I Never Asked to be Born! Stations in Life!

I grabbed my skull.  Oh!  I grabbed my skull!  But I didn't quite grab my skull.  I only put both of my hands on my head, and my head was made out of skin, hair, and all sorts of other shit, including a skull and a brain.  In that manner, I grabbed my skull.

And I huddled in a corner.  This corner was in a corner of a dimly lit room.  Yes, there was some light in there.  I didn't know where it was coming from.

What's my name!?  I didn't only ask the question in my head... I shouted it.  Well, my name is Danny Castro, and my name is Daniel Castro on my birth certificate, but I go by Danny.  Ok.  My name is Danny.

I grabbed my skull in the aforementioned manner.  I thought about my brother Ismael and all his wild ideas about light, color, and sight.  On his own, he had figured out that we never really see anything but reflections of light.  I never get to see Ismael Ismael, and Ismael never gets to see me me.  I tightened the grip on my skull.  Let me explain.

The human eye can only see because light shines into it.  If there were no light, the human eye would not be able to see what it sees.  The human eye is a mechanism that picks up light.  That light--and the colors and gradations of that light--is then interpreted by different parts of the brain, and then we "see" what light has reflected.  I'll try again.

If there is no light whatsoever, our eyes see nothing: only darkness.  They see nothing because no light enters into our eyes, and our eyes need light in order to see things.  So, all our eyes really see is light.  So, when there is light, what our eyes see is light reflected off of other things.  The sun shines on different parts of Ismael, and those are the parts that I see, so then I "see" Ismael, but what I really see is a reflection of Ismael.  The light.  Our eyes only see light.

I thought about that because, when I thought I was grabbing my skull, I was really grabbing a bunch of different things.  And when I think I am looking at something, I'm really only looking at the reflection of light off of that thing.

Oh!  Strange things filled my mind.  The room was empty, but there was a dim light coming from somewhere, and I was in a corner grabbing my skull.

All this honesty was thrashing around in my mind.

"What do I do?"  I thought to myself.  "I didn't ask to be born into this."  Outside of the door was waiting my normal life.  I was born in Southern California, and my parents loved me, and it was hard to swallow, because so many people were suffering around the world.

"I didn't ask to be born!"  My mind raged.

I imagined a twelve year old girl born with AIDS in Africa.  There in my corner all huddled up and grabbing my skull fiercely, I thought about her (I also thought about my perfect grammar).  She was poor.  She has had AIDS since she was born, and I forced myself to think hard about this.

She sat in an empty room clutching her skull.  Outside, there was chaos, and there were her siblings waiting for her to take care of them, because their parents were long dead.  The HIV had taken them away.  And her mind raged, "I didn't ask to be born!"

"What is fair?" I thought to myself.  Nothing is fair.  Is it fair that I was born in Southern California to a nice family and she was born in subsaharan Africa with AIDS?  Who the fuck decided to put us where we were born?  Why wasn't I born in subsaharan Africa, and why wasn't she born in Southern California?  Maybe she was?  Maybe I was?  Maybe we were all everybody, and maybe everybody was everybody else!  Why was I thinking so abstractly?  Mark done said, "Love your neighbor as yourself."  Maybe everybody was everybody!

I clutched, and I was losing my mind.  Nobody deserves anything.  I thought hard, and I thought logically.  There must be a god.  Ipso facto, when/how/why/where we were born was not arbitrary, nor meaningless.  Considering the massive implications of all of this, I came to a conclusion.

We are all orphans, to an extent.  What do we deserve?  Almost nothing.  But not nothing.  Something. We deserve something.  For he we are!  We exist!  What do we deserve?  Do we deserve to be rich?  Do we deserve to be poor?  We can't deserve those things, for we had no say in which station we should be born into.  What do we deserve then?  For, we do deserve something.

We deserve love.  Every single one of us deserves love from everyone else.  And we deserve to love everyone.  "Love your neighbor as yourself."  We should be hard on ourselves and on everyone else, in a loving way!  That's the way we should love ourselves and others!

We deserve the chance to be loved.  More importantly, we deserve the chance to love others.

And most importantly, we deserve the chance to be saved.

And so have we been.  Drowning and seemingly without hope for one last gasp of air, we have been saved.

Although it seems that nothing in this life is fair, there is hope and at least we do deserve something and not nothing.  That is fair.

I let go of my skull.  I walked out of my room.  I hugged my family.  I got on my computer.  I sent a couple bucks to whatever organization givewell.org told me to.

I went back to my room.  I closed the door.  I got on my knees.  I was humbled.  I don't deserve any of this.  Hell, I don't even deserve to be alive, probably.  I thanked god and I took George Harrison's advice: "Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait; and love one another."

I heard U2 in the background.

I went back on my computer and thought about true love.

A Quick/Short Word on Abortion: VP Debate 2012

I just wanted to say some things about things that were said at the 2012 Vice Presidential debate.

I paraphrase.

Paul Ryan said that he believes life begins at conception.  He said he does not just believe this because of his Catholic beliefs; he also believes this because of what the sciences have shown and because of morality.  So, he said that if Mitt Romney was elected they would make abortion illegal, except in cases of rape, incest, and threat to the mother's life.

If one believes that life begins at conception (that, once a sperm gets into an egg, the union is a human, as much a human as a full, grown ass human), then Ryan's beliefs make sense.  You think something is wrong, so you act against it.  You believe something is a human, and you believe it is wrong to kill innocent humans, so you make it illegal to kill (abort) humans.  That makes sense.

Joe Biden said that he also believes life begins at conception.  He said he believes this, because he accepts the Catholic church's position/beliefs about this.  After saying this, he said that he does not believe in telling women what they can and cannot do with/to their bodies (it's between them and their doctors, he said).  He said he doesn't believe in forcing his religious beliefs on others.  He completely changed the subject.  He hid behind his religion; in essence, he made abortion a religious issue, so that he wouldn't have to defend it, and so Obama and he wouldn't have to hold people accountable for their actions.  If abortion is a religious issue, then Biden doesn't have to push it on anyone.  How can someone say that they believe that life (being human) starts at conception (for whatever reason: religious or scientific), and then say it's ok for people to kill (abort) those humans?  Is Biden ok with people killing each other?  Maybe he doesn't want to push his religious beliefs that say killing innocent people is wrong on others.  Maybe he thinks murder is a religious issue too.

Also, if life begins at conception (according to both candidates), then the issue is not one of what women can and cannot do to/with their bodies.  The issue is about what people can and cannot do about a human that is growing in a women or wherever; no one agrees that mothers should have the choice to kill a life.  People say 'pro choice,' as if it is solely about a woman doing something to her body--it is not the case that she is only affecting her body, though.  I don't think women should be forced to have babies, if they don't want to, but I don't think lives should be terminated.  Freeze them maybe?  Or maybe pick the lesser of two evils: force women and men to have the babies they 'accidentally' created; do this, at the cost of taking some freedoms away--life vs some freedom.

In my opinion the issue is a scientific and philosophical one.  If one cannot draw a non-arbitrary line where life begins, then life begins at conception.  This is the case, so life begins at conception.  That means that when sperm enters an egg it becomes fully human and should be entitled to all the rights that all humans should have.

Ryan made abortion a scientific and moral issue.  I commend him for that, and I agree with him.

Whether you are for or against abortion, at least be consistent and have good reasons for believing what you believe.

By the way, you don't have to be a woman to talk about abortion.  I didn't ask to be born, or to be a man (boy?), or to be so handsome.  All people should be free to think philosophically and critically about all issues: this promotes critical and new ways of thinking about things.  Obviously, it affects women in more and different ways, but abortion can affect everyone: woman and man.

Everything can be made into a religious issue, and many things can be considered non-religious issues.  If you believe such things as stealing, raping, physically hurting others, deceiving, killing, lying, cheating, being rich, being skinny and hot are moral issues that governments can address outside of religion--leaving religion out of it--then abortion isn't a religious issue at all.  It is a scientific and moral issue that should be dealt with by a just and moral government that is for and by the people and that protects ALL of its people.

If you're reading this, you weren't aborted... just sayin'.  You might wish you had been aborted, but ya... you weren't.  Weird, huh?  Not weird because I think you should have been aborted, existing is just so strange in general... sometimes--to me at least.

Look at these un-aborted humans--so handsome!