Point being, there are two ways I see this going:

a) life has no meaning at all so you do whatever keeps you happy on an absolute level, and that usually doesn’t include random violence and disobeying social norms.

b) the only purpose you have is to find the meaning of life. it’s all hidden somewhere out there and you spend your life following your destiny. this is something Paulo Coelho has been trying to tell us all along, i believe.

either way, the whole jaded, nihilistic trip that tells me to kill myself or the utterly optimistic ‘life is amazing and God is the Almighty’ are not gonna work.

New Age Religion. Yay, for freedom of expression, faith, belief, etc. There’s not much you can think of that hasn’t been done, blogged about, packaged and sold before you arrived on the scene. And yet, the cliches work. We all fall for it because we willingly suspend disbelief and rational thought in the hope of a greater truth. It’s the reason the entertainment industry is one of the richest in the world – we all want to believe. But lately, believing is so passe. Object, rebel, don’t conform!

Personally, I don’t think faith is that awful. Life isn’t always a battle to see the who wins, it isn’t a competition to prove you’re better and it isn’t a reality tv show [took me a while to believe this one.] This isn’t some huge board game with your path charted out and your major decisions made before you start playing.

A friend told me that I’d learn more in the next two months without familiarity than I would with a whole year of comfort and I’m so glad I took his advice. What I have learnt is that everything repeats itself. Or atleast, if you’re looking for the patterns, they’re there. You leave this, start that, take a leap forward and a small step back and there you have it – your existence can be explained with an endless diatribe about the pointless details that you cling to for everyday normalcy or a couple of syllables loosely strung together about the fucking huge milestones.

A couple of observations on the Alchemist [since I've been forced to read it again]

• it is quite sexist. Not a single woman accomplishes anything of great import throughout. The only smart woman in the entire thing [there were only 3 mentioned anyway] was the gypsy who managed to get a decent portion of his wealth in the end. And even there, the woman was fair – she could have easily asked for half his wealth, but she only asked for ten percent of it. of the other two, the first didn’t do anything except listen to his stories and the second promised to wait for him with bewitching eyes. how amazingly amazing.
• it is so obviously loaded with cliches that scream at you from the pages that i nearly developed an awful headache by the end of it.
• it’s only redeeming quality is that it so easily provides parallels for everyday life that i find myself comparing at the oddest of times.

So yes, I really don’t like the book and it grates on my nerves but for 14 year olds that are convinced life is shit and that there’s no point in existence, [yes, that's how early the nihilists are these days. *sigh* they do catch them young] it is definitely worth reading.

There was a whole bunch of other things i wanted to talk about like music and books and everyday nonsense, but that will have to wait for tomorrow probably ’cause I’m really sleepy.

In a random side note:

There are times when I feel like I should be grateful for the things I’ve had the good fortune to experience and these times are few and far between. [not because I have little to be grateful for but rather because I rarely pay enough attention to be really grateful] One of them was recently, as I stood somewhere with people I barely knew and yelled at the top of my lungs for music and talent and things I still can’t comprehend. For those things, thank you.