It's The End Of The World As We Know It

I guess I had to take a page out of R.E.M.'s book here for this post. It really is the end of the world as I know it. A lot of Seniors(many of whom read this blog). I will never see again. I am very saddened by this. Granted I will get to spend some time with Matt and Sean and may Happle and Andrew but everyone else is Sayonara. Maybe I will see them again, may be I will get to talk to them again, who knows. I feel right now the same way I do at the end of camp every year, very sad that I will not be seeing so many people for such a long time, if ever again. However, this is worse. Many of theses people I have known for years. At camp, I've only known people for 2 weeks. I am going to miss the class of 05, but I wish them the best of luck as they go on and live their lives to the fullest. The other thing that end this week was my basketball career. My dad told me 2 days ago at dinner that I would not be playing basketball in high school. He had many rational for this, but one of the main ones was it just took up too much time. I guess he's right, but I don't want to accept it. I guess I just don't like giving up. Goodbye Seniors and Goodbye Basketball, Goodbye World As We Know It. I loved you but now you must leave. Hello brave new world which is unfolding before me. I think that after this year, I have become a new person in a new world. Thank you Seniors for helping me find myself. See you all later, goodbye.

Deep

I was having some deep thoughts so I decided that I should write them down. They all center around conflict and/or war. I was just thinking about why individuals fight, not whole countries but individuals. What I mean is what is the motivation of a soldier to fight. Some people say that they are fighting for their countries. That is ridiculous though. We are all part of the human race and we are all in a way brothers and sisters. We all share a common bond of humanity. How do we find a way to rationalize the killing of the people who are in essence, exactly the same as us. They have families, they go on vacations, they take group pictures, they watch reality TV shows. How the hell do we rationalize the killing of them. The only way I can think of is that we take the individual out of the picture and focus on the nations which have committed "such atrocities" that we cannot help but fight them. We must turn away our attention from those who are most like us(the foot soldiers) and look towards those who are the most inhuman(the leaders of those soldiers). Or, we must look even farther away from the human race to the ideals of the people we are fighting against. So now what are we really fighting, ideas!! We are fighting dreams, nothing more, nothing less. I am not saying that there is not a time for war. I am simply saying that the motivations are wrong. We, as humans who are basically good, cannot fight to kill another man. That is, unless you are insane. We fight for broader reasons that are not necessarily right. That is why we must always be careful before we attempt any type of aggression. I know I probably won't get any comments on this but I just had to throw it out there. I t was bugging me.