Dukkha

The First Nobel Truth of Buddhism; Dukkha. Dukkha= all life is, or leads to, suffering. I believe that suffering is a major part of life and without suffering we could never truly experience the same kind of highs that come from a joyous experience.
In my life I have certainly experienced suffering. I first really experienced it when I was six and my cat Spot died. I experienced suffering once again when my Papa, the man whom I admired as a role model and father figure, wasted away slowly and agonizingly in front of my young eyes. The person I looked up to most was ripped away from me by ravenous cancer at a time in my life when I could have used him most. A few years later, the summer after I graduated High School, one of my good friends and teammates wrecked his car while driving intoxicated and lost his life. Yet more tragedy occurred when last year a friend of over 10 years overdosed on prescription medicine and alcohol and never woke up. These are merely the major occurrences of suffering in my life, there are many more (mostly dealing with members of the opposite sex), and the degrees of the suffering varies, but such is life.

found poem

This came from a prescription drug information sheet, I just twisted the words a little.

DO NOT SHARE
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
DO NOT SHARE

KEEP THIS MEDICINE
DO NOT SHARE
DO NOT SHARE

USE THIS MEDICINE
USE THIS MEDICINE
KEEP THIS MEDICINE

KEEP THIS MEDICINE
for whom it was not prescribed
USE THIS MEDICINE

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

living life and books

The statement that one whom reads without doing is missing out on life is, to me, profoundly absurd. There are many things which I have done in my life, of that there is no doubt. I've gone all across the country in a car, I have climbed the mountain with the highest recorded wind speed from a surface station (Mount Washington, NH), I have experimented with mind-altering substances, I have driven a train and soared 75ft through the air with no more than a hi-tech piece of wood strapped to my feet. However, none of this exceeds the experiences I've had in books. I have lived in worlds where people are created in test tubes with varying levels of brain function to keep them satisfied in their social situations and they don't know romantic love, where the population is kept at bay via a drug induced emotional coma (Brave New World, Aldous Huxley). I have thumbed my way 'cross country with Sal Paradise and met some very interesting people along the way (On the Road, Jack Kerouac). My point is that while the things one may experience in "real" life are tangible, physical occurrences of their being- those achieved in literature can be richer. Richer in the sense that I will probably never get to thumb my way across country and I am most certain that I will never know the oddities of residing in a land where love is seen as madness and people are bred to certain mental capacities. Books are our portals to different worlds, they are an escape from "real" life, and are, therefore, that much better.