The unknown.

People often tend to say:''what you don't know, can't hurt you''. But I don't think I completely agree. Of course I agree in the case of someone keeping a secret. As long as it's a secret to you, it can't hurt you either. It only hurts once you find out about it. In that case I totally agree. But imagine the case of when someone has to make a decision of which the choice has a lot of influence on your life or the way you will live your life in the future. If you're aware of the fact that that person has made their decision, you'd probably be dying to know what that decision is. Imagine you don't know their choice, imagine that decision is unknown to you. Wouldn't you want to know the person's choice? Wouldn't that hurt you? I mean.. Who doesn't get hurt when they're left unkown? Who doesn't hate being confronted with secrets? Who doesn't get hurt when they're left in the dark corner of not knowing the answer? The dark corner of not knowing the answer to the question that keeps on haunting your brains. When you're left in that dark corner, you're left with fear. A lot of fear. A fear to lose something precious or a fear to a possibly upcoming fight to overcome an obstacle. That fear is causing a lot of pain. So yes, when something is unknown, the chance that it causes pain is certainly there, which means that the saying isn't completely right. Because what you don't know in this case actually does hurt you. But except for just fear, 'the unknown' also leaves you with hope. Being left in the dark corner also helps you to have faith, to believe and to hope. Hope to get what you deserve or hope to overcome those obstacles. Having faith certainly isn't something bad. It actually helps you grow as an individual person, which makes you stronger and makes you immune for the pain the fear-side of the story causes. This way the hope-side of the story proves that the saying is right. 'The unknown' really can't hurt you.
So I still keep wondering.. Does, in the case of someone making a decision that could have an impact on your life, the saying ''what you don't know, can't hurt you'' make any sense? Or is it a matter of one side overruling the other, in which the 'winner' decides the amount of pain a person gets?
Is the saying right or does it depend on the person?

Love & Hatred.

Love and hatred. Two whole different words with two whole different meanings, but they still combine. How come?

Everyone has certain people in their lives they love to death. These could be family members, really really close friends etc. But the thing I keep noticing is the fact that the ones you love so much, are actually the ones that annoy you the most at some times. You feel like hitting and punching them, but you can't, because you love them too much. It's kind of the hatred-feeling. And actually I don't like the word 'hate'. I think it sounds really really mean. So maybe I should use the term 'strongly dislike'?
Yea, so.. You really get the feeling that you strongly dislike the person you actually love at the same time. It's kind of weird actually.. How two opposites lie so close to eachother & also actually have a big effect on you and your beloved ones. It's actually kind of creepy. It can become a fear. A fear to strongly dislike people you care about, which causes a fear to love. And to be honest, if you fear to love, your life sucks. Love is something you need, just like you need the feeling of joy. I mean, how can you live without joy? It's impossible. I think it's the same thing with love. Everyone needs to love and to be loved.

But now.. the thing I've been wondering about for quite a while is: Are love & hatred just something that is supposed to be combined at all times? Something that's supposed to be together, like a pair of shoes or the 2 parts of your brain.

Is it possible to love someone without 'strongly disliking' them at the same time?

Useless.

If you decide to critically think about life, you've got two options. You can either think about it from the perspective of you as a person on this world. But you can also think about it by using the perspective of something bigger outside this world, that watches humanity grow from afar.
Through the first perspective I see that humanity is important. We all live. You can't change that very easily. So you've got to make life the best you can. You've got to enjoy life to the fullest. This can be done by materialistic stuff but also by love, friendship, encouragement, success etc. It's all part of your life. It doesn't last for long so why would you just sit around and do nothing, while there are so many goals you can try to achieve at the same time? So many things you know you want. So why not go after it? Now is the chance, because now you're alive. We all need to make the best of it, we all need to be happy.
But on the other side.. Through the second perspective I really start to think seriously.. You live, you're alive. You do things in that 'life'. You achieve goals in that 'life'. You get children. You give them love. They give you love back. And then you die... Then what? I mean.. Life goes on without you. Of course people will miss you. Of course people will cry and need time to get over the fact that you're gone. But life still goes on, the world really won't stop turning. The rest of the world is still alive. They still do things in their lifes. Like nothing really happend. Because why would they miss you? It sounds mean, but it's true. Everybody makes certain goals that only have an effect on their children, grandchildren, family & friends. It's actually pretty selfish, even though we all do it and don't really notice that we do. Those goals are only small goals. Small goals if you look at how little it has an effect on. Why can't there be one big goal that has an effect on the whole world, on humanity? Why is there never an effect that lasts for ages? A goal that changes the way of living by humans. Nobody can make a goal in their life like that. Not me, not you. We just live for ourselves and the ones we care about.
Also.. What if humanity never existed. Would there really be something missing in this universe? Our existence doesn't have anything to do with the universe, it doesn't have any effect on it whatsoever. We get born, we live, we die. It just keeps going on and on and on like that. So if we wouldn't exist, whatever there is in the universe wouldn't miss us. We're useless. Humanity is useless. Everything we do in our daily life, every goal we make & achieve. It's all useless.
My conclusion now is that at this moment, you're alive, which means that you have to enjoy the fact that you're breathing. That you can be where you are. That you have people around you who love you, who care about you. You should do anything as long as it will make you look back when you're old and think: 'My life was great.' But if our spirits still exist in maybe 10 ages. Which means we've seen a lot of people get born, live and die again. Which means we've seen a lot of goals made by humans that only had an effect on a small group of people in a short period of time. If our spirits still exist by then.. That's when I think we'll look back and think: 'Our lifes were useless.'

Resolutions.

2010 keeps coming closer. A new year, a fresh start. It's time to think of some resolutions. What are you going to change about your way of living, way of being, during the upcoming year? As we approach 2010, and think about those changes we want to make in our lives, it's easy to feel stressed out. Many people feel like they need to make a lot of changes in their lives, just to create this 'perfect life' and 'perfect human being'. And I'm not saying it's bad to think that way, 'cause it's not. It's really good that you can realize that you're not perfect and that there are things that need to be fixed. Because no-one is perfect. But it can also turn out to make you feel very insecure. You feel like there are so many wrong things about your lifestyle that need to be changed, that you're a horrible person the way you are now. You can't wait for the new year to start to work on those 'mistakes'. I really think that's bad for your selfesteem. Because when it doesn't turn out the way you want it to, you will become even more depressed. And I don't think all that drama is necessary. That's why I want to challenge all of you to make one change, in stead of a million. One small change, repeated every day of 2010. One small change can already change your whole lifestyle. A million different changes really aren't necessary.
You just need to make one important & thoughtfull change.
Last year I made only one resolution too: Read in the bible every single day. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. And that one small change made a huge difference in my life. So think about it these last few days: What one change do you need to make?

Persistence.

What is persistence? Persistence is the beginning of success, it's its foundation. You won't have any success without it. But what exactly is success? There are many ways to describe it. One is that you have success when you're internally happy and satisfied. Another is your education and the way you use it in your life. Although there are a billion ways to describe this success, there is only one way to describe its failure: giving up. No matter what your definition of success is, if you give up and lose persistence, you won't achieve it. Every person in the world is born without knowing the concept of failure. We never knew we could give up. Think about how you learned to walk. The first time you tried, you immediately fell down. The second time you tried, the same thing happened. You didn't know it was possible not to succeed, so you kept trying and trying. You never gave up. 'Cause if you would've, you would've still been crawling right now. So I guess that means we all had persistence the first few years of our lifes. But as we grow we learn there is something called giving up. We learn there is something called failure. I mean, it gets proven to us all the time:
'Don't waste your energy, it will never work.'
'Why don't you give up already?'
'I already tried that, it doesn't work.'
If we were told that bullshit when we were still trying to walk, we wouldn't have believed it. So if we didn't listen to bad advice then, why listen to it now? It only makes us give up faster and lose our persistence. And we won't achieve our goals that way. So if you ever feel like giving up, you MUST keep going, no matter what. Even if it seems impossible, do not give up. 'Cause if you do, you fail. You fail to achieving your success. Only by continuing you will succeed. You never know when you'll reach your goal & where it's waiting for you, but it sure waits for you somewhere. So if you fall down 2 times, you stand up 3. If you fall down 6 times, you stand up 7. That's what persistence means in my eyes: standing up 1 more time than you fall down.
My conclusion is that only by having persistence, you will achieve your goals, your definition of success, whether it means internal happiness or making a lot of money.

Rain.

It's raining and I love it. I enjoy the sound: it's relaxing. It lets me drift away. Far from where I am. Far from where I'm supposed to be. I start to think about everything. I think of my past, I think of the present, I think of my future. But I mostly think about the negative things that are happening or have happened in my life. I think about how I lost people I cared about and how I let people ruin my life. I think about betrayal, people that can't be trusted and situations that ruined a part of me. Situations that tore my heart into pieces and made me lose my mind for a while. But when I'm done thinking about the negative things, I realize that I'm still alive and that I'm still happy. I think about how that can be possible. I think about my friends who've always been there for me, who've always trusted me, who've always respected me. I think about how much friends actually mean to me, how badly I need them in my life. How badly I need them to comfort me, to protect me and to encourage me. I think about how much I actually love them and how horrible my life would be if I'd lose even one of them.
So after a while the rain makes me realize that my life really isn't as bad as I think it is sometimes, because while listening to the relaxing sound I know that me and my friends are able to win the fight. The fight of us against pain, us against fear, us against anger, us against sadness. It's me & my friends against the world. And that's why I love the rain.

Dilemmas.

What is a dilemma? If you look it up in the dictionary it will probably say that a dilemma is a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives. I think everyone has had a dilemma before. I also did. You're in a situation where you can choose between a few things. Let's say you can choose between 2 things: the smart thing to do or the thing you've been wanting to do for a long time. 'Cause that's what it's like in most cases. In other words you have to choose between doing what your brains tell you to do or following your heart.
Everywhere it's been told that you need to follow your heart, follow your instincts. But what if that brings very much trouble afterwards? What if your whole life gets even harder? What if everything would get even more complicated if you'd do what your heart tells you to do? Would you still follow your instincts? I think I wouldn't. I think I would do what my brain tells me I need to do and get over the fact that I won't get what I was longing for, for so long.
But the thing is that we don't know that from the start. It's like life wants us to make the wrong choice so it can punish us. So it can make us feel bad about ourselves. Maybe that's why I'm as insecure as I am. It's like life lets us make the decision first and afterwards let us know we chose wrong, whether we chose to do the smart thing or the thing our hearts told us to do. No matter what, we chose the wrong thing. 'Cause for some reason, to me, that's what it always seems like. It's like when you choose to do the smart thing, life gets boring, so you don't want to make that mistake again. But when you do what your heart wants you to do, you'll get in more trouble. Everything in your life gets worse and more complicated. And that's not the way you want life to be either.

So what do you do when you're in a dilemma? Would you go for the safe&smart,but boring thing the brain wants you to do, or the risky&dangerous, fun thing your hearts wants to let you do.

Does everything have an ending?

Everything ends somewhere. A book has an ending, a song stops after a few minutes and the earth stops where the universe begins. But where does the universe end? How far can you go through the universe without anything stopping you? Or is there maybe even something bigger than the universe. Is the universe a very small part of something else, like earth is a very small part of the universe? Does the universe ever end?

Also, they have said many times that the world would end, but it never happend. Now they say the world will end in 2012 and I wonder if it's true. Can 2012 really be the ending of life? Can 2012 really be the ending of pretty much everything that exists? Like a book can end on page 428? Like a song ends after 3 minutes and 48 seconds?
And what about the word 'forever'. What does that mean? Does 'forever' have an end? If you say that you love someone forever. When does that love for the person end? I mean, it must be ending somewhere, right? If you love someone forever, is forever over when you die? Or is there still the spirit that carries the love for that person? If you love someone forever, does that really mean forever, without an ending?

So now I wonder.. Do things that have absolutely no end whatsoever exist? Or does everything end somewhere, sometime?