The brittle dress we wear

A friend of some friends died in a car wreck this past week. She was my age, pretty girl, world at her fingertips I'm sure. I didn't know her personally, but I didn't need to, news like this is always hits home hard, when someone dies at such a young age. We all think we're so invincible, take so much for granted, yet the reality is in a flash everything can be gone. She probably woke up that day with everything on her mind but her own mortality, now she's no longer with us, loved ones never given the opportunity to say goodbye. So they'll grieve for awhile, eventually have to accept reality, and then go back to being self-consumed in their self-centered lives.

That's no knock on them personally, this is what we do as humans. I'm culpable myself. We waste away our days in a false sense of security driven towards empty ends till something like this shakes us up, offering the possibility of enlightenment, before we decide it's simply easier to assimilate back into the cycle of self-service and unfulfillment. So many of us, too many of us leave this life in vain, having lived for nothing and accomplishing nothing. But "something" isn't wealth, power, or accolades; it's leaving the world a better place than you were given it, even if that impact is only felt by one person.

So the point is to live each day to the fullest. Carpe Diem. Simple idea, yet I doubt many understand the concept for its true worth. It's not about hedonism and overindulgence, it's about spreading love and peace, and striving for happiness, true happiness. Not that stuff that wears off after the initial high of a 50" flat-screen or brand new car. Let the ones you love know you love them, treat everyone with respect, and have no regrets. Honestly, I don't understand the point in living any other way. Oh yeah, that's right, our egos and television tend to tell us differently. Of course the way it is, isn't the way it has to be, it only is, because that's what we believe.

To think it only took 25 years of me shifting from one desire to the next believing that each would make me happy, while all along only the opposite was being accomplished, and staring across this vast wasteland of an earth and seeing that the happiest people I saw were the ones that had essentially nothing in terms of wealth, looks, prestige, etc., to finally have an understanding what it actually means to be happy. Of course they are still plenty of people with "nothing" that waste their lives chasing after "something" and a few with "something" that are able to grasp a semblance of true happiness. It's all about how you live, and that's the only advice I'll leave you with, to live, truly. Live for the daughter that will grow up without a mother because of what happened earlier this week.

So we meet again

Well, I decided to re-open Simon's Mind after a loooooong hiatus. I'm as surprised as you, but I got a lot to say. Plus 2008 is the Year of the Rat, which means absolutely nothing. Or if you prefer to follow the ICRI, it's the Year of the Reef, because they want to "raise awareness about the value and importance of coral reefs". Friggin' weirdos. Oh well, SIMON'S FREAKIN' MIND is back, ROCK YEAH!!!