Tangled in the Twine

It's been more than a long time since the last philosophical post, yet seeing as the bulk of my readership has been reduced to ignorant hecklers, where's the incentive? I've always said, this is not a journal, nor will it become such. But, in order to address the larger issues that I'm sure a lot of us face, sometimes you just have to talk. Drastic changes in mindset have probably occurred since the last time I've tickled your intellectual fancies, but I've remained the same cynical person throughout it all. I've grown and regressed, matured and reversed, and have surprisingly few concrete thoughts on anything. I'll tell you one thing, not knowing why is possibly the greatest blessing to ever curse us.

Most nights, and select days, are spent contemplating the intangibles of teenage life (pizza not included) with very little to show. Scant progress is perhaps most abundant, but there are occasional breakthroughs, rare epiphanies, and all too uncommon revelations that force our cognitive wheels to keep on revving. And while it's not my place to provide any of you with concrete examples as to what the hell I'm actually talking about, it is my place to guide you in the right direction. Recognizing that we have the ability to think, to decipher, to unravel the ropes in which we've bound ourselves should be reason enough for celebration. We know that life's difficult. We know that we may have it better than others. We know that some may have it worse than us. But through it all we know that we know. We know what we can do, and for some inexplicable reason, we haven't the slightest. But is that not the most glorious news we've ever received? Our ability to smile in spite of the anger that chokes us, the ignorance that stifles us, and the regrettable fools who just can't understand, leaves us with abilities that can't be measured. We control what we want. We control what we know - we learn what we don't. We have power, whether we like it or not.

Sometimes it seems that the power to wield honesty is the most dangerous. We cross the lines of good intentions and enter vicious territory. We say too much, think too little. We think too much, say too little. But for some inherent reason, we can never learn the proper equation without failing in our attempts. We've reached life when we speak with clarity and think with force. Oddly enough, the simplicity of such problems has proven incredibly deceptive. How many of us have actually lived? I suppose that's left unsaid. Yet when we've reached life, is it better to share, or horde? Does life flourish while only in the confines of our minds?

Or are we living through smiles in spite of it all.