rings we can be crowned king and queen. 

You know, it's a really good thing there are cell phones, because otherwise there would be no convenient way to ignore people who are sitting right in front of you.

Have you ever been around someone who is laughing, and then when they finally stop laughing they say "That's funny"?  Sometimes I wonder if these people secretly think the people around them are aliens, and they are trying to explain what laughing means.  And then I start liking those people more, because that means they are trying to be helpful, and I like helpful people.

Built a huge snowfort today, and then I had a huge snowfight with the little bro.  I would start in the fort and yell "I am Catan!!!" and he would roar from the field "Here come the barbians!" and then he would start a war cry and I would war cry back, and then we would start the battle. 

(If you don't get it . . you should start playing some Settlers of Catan!)

It was an epic day, and I will remember for a long time to come.  I hope you are all enjoying the snow too!  (Perhaps even by being happier to stay inside with some hot cocoa!) 

Goodnight to all! 

"Hi" came a small voice from the other side of the large desk.  I leaned toweringly over it and saw a small person standing there with large, innocent cartoon-like eyes starting back at me.

"Yesss?" I prompted inquisitively.

"Hello. I am your inner child. I am here to ask why you aren't very silly anymore."

"Eh, beat it kid," I said without amusement. "I got work to do."

"How could you say that to your inner child?" the small boy said, his eyes swelling and water noticeably forming at their lower ridges.

"Well I don't really believe you're my inner child since I don't think I have an inner child," I condescended to say. "Besides," I went on hesitantly, "if you're my inner child, how come you're outside me? Eh, how about that."

"Rather silly, isn't it sir!" the child beamed in reply.  "You should conform most to the silly things you see in life.  That's what's fun to do."

"Kid, I'm swimming in a pile of undone filing reports." 

"Did you have to take swimming lessons to learn to do that?" 

I lowered the paper that had been centimeters from my face and glared at the kid, considering that I would have laughed at that joke ten years ago.  What a long time it had been since those days.

"You know," I came to say with a sigh, "that's a little bit funny.  But I'm thirty now, and that's not funny anymore."

"I don't know much about numbers," the child admitted sadly, "do they get more powerful when they are bigger? So that they don't let you laugh at things anymore?"

"Something like that," I responded, distracted again.

"Hmmm," the child let out, a touch sarcastically, "I thought that one was the strongest number."

"Yeah," I admitted, thinking of college football, which was a very important matter, "Well who's coming up with these rules?"

"Someone must be," the child replied, grinning. 

"Look kid, what do you want?" I barked, agitated. "Like I said, I have a lot of work to do."

"I want you to stop sinning."

"Sinning? How am I sinning?" I yelled infuriated.

"The Bible says adultery is a sin."

"Adultery? What on earth do you mean, how am I committing adultery? I'm not even married!"

"Adultery: the sin of becoming an adult," the small boy asserted with extreme gravitas. "It's right there in the Bible." 

My eyelids drooped down low at this very ridiculous comment.  Realizing that arguing with the kid was not going to work, I stooped to his level and slowly sighed the question, "Ok kid, what do you want me to do?"

"Why, there are all kinds of things to do!  Look around you.  It's a beautifully snowy day outside, let's go build an igloo! We could invent a word and tell people what it means so they can start using it.  Invent a boardgame, for heaven's sakes!  Challenge people on the street to play rock-paper-scissors!"

A moment of silence went by.

"The possibilities are endless!" he emphasized.  "When was it that you started believing seriousness was such a good thing in humans!  For all you care, you could just sit there and imagine having a conversation with your inner child."

At this comment I snapped back to reality at my office, suddenly realizing I was sitting quietly at my desk, as I glanced at the empty room around me.

Way drunk on people, life, and words and phrases that don't make sense.  And perhaps a little too much coffee.

Because you know coffee does things to you.  They should probably overregulate it until we all become communists, and then world history can be blamed on caffeine, which it probably should be anyways.  What war wasn't declared because the brew was a little too strong that morning?  I have graphed it, and the cruelty and frequency of wars actually correlates very nicely with coffee production in Europe and parts of Asia that have never been discovered.

Another thing you'd think people would have figured out by now are commercials.  I mean, they are just trying to get us to buy stuff.  It's so obvious.  But I have figured them out.  Now I always look for premises and conclusions in the commercial, but they never have them so I am never convinced.  Unless there is a really hot girl in the commercial, then I am hooked and I buy it everytime.  I cannot tell you how much women's shampoo I own.  Hot girls are always good arguments to a guy. 

Why is everyone always making fun of 'Cold, boring philosophy' because it kills all the mystery in life?  Grow up, John Keats.  If philosophy is so alone and cold, maybe you should invite it in for some hot chocolate, warm up together by the fire, and then you could be the very best of friends with your new dazzling companion, who you find to be full of a vigorous humor and a tremendous energy about all things lovable and good.

Logic is really quite a drunken companion in life, even though people think he is such a stringent and unbudging curmudgeon.  But no, really he is wild.  Because he can take anything you see and then connect it with something else you saw way back when, and combine them to make a whole new creature of a conclusion!  But then that conclusion gets with another conclusion from the day before, and they make wild, raucous love all over the bar.  Yes, your friend logic really leads to some crazy nights, where all of a sudden balloons are floating out of holes in the ground to make the entire sky be filled with them, until you notice that they are all forming the picture of a circus, which you find quite ironic.

Speaking of which, one time a friend of mine used the word 'falsity', and later on another guy pointed out quite pretentiously, 'And to set the record straight, 'falsity' is not a word'.  It took us awhile and a trip to the dictionary to find out the falsity of his accusation.

The fallacy of most people is that they do not think about outer space enough.  Really there are important questions out there: what does the moon spend most of its time thinking about?  Are sandwiches more of a melancholic or joyful food?  (Did you know meat could expire? I ate a sandwich last night with expired meat, which I didn't know could happen. That might be a part of all this.) 

Expiration dates are probably shams meant to keep capitalism going.  Shame on all of us for believing them.  (And it didn't even take a hot girl to convince me.)  But people shouldn't be worried about capitalism, because capitalism will always be alive as long as people are using playing cards.  Why?  Because humans will ALWAYS lose playing cards, and need to buy more packs.  That is what keeps the playing card industry alive.  It is our finite intellects which propels it forever onward.

It is really our finite intellects which make life so interesting, because it means we have to figure everything out.  I passed by a parking lot earlier where one car had its trunk open and I thought, "IS IT A DRUG DEAL?"  Humans want to find explanations for things, which is why some people think the black death was caused by meteor showers that dropped the disease all over Europe.  Those people are idiots, but they are good for showing that humans like to find explanations for things, so let's keep them.

The other day this guy said, 'I bought these headphones for $100, and they block everything out perfectly.'  But he is crazy, because I play songs in my brain that block everything else out perfectly, and my brain was free.  Although that led me to think that my brain wasn't technically free, because my mother had to grow me inside of her, and she had to eat food to do it.  So my brain is actually worth a fraction of the food that my mom ate while pregnant.  I wonder how much money I took to grow.

Narcissism in me is a perfection, but in everyone else it is a flaw.  You know, I think it is interesting that we cannot see our own faces unless we have a mirror, and I have always wanted to write a story about a man who never saw his own face, and it would go on to emphasize—in quite a profound fashion—just how much we are capable of focusing on other people instead of ourselves.  But I never wrote it, and then I died. 

By the way if you are wondering what the point is to all this, you can now think a very intersting thing, which is that humans like there to be points to things.  But if you like there to be points to things, you should think about your whole life and wonder if there is a point to it.  Because my friend and I were talking earlier about how believing in God is basically believing that life is a story.  If God's not there, there's no story.  We just kind of 'here', and there's nothing to actually do.  So if you think that life is something like a story, then you have good evidence that God exists. 

Otherwise, if not a story, life is most like a dream—a nonsensical reality, temporally present, unremembered once over.

But back to business!  Although there are people who think that life actually is a dream.  Man, I've always wanted life to be a dream.  That would be a dream come true.  And other people have weird views, like psychologists.  They think life is a like a video game where you go through stages, and in order to win the game you have to successfully pass each stage.  Some stages happen when we are very young, and if you don't win them you screw up the whole game.  So I actually don't know if I can still win at this point, but I think getting all nervous about whether or not I won those stages is failing at some other stage, so I had better just stop worrying about it and move on.

Being single is awesome because you get to have fun with everybody.  But recently I got afraid that one day I would look around me and everyone would be married and I would be like, 'Oh crap.'  I guess life is like a school assignment and we were all supposed to partner up.  But that is okay, because I have a plan: I will go to the beach and make sandcastles everyday.  I've always felt like my sandcastle creativity was compromised by family members anyways.  Then again it is good to do things as a team.  So what I will do instead is let all the little kids who always ask to join in help out, and we will build a ginormous castle, and then I will get out the pirate boats and soldiers I brought along as a surprise, and we will have an epic battle for the ages.  Certainly the sun will set, and the tide will rise, but that day will live in our hearts forever.

If life is a dance floor (and it is), then sometimes there is a fast song playing and sometimes there is a slow song playing.  There are a lot of gray skies in Ohio, and lots of times it is a slow song, and the days tick, tick, tick, all day, and I eat lots of sandwiches, though I'm not sure if I'm supposed to.  But then other nights the music gets really really fast and I am with friends and if I think it I say it, and we laugh and laugh, and we are glad we are alive. 

Sometimes friendship is a spaceship and you can explore the entire universe together.  Other friendships you try to build that technology, but they speak another language, and you never even get to automobiles, much less to space race technology.  Ah, but how I love a good spaceship friend!

My friend Mike Bob once said to me, "You sure do have a high sugar intake" and I said, "What can I say, I am a friendly person. If I see sugar out on the street, I will take it in."  

There was a lot of sugar on the streets tonight, my friends.  Maybe it is not healthy to not be crazy when we live in a crazy world, and you should be taking copious notes on all this.  Sure society has a stranglehold on all our lives, but just think of all the sandcastles we could make!  Besides, society is as logicless as the hot girl in the ad.  We could launch off into outer space in spaceships and live off sandwiches, while never knowing what that meant.  Our friend philosophy could make nebulae shine all the brighter, while logic made galaxies collide against their will!  And we would think it was a great story, but then maybe we would wake up at the end and realize that it was all just a dream brought on by too much coffee.