Sickness, as in Health

UGH!

In Space(time) and Einstein today, we saw a patronizing National Geographic video in which black holes and quasars were sensationalized with a John Williams soundtrack. There was one section where in a matter of thirty seconds, Andromeda and the Milky Way collided, the black holes at the centers of the galaxies becoming one, or as they said in the video, "gobbled each other."

The short animation presented a process in the making, one that will happen eventually, some 20 billion years from now. Watching the destruction of much of the life in our solar system brings an odd sense of closure and finality, even though it is yet to happen. No matter what we do in our life, there will be a day when, if somehow the human race has managed to live that long, our galaxy collides with another and we're destroyed.

No matter what.

It's pretty far away, though, isn't it? I probably won't be alive for it. My legitimate children probably won't either, but still, there is a finite end to everything we've ever known, we as in the next thousand generations.

I'm not trying to say that our actions are useless when facing a grander destruction. I'm really trying to illustrate the same thing I always am: If you aren't enjoying your life, relishing the minutiae, then you are really only counting the days until not only your own death but the death and decay of everything you know. Nostalgia be damned!

Life is not suffering, it is a brief state of mutual acknowledgment. Enjoy it or die.

Also I don't know how Brittany is doing it, but every time I hear the French language, I can't help but to imagine there is a montage behind me and what's being said is comical narration.

I was a bully

I want to be fair, and honest. For some time during the time I was bullied, I was totally also bullying some kids. I have two clear examples that put me in a bad light, but if I'm trying to play the victim card, I should show my whole hand.

I made fun of one of my friends in 4th and 5th grade. She was overweight and I called her a rhino and she would chase me furiously. It was one of those incidents that could go either way between flirtation and bullying. I hope I apologized.

But my other behavior doesn't tread any lines. There was another guy in one of the joint classes downstairs in Glenfair. He was in Talented and Gifted with Keith and I, but he was a weirdo. He couldn't sit down properly and would make noises throughout class. Keith and I harassed and harangued him, not to the point of suicide or anything, but definitely to the point of crying.

We were confronted about this by not only the two teachers of the joint class downstairs, but both classes of thirty. We hung our heads and had to explain ourselves and apologize. It turned out that he was autistic. It wasn't explained to us what autism what, but what bullies were and that was us.

I didn't learn about autism until years later, it must have been.

Louis C.K. has some line about waking up and feeling great and then remembering all the things you've done and having to live with yourself.

So we didn't understand that he was autistic, fine, can't blame us for that, but making a kid cry weekly is heinous.

And this isn't the worst thing I've done. We all have our dirty laundry.

Hopefully all the great things I'll do with my life will reconcile the terrible things I've done.