Anthony Jr. 🍝

 Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away.

    How do people continue forward, every single day of their lives? How are we meant to continue pushing, on and on, despite there being no end in sight? The more I think of it, the more it hurts my head. I long for rest, deep in my soul.

    Life is brutal. Every single day, we wake up, we move, then we sleep. Over and over again. We run around in circles, slowly accomplishing nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not one thing we do in this lifetime, will stand against the test of time. Yet we’re expected to move forward, anyways. I suppose I’m just being a downer. Seriously tho, it doesn’t make much sense. We spend our days, filling it up with meaningless tasks, in order to keep ourselves busy. Perhaps thats the key that I’ve been missing. Perhaps, I’ve simply found too much time to sit and think about it. Maybe the secret is to simply keep on moving your feet, so fast, that you don’t have time to sit and think- about anything.

    I watched The Sopranos last night. I’ve been working on chipping away at the series now for a little while. Overall, I’ve enjoyed it. There were some parts that rang true to me, and others that, well, missed the mark. Regardless, it’s been a solid series, probably one of the better ones I’ve ever consumed. The episode I watched last night was with Tony’s son, AJ. He tried to kill himself. He continues to walk around, with a cloud over his head, talking about how nothing made sense. He would speak to his therapist, saying how fucked up things were. The more knowledge he learned, the less meaning he found in life. I related to his struggle. Then he tried to kill himself.

    Depression is a serious epidemic that we as a society currently face. Especially, here in the West. I believe that it is a side-effect of over-exposure to certain elements. I saw a graph yesterday, showing suicide rates amongst teenagers and it was pretty wild. In 1994, the trend all of a sudden completely dropped off, and suicide reached some of its lowest points in its recorded history. My theory is that the internet become more accessible for people across North America, and the world. This helped individuals, who were perhaps lonely and isolated, to reach out and connect with other people, giving them a sense of belonging. However, after the introduction, the trend slowly started to climb back up. All the way, to modern day. The modern day graph showed a drastic increase, way past the previous levels of 1994. 

    The sharp increase can only be explained, in my opinion, as over-exposure. The internet and social network started off as a great thing, for humanity to connect with others and reach out, all around the world. Now a days, however, we are connect ed 24/7. We have become enslaved to the very system which was meant to liberate us. We have fallen into a trap, where we spend most of our days, staring at a screen. Whether that be from work, to our time alone, to even out in public- technology has gotten a real choke hold upon us. I truly believe that it will be the death of us all, within a matter of time. 

    David Bowie has a great song I listened to yesterday while working out. It’s called Starman and it’s an absolute banger. The reason why it stood out to me so much- yesterday, while I was grinding away on my stationary bike- was because of the lyrics. There’s a starman, waiting in the sky, he wants to come and meet us but he’s afraid he’ll blow our minds. Something like that, don’t quote me. The reason why this vibrated with me, is because of the last line. He’s afraid he’ll blow our minds. Literally. Blow our minds. Boom.

    The human mind is a modern day miracle, without a question. To be honest, it’s probably our greatest link to God himself. The fact that we, a bunch of organic beings, are able to think and speak is fascinating. However, like all things- we have limits. We have a ceiling, and a floor. What worries me, is that sometimes our ceilings are much closer to us than we realize. Much like a muscle, working out your brain regularly is needed in order for it to grow. In order to better understand and discover knowledge, you must be able to lift and let go of ideas and thoughts- much like lifting weights. However, like your muscles, there are limits to ones own strength. The mind can only stretch so far, before completely losing itself.

    Knowledge is power, that much we have known for years now. The secret is out, yet most do not care for it anyways. The one part of the secret, which I believe nobody tells you, is that Power requires Strength, in order to wield it. Power without Strength, corrupts the mind. It collapses ones spirit, and keeps them depressed and broken as an individual. However, with strength, one can find the ability to wield power with better success. The ability to withstand so much knowledge, so much power, and still find a reason to wake up and perform the mundane. It truly is all about Power and Strength- Yin and Yang- when you really think about it.

    We as humans are only meant to wrestle with so much information. Our brains- much like computers- can only store so much. Once we reach out ceiling, we tend to breakdown and malfunction. We reach maximum occupancy, within our heads, and we collapse under the weight of knowledge. The truth becomes heavier than anything we can ever imagine. If there truly were a starman, waiting in the sky, he would most probably blow our minds. Much like the internet. Much like depression. Too much of one thing, leading to our downfall. I can’t help but shake the idea that the internet has given us too much power- too much knowledge. Sometimes too much of something can be the destruction of something else. 

"We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent -

people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save" - Erich Fromm

        Glory Be,

                    Amen.