Happy Easter!

Easter is the weirdest holiday to me. I was born on the 19th of April-- In my birth year, that was Easter Sunday. Truth be told, it's my firm belief I should have popped out of an egg that day, but certain aspects of human anatomy kept that from happening. 18 years later, Lady Gaga stole that idea from me.

Bitch.

However, I really enjoy Easter. Aside from the terrible Men's Warehouse necktie color-scheme it has, it brings in new life. I have never once experienced snow on Easter, even in the frozen Northland of Minnesota.  And I'm okay with that.

My younger sister likes to go a little bit crazy with the holidays, and I actually like it a lot because it shows she isn't afraid to really embrace something she enjoys. Just a few hours ago, she came up the stairs with a big plastic bag filled with stuffed bunnies saying something like "I am the Easter Bunny Faerie and I am here to... Easter-ize... this... living room." 15 minutes later, the living room was fully Easter-ized with everything from eggs to stuffed rabbits. Easter-ized as hell.

In World of Warcraft, there's an Easter-equivalent in-game holiday called Noblegarden. In it, everyone from lords to peasants are searching for eggs that give gold, candy, even some elegant garments inside. (There is also a rabbit pet that lays eggs, but that is neither here nor there.) Completing all the in-game "Achievements" grant you the title "(Character Name) the Noble". I really like it-- A small (probably unintentional) reminder from the programmers that remembering to revere life is truly noble.

How you choose to show that reverence is up to you.

So, I'm going to wake up with a big smile ready to take in the (hopefully present) sunshine and remember how great life is. Have a fantastic Easter, readers!

Words for Love

I know it's been a while since I posted something last, so I'm going to make this count.

Valentine's Day is the one holiday that more people dislike than enjoy. I, for one, like everything about it. It's great to see lovers expressing their feelings for each other. Even if the PDA is a bit much, I really like seeing expressions of love in any form!

One thing that I've noticed in my study of multiple different languages is that the word for "Love" is difficult to translate. While I understand the meaning that those words try and convey, I never understood why it differs so much. 

Growing up in a church school environment, you learn a fair amount of things about ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew (if you're paying enough attention), as those are the two languages that the Bible is written in. What I loved most learning about are the four Greek words for Love. English has one word, two or three if you bend the rules a bit... Greek has four.

The first is φιλία, or Philia. Philia in modern Greek means friendship, but in ancient Greek carries the connotation of a brotherly love. We can see that meaning in "Philadelphia", the City of Brotherly Love, and in the words "Philosophy", a love for wisdom, and "Bibliophile", someone who loves books, et cetera. It also could mean loyalty to friends or to a specific cause.

The second is στοργή, or Storge. Storge means simply affection, a natural, innate affection such as that which a parent loves their child. It's often described as being affection through familiarity. Strangely enough, it's the word used least in any Greek work.


The third is ἔρως, or Eros. Eros is a very intimate love-- It's where we get the English word "erotic". It's a very passionate love, filled with desire and longing. However, it's not always sexual in nature. Plato once said Eros-type love for a person is also a love for the beauty of that person, and ultimately an admiration of beauty in and of itself.


The fourth is my absolute favorite word for love from any language: ἀγάπη, or Agape. Agape is the strongest love, and often translated as "pure love". What differentiates it from the other words is twofold: It is unconditional, and it is always giving, without expecting anything in return. It also carries an undertone of being completely content with the status quo-- When someone feels Agape, they won't want to change a thing.

The only thing I dislike about Valentine's day is that it focuses romance's importance into a single day. This is a problem for two reasons: Obviously, the first is that romance should be Valentine's Day-strength every day of the year, and the second is that it only focuses on one kind of love!

Real, true love is unconditional. It won't stop or sputter-- It's like a river, always flowing and rolling over or around any obstacles, no matter how much work it takes. It's determined! It's strong!

But it's also gentle. Like water, it can be as fierce and powerful as a crashing sea, but also peaceful and serene as a lake in the early morning. It is always content to take the lowest places. It is humble! When the lowest path is taken by water, eventually you will find the ocean.

 Look at how much Love has grown! When it is determind, strong, gentle, peaceful, and humble, it grows into something immense and strong as the ocean itself!

We should always strive to live out all kinds of love. When we do this, and we strive for what love should be, we become very strong by sharing love with our friends, our family, and (if we have one) our lovers. We should have Philia, Storge, Eros, and Agape all in balance in our life at all times. We can live in harmony this way.

Happy Valentine's Day. Let's all try to act out Love in all its forms, every day.

The Road Goes Ever On and On

Oh, wow. The end of this year is in... half an hour. Central time. I'd be lying if I said I was excited, though. Very little marks this day as important to me aside from the symbolic mark of the chance to reinvent oneself and resolve previous faults, mistakes, bad habits, et cetera.

I have a few resolutions, of course... Exercise more, read more, sit around like a fatass less... You know. The normal stuff. However, I also want to move deeper into the roots of my own personal philosophy. I've been reading a lot of philosophy lately, and I've come to realize that it's kind of a silly thing. Both philosophies and resolutions, actually. In fact, they're so silly I'd almost say they were worthless.

Almost.

Studying philosophy is much more similar to making a new year's resolution than one might expect. You do both in order to fully realize a certain aspect of your own potential. You also must be meticulous and organized in doing so. You also need to be fully committed. If you slack off in any aspect of either one, things get messy and they just don't realize the right conclusion.

This may seem a bit silly, but think of last year's resolutions you made. Don't remember 'em? Yeah, me either. But try to think what they might have been. Do you think you improved over this year? I hope the answer is yes.

If you thought of it deeply enough, you have begun to use the past to evaluate the present. You retraced your steps. It's always important to know where we've been-- that's why we study history, after all. Philosophy has more common threads in New Year's resolutions when we look at where we're going, though, so let's take a brief glimpse at what the next decade might bring.

I made a new year's resolution to read more... The more I read, the more I look at the human lifespan not quite as a span of time, but more a series of events-- Less of a timeline and more of a sequence of events, decisions, and actions.  Allow me to elaborate...

As you read in my previous post (I hope you have, anyway), Gautama Buddha makes a metaphor out of the Ganges river. It is constantly flowing-- As a certain Greek philosopher (and Native American Disney star) once said (sang): You can't step in the same river twice. You are a completely different person than you were a split second ago-- So how can you make a resolution for the entire year when you change so subtly (and yet so powerfully) in such a small amount of time?

Heraclitus, everyone!... Oh, wait.

My point is this: Whether you are studying philosophy or resolving to improve yourself in the new Decade, don't decide to do it as something that will radically change you. Rather, I urge you to view it as a product of you radically changing. I want my resolutions to happen of their own accord because I followed the correct path to make them happen. I do not want to choose my path in order to achieve a resolution I made back last year.

I sincerely hope your Resolutions come to be, and I hope your Philosophy deepens your understanding of the world around you. Thanks for reading.

Peace and Love in the New Year.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So, everyone knows what today is supposed to be about. I mean, really, they weren't very creative in designing the name of this holiday.

Today is the day to gather with your family in one of the most basic, ancient ways (around food) and remember what it is you're grateful for. Many of you have given this notion some thought, without doubt.

But, ask yourself-- Did you live it out?

The sermon of the Thanksgiving service at my family's church focused around the made-up word "ThanksLiving". As corny as it sounded, I ended up liking the idea. It reminded me of something I read in a book I've mentioned in an earlier post: Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. Specifically, it reminded me of this section regarding what he calls "mindful eating":

"...We can look at the food deeply, in a way that allows it to become real. Contemplating our food before eating in mindfulness can be a real source of happiness. Every time I hold a bowl of rice, I know how fortunate I am. I know that forty thousand children die every day because of the lack of food and that many people are lonely, without friends or family."

How many of us thought about something along those lines as we ate our Thanksgiving dinner tonight? I won't lie, it was one of the farthest things from my own mind.

Let's take another look at that word "ThanksLiving". Being able to live out what we are thankful for, that is a form of being mindful in all we do. When we give thanks, it makes it sound temporary, almost forced. However, if we live thanks, we can understand everything that went into that bowl of rice-- The Earth, the Sky, and a lot of hard work. To give thanks is a momentary temporary thing, but to live thanks is ongoing and constant.

The Chinese word for Thanksgiving Day is 感恩节 (Gǎn​'ēn​jié)​.  Those first two words, 感恩,  mean "to feel kindness, mercy, and charity". Not "to feel gratefulness". Being ultimately grateful, I think, results in us showing those traits: kindness, mercy, and charity. We know what we have, and we are thankful for it, so we are moved to help others who could be less fortunate.

I really like the way these words are written. If you take a close look at the lowest parts of both of those words, you see a common pattern: the radical 心 (xīn), which means heart.

I know most of you will read this after Thanksgiving day, and that's my intention in posting this so late. I hope you remember even a few words of this post, and that it makes some impact (however small) so you can be thankful every day, not just one day out of the year. I hope we all can remember that giving thanks can be a way of life, and I hope it moves us to help others out of kindness, mercy, and charity.