Author: Sam

I was born December 16th, 1982, in Carlsbad, New Mexico. The town is in the desert, not to far from the famous Carlsbad Caverns. Around late 1988, after the birth of my two little brothers, we moved to Piqua, Ohio, a small farming town outside of Dayton. About two and a half years later we moved to a huge house in the old part of Galveston, Texas. It wasn’t a great neighborhood, but it was a really cool house!! We spent about three and a half years in Texas, half of which we lived in a nice neighborhood a little farther north in Dickinson, Texas.

At the age of 11, in early summer 1993, we made the move to Nome, a town of 3500 people out in the middle of nowhere in northern Alaska. We lived in a small apartment complex called the Aqipik Apartments (why I remember that, don’t ask). We stayed for the summer, and in the winter, after a month in Hawaii to thaw, we moved to Monroeville, Pennsylvania, a short drive to the east of Pittsburgh. The following summer it was back to Nome, this time with a somewhat better apartment, rented from a guy named Nacho. That winter we stayed in Anchorage, in a little shit hole of an apartment with Russian landlords who didn’t know how to tell me in English to turn my classical music off. That was a long, cold, winter, my first and only in Alaska. That spring we moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, across the bay from Halifax. We were supposed to stay for a decade, so Ed and I started public school. We ended up staying until August 31st, 1997, when simultaneously our house lease and Visa’s expired, so we had to get out of the country fairly quick. We moved to a suburb in the north hills of Pittsburgh, a lovely place called Hampton. We stayed there for 4 years, just long enough for me to finish High School, after which my family moved to Salt Lake City, Utah. I visited them for a while over the summer, then I came back to Pittsburgh, before finally coming to rest in Cleveland, Ohio, where I now go to school. My entire life I have been on the move, where will I I go next??

There comes a point where the events of life force one to consider what one believes. Many people seem to simply “inherit” their beliefs and value systems, giving no more thought to it than that their parents were that way, no more explanation than “that’s how I was taught”. Other people seem to pick a set of beliefs, almost randomly, according to what “feels right”. Still others seem to pick beliefs as if they were just a facet of their personalities, something to attract people. Finally, there are those who never really address the issue, who are standing right next to those who haven’t decided.Most people when questioned or challenged become rather fervent about their belief rather quickly if they weren’t already, sometimes wandering into blatant hypocrisy. Somehow, while people talk freely and civilly about politics, when the discussion wanders into what one believes about life in general, people clam up. They become unwilling to discuss their ideas beyond giving you a general sense of what they are. Having chosen a solution to the ultimate problem, to the meaning and point of life, they bear down. Very few are willing to see the whole thing as unsolved, and some are so fervent as to die ( or kill ) for their belief.

Beliefs are irrational. They undermine one of the most powerful of our abilities, our ability to reason. When the problem becomes too hard, and you can’t find a solution, you pick one that looks right, and you believe that it’s the right solution. It may not be, but if someone challenges you on it, you disagree. You never say “I don’t know.” Faith and natural belief are the remnants of people’s inability to answer the ultimate question. In most cases, the human drive to find meaning, nearly as fundamental as hunger to an intelligent species, is satisfied by this arbitrary choice.

I like to think that I am in the last category of people, and that I never intend to decide what I believe in. Deciding what you believe in substantially damages your ability to learn about the world. Science has already discarded several possible sets of beliefs held previous to its discoveries, like the idea that storms are god- wars and the idea of the earth-centered solar system. Science embodies the logical reversal: if we cannot directly understand what is true, let us eliminate what is not true. Perhaps all that I will ever accomplish is to eliminate a few more choices. Perhaps I will find the answer, and the answer will be that we are no more than automatons following a course laid out from the beginning of the universe by the laws of interactions of forces. As eventually anti-climactic as this may be, I cannot be satisfied with any other existence without having tried.

*** This piece was heavily inspired by something I read online, and might borrow more language than I had intended. I’d share the link, but it appears lost to the sands of time. ***

When the day is said and done, what is important? Did you learn something new? Make someone feel better about their day? Help the world become a better place? Everyone one those things make people happy. If I go to class and learn some cool piece of knowledge that allows me to do Integrals faster and better than ever before, that makes me happy. If my friend goes down to the homeless shelter and serves soup for 4 hours, and returns feeling like she really helped people, which probably makes her happier. But if someone plays a computer game all day, one they’ve already beaten twice, does that give them any less of a right to be happy? Happiness is such a personal thing, so deeply intertwined with everything we hold dear and believe in, that once we find what makes us happy, then that is the thing we should strive to do. I am not saying we should serve soup in homeless shelters, not all of us, but if that is what makes you happy, then that is what you must do. If your day is not complete without mooning the neighboring dorm, while it may be twisted, it is your path to happiness. Every good thing we do, everything we are praised for, is done for our personal gratification. Mother Theresa, while I don’t actually know, undoubtedly enjoyed helping the many people she did. Masturbation is generally used in the perverted sense, but it can also be used in a more general self-induced pleasure. If you set on purpose to make yourself happy, by helping others, is that substantially different than jerking off for hours on end, if that makes you happy?

I’m tired. I spent an entire day with strangers, and only a few known quantities to rely on. I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but I found that I was increasingly quiet, more so than I normally am. I projected myself as a somewhat quiet, introspective kid. Do I want to be a quiet, introspective kid? Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But I am tired, but not just tired physically. I acted today, not knowingly, but as something that I had to do. I put on a performance to impress a dozen adults that I was someone who would meet their approval. I put on a performance with a college student so that he would think I was a cool guy he could relate to. And finally, I put on a performance for my friend, so that she would think more of me, so that she wouldn’t regret inviting me on this special day. Did I succeed? I don’t know yet, and I’m not sure if I will know. All I can be sure of is that I could have tried harder, and it sucks to know that. To know that you COULD have done more, that you COULD have been a little more charming. But I was acting, I was on stage in front of over a dozen peers and I didn’t give my all. I’m not a theater major. I’m tired of acting.

One Saturday ago, I was looking around online, and I found out that from 4-6 in the morning on Sunday morning there was a meteor shower. It was awfully early, but 10 of us stayed up to see natures fireworks. It was cold, and we couldn’t seem to get a good view from the cramped quarters of the balconies. Someone suggested the roof of Norton. I knew how to get to the roof, so we all snuck to the janitor closet and climbed the ladder EVER so quietly, sneaking onto the roof. The sky was perfect, cloudless, and for the first time in a long time, my view of the heavens was not cluttered by ugly buildings. We watched the stars and the meteors for over an hour, lying on our backs on the cold, wet, gravel roof. If you don’t think this sounds exciting, you should try it. The shooting stars last less than a second, so everyone was constantly missing them.

Nortonites – “OOOHH!! THERE’S ONE!!!”
Gerrie – “WHERE?!? WHERE?!? Fuck, I missed another one!!”

We snuck back in, and after some more viewing at an adjacent field, 5 of us guys climbed up the ladder again, this time to see the sunrise. It was maybe the first sunrise I’ve ever made the point of seeing. It was also one of the most interesting nights I have ever had.