The last week has been troublesome. So much so that I have several posts I’ve left on the cutting room floor, because I was too deep in the problem to make a coherent post. I could have posted those, but they would have caused more damage than they would have helped me. So, having had a few days to think, Here I am.

Over the past week, I’ve had several rounds of bad news. The most impactful to me is that I learned that a medical condition I have that wasn’t too severe, has worsened. It wouldn’t be accurate to say it’s become severe, but it would be accurate to say that it has that potential, and soon, without some changes in lifestyle. I don’t really want to go into what that diagnosis is. That’s not germane to anything. Let’s just say I have to change what and how I eat, and exercise more.

Maybe you can guess from that. Please do congratulate yourself on how smart you are, and don’t speculate here.

So, from this, I learned something about myself. I have a very specifically directed rage problem. I know you’ve seen my “moderately pissed off” state of being, but I mean, rage. At one point last week, I was so pissed off at the world in general that I was (figuratively, but only barely so) ready to rip the head off of anyone who crossed me.

While that was happening, there was very little I could do with it other than ride it out.

But afterwards, I thought about the problem. What about this situation made me so angry?

(This is a tip for life, by the way. The first step to rising above something and seeing it from a different perspective is to start asking questions)

Having thought about it for a little bit, I realized that it was, essentially, a systematic denial of my humanity as a child.

I mentioned earlier that, while I do not agree with atheists (and vociferously so), I feel they have some good points that do need to be addressed by those that, well, aren’t atheists. One of those points relates to our humanity. Some things are just… human. We eat, we sleep, we do things, we have sex and children, and then we die. All of these things are human. In the sense that they relate to the vessel of a sacred entity that inhabits it, I suppose there’s some sacred aspects to it, but generally, not. There’s really nothing sacred about being human. It’s dirty, it’s messy, its smelly, and sometimes it’s even beautiul.

But why do we insist on treating things as if they were?

Nearly all human pursuits are done in the context of humanity. Eating, sleeping, sex, everything. it’s all in a temporal context. It’s things we need to be able to do for our body to survive in this world, but this is with the full knowledge that our bodies will, eventually, die. There’s nothing whatsoever permanent about them, and there’s nothing at all useful about behaving as if there were. We treat our bodily needs and desires as if they were sacred, when they’re just as transitive as our bodies are. There’s a reason why hunger is a cyclical thing – all kinds of hunger.

But there is a sacred aspect to it all – one thing that can be taken away from this life once we’ve left it. And that’s memories, and/or experience. (The argument as to whether memories are purely physical can be left for another time – it can’t be proven either way.) So, it follows that the one sacred thing in this life is the experience, lessons, etc., that we can take away from this life. Learning how to be human, I suppose, one life at a time.

So the sacred part is respecting the journey of the other entities that are on this trip through the temporal realms with us.

You don’t feed someone because it will keep them alive. You feed someone because it is respecting the fact that their body needs food to survive, and their journey shouldn’t be dependent on available resources. (It is, sometimes, but it shouldn’t be). You do nothing for a person, including yourself, because it’s a sacred thing of itself, because it isn’t. But you do it because you are respectful of your journey, and you’re respectful of the journey of others, and you know that any damage you do now might take several lifetimes to overcome.

So back to the topic: I am angry because I was not respected enough to be treated as if my journey had any value.

I had many things that I wanted to do as a child. I wanted to run a company. I wanted to be a chemist (not pharmacist, the American definition). I wanted to be an engineer. There were so many things I wanted to do, and I was stopped at every turn because what I wanted meant nothing to anybody. On a more human level, I wanted to eventually find a gilfriend, but that was taken away too, because I was taught that that kind of thing was wrong and that you had to go about it in a very specific way – that was unavailable to me because of the way I was raised. At some point I realized that all hope for the future – to be who I wanted to be, who I could be – was gone, and it was taken away from me.

Of course I was angry.

So when I got this bad news, I felt like I was just a step or two closer to having all of these things permanently closed off.

I hate the people who did that to me.

And who understands this? Certainly no one who identifies with any of the major political parties, or even religious sects. Trying to ascribe sacredness to something that dies is the essence of satanism, and it doesn’t even matter what it is. But if you approach it more with assigning sacredness to that which does not die, and then respecting the ownership of the transient by the permanent, well, then, you’re on the way, I guess.

When it came to me, no one cared about that part of me that they couldn’t control. Their own short sightedness may have destroyed any chance I have to fulfill my purpose for this life. And, does that not deserve all the rage one can muster?