Hope everyone has a great Halloween and weekend.
Billy xoxo
at the end of it, i felt like attached to the guy in a way that i dont want it to end. it's so grippy.. keeps you in his world.. it's a true story after all.. one of the best reads ever.. at the start of it i thought to myself, if i finish reading this book, then i'll be a hero for myself.. 933 pages of tiny font! :D
the thing about it is a soul reflective book.. it's so deep in the descriptions that makes you smile, and also makes you feel sorry for the people in the story.. if you're a fan of novels and inspirational stuff, then this will help a lot..
one of the best lines i read in the book are:
"Every life, every love, every action and feeling and thought has its cause and its reason and significance: it's beginning, and the part it plays in the end. Nothing in any life, no matter how well or poorly lived, is wiser than failure and or clearer than sorrow. And in the tine, precious wisdom that the give to us, even those dread and hated enemies, suffering and failure, have their reason and their right to be."
i'm a bit emotional now.. haha!
plus, i'm losing the grip on emotions right now.. and its getting a bit harder by the day..
so this is how it goes.. i miss you guys.. and i know haven't been a good voxer.. i miss being here so much.. want to hear you stories and read them soon.. :)
...you have to cut yourself to remember you're alive.
Life is what you make it, and make of it. Yeah. I'll die someday. I'm working towards accepting my mortality. But, for today...
There's nothing like a moshpit in front of Metallica and 19,000 head-banging lunatics to remind me how fragile and beautiful life is. Teenagers and fortysomethings. Raw vitality and awkward resistance. Generations apart, but united and tangible energies. Living. Alive. And nothing else matters.....
is something i got 45 minutes of since yesterday...
damnnnn im tired! dammnn dammnn!!!
am going out for a starbucks get some coffee stay awake till like 8 or 9 pm then sleep.. will try to find activities to do!
Once upon a time, a man died and went up to Heaven, where Saint Peter was waiting for him at the Holy Gates.
“I’m very sorry,” said Saint Pete, “but I can’t let you in.”
The man was shocked and very disappointed. “Why not, Saint Peter?” he asked. “Wasn’t I a good man on Earth?”
“You were a very good man, indeed,” replied Saint Pete.“But here’s what your problem was – you could not stop yourself from telling other people how to lead their lives. If they were making a mistake of some kind, you felt compelled to point it out to them.”
Once again, the man was shocked by Saint Peter’s words. “But I don’t understand, Saint Peter. Why was this a bad thing? I was just trying to help them. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do on Earth - help people?”
“Not in this instance,” replied Saint Peter sternly. “You never learned to mind your own business. And for that reason, I’m afraid you’ll have to go to Hell.”
The man pleaded with Saint Pete. “Please, Saint Peter, I didn’t mean any harm. I was just trying to help, that’s all. I didn’t know I was doing a bad thing. Please, please, give me another chance?”
Saint Peter looked at the man and could see that he honestly hadn’t meant any harm. Because that was so, he thought that perhaps he might bend the rules…just this once. However, before he did, he would test the man’s sincerity. Unbeknownst to the man, of course.
“All right,” decided Saint Pete. “I’ll go to the Higher Ups and see what I can do. In the meantime, you wait in that room over there. Just go in, and close the door behind you.”
The room to which the man had been directed was large and empty, save for a bench. As directed, he closed the door as he went in, and sat on the bench, waiting for his verdict. And as he sat, he noticed there was a narrow, open archway which led to an anteroom at the far side, opposite to where he was sitting.
As he was pondering what might be in the anteroom, the door he’d closed opened, and an angel came in. He was carrying a very tall ladder.
“Hello,” said the angel. “I hope I’m not disturbing you. Do you mind if I come through? I’ve just got to take this ladder and leave it in that anteroom over there.”
“Please, go right ahead,” said the man. “You don’t need my permission.”
And then, an odd thing happened. The man watched as the angel walked across the room towards the anteroom, turned his ladder horizontally in his arms, and attempted to walk through the narrow archway with it. Naturally, he was unable to get through, as the ladder held horizontally was now much too wide.
The man observed with incredulity as the angel made attempt after attempt to get through the archway while holding the ladder thusly. Each time, the ends of the ladder banged against the wall on either side of the opening, propelling the angel backwards, and making quite a mess of the walls it kept hitting, in the process.
Naturally, after about fifteen minutes of this, the angel was winded and perspiring.
“Whew!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t realize this was going to be so difficult.”
The man couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you serious?” he blurted. “If you want to get through, hold the damn ladder vertically!”
The angel shook his head and looked at the man regretfully. “My friend," he said, “this ladder’s not damned, but you are.”
And the next thing the man knew, he was in Hell.
_______________________
I can’t remember how old I was when my father told
me the story above, but I was still young enough that
my questions were only just starting to become
annoying to him. Those questions were on every
subject from “Why do you support the war in Vietnam?”
to “Why don’t you ever do anything to stop all the
terrible things going on in this house?”
Since he couldn’t seem to come up with any reasonable
answers for me, the parable above was an attempt to
stave off the inevitable, which was that my
questioning of him would eventually go
from annoying to unbearable… for both of us.
Even my response to this story was not what he’d
hoped. He thought I’d feel forewarned that my quixotic
nature was taking me closer to Hades every day. But
ironically, all it prompted was another litany of
questions: “What kind of angel is stupid enough to
behave like a human?” and “What kind of God would
send a man to Hell for questioning human stupidity?”
It wasn’t until many, many years later that I recognized
that my father had a point, though perhaps not in the
way he’d believed. Anyone at all, with an average
human intelligence, understands very well which
way one needs to hold a ladder in order to get it
through a narrow archway. But pretending that he
doesn’t, he accomplishes one thing – he can tell himself
he tried to get through with everything he had and
just couldn’t succeed.
The fact is, he doesn’t want to succeed. He says
he has to get through a door and deposit a ladder in
an anteroom, but he doesn’t truly want to.
He just wants to pretend to himself and everyone
else, that he really, really tried.
And because this is actually what he wants – that
illusion of the attempt of a completion of a 'task', which is
another word for a ‘change’ – rather than the actual
change – he doesn’t want anyone to point out to him
that his ‘attempt’ is in actuality no attempt at all.
He doesn’t need anyone getting in the way of
his self-deception. Like my father, it will more
than irritate him, because by pointing it out, making him aware that you are aware that he’s lying to himself, you will make him hate himself and, as a result, (especially if your own attempts at change are real, and your desire to help him is motivated out of genuine caring, rather than smug superiority) – he will hate you, too.
A fast way to hell, indeed.
Remember that the next time you
(metaphorically) observe an intelligent adult holding a ladder horizontally, trying to get through an archway.
Say nothing. Wish him “good luck,” and get out of his way.
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