Recently I've been thinking a lot about the journey I've made to get to where I am today. Lots of things have happened to me along the way (most of the things that have happened to me have been my fault. We create a lot of our own problems, I think), and with every conflict I have changed somehow. My thought patterns and ways in which I interact with the world have evolved, have shifted somehow.

I like to think of my life as in constant flux, never settled, never finished, always striving for change and more. That being said, it's not easy. I have changed a lot in my particular worldview a lot over the past few years especially, and I wonder if everyone goes through the same things I am or if I just think too much.

Putting it more directly, I wonder if everyone goes through many different evolutions of thinking about life. I know I personally have gone through the phases of realism, romanticism, modernism, and now I feel like I'm stepping out into post-modernism. What's next, I do not know. Does everyone go through life like that?

I feel like maybe in order to fully grow up and mature we have to go through many stages of thought which eventually bring us into the modern thought of our particular culture. For me, I trekked through fideism for years eventually leading me to the pinnacle in which I thought my particular beliefs should be impressed upon others, and I eventually lost my footing and got lost in relativism for a while. I'm starting to pick through the relativistic rubble and salvage it all, but for a while it was weird.

What do you think? Does everyone have to go through the pain of evolution of thought in order to reach contemporary or are some people born post-modern? Do some people never reach the end and just settle into some outdated model of thought? Where are we going next? I suppose only time will tell, but regardless I'm sure it will be fun to look back on posts like this in ten years and see how stupid I used to be.

Random things I've been thinking about....

Recently, in my Harry Potter book, Harry talks about looking up in a house and seeing a bewitched ceiling that looked like a beautiful night sky, shooting stars and all. Would its beauty be belittled simply because he knew it wasn't real? What if we were to realize that this reality isn't real? Would it belittle the beauty of what surrounds us knowing that it isn't the true reality?

I feel like seeking enlightenment is very selfish. Sure, one can meditate for their entire lives and perhaps glimpse the reality of life, but would your life have been better served moving to Africa and helping orphans of AIDS virus?

I feel like so much of life is what we make it to be. If we're looking for racism in our everyday life, we'll find racism. If we're looking for God's voice in life, we'll hear God's voice. Your mentality towards the situations you encounter has so much to do with how you encounter your situations. Oh goodness. I sound so post modern it scares me.

I've been struggling with the character of Jesus Christ lately. Christianity is the only faith, to my knowledge, that claims to have an absolute grip on the afterlife ("no one comes to the father except through me"). So, logically it would make sense to be a Christian. If you're wrong, you get another chance. If you're right, you go to Heaven. Is there another religion that stakes its entire claim on a man that walked around on this planet as God? It just seems interesting to me.

Here at home I'm an echo chamber. I have lots of things that I think about and nobody to rebound my thoughts on and have conversation. I'm isolated. Often times before I have time to put my thoughts onto my blog, I forget about them or dismiss them as childish and stupid.

Yesterday I was on my daily bike ride. When I was looking around at the houses in my new town (I recently moved into the deep ozarks of MO), I realized how poverty stricken my town is. Here I am riding a $1k bike with my iPod strapped to my arm through this poor community, and I feel like I don't appreciate, or even deserve, anything that I have. This makes me appreciate everything even more, knowing that I don't deserve it. I stood up on my bike and rode it up a grueling hill harder than I thought I could just to prove myself worthy of this equipment I own. It all sounds kinda stupid, but I felt terrible. It's really late, so I'm probably not making any sense.