I did exactly as I said and the reactions were exactly as I anticipated except for one little thing.

Someone said “you must be independently wealthy”
Someone said “I guess we know who the rich one is amongst us.”

So strange. A joke. It made me laugh at first. Surely all available evidence is to the contrary!

But it was a strange joke, one with something behind it too. The
idea, the implication being that it is impossible to simply… leave.
No one could do such a thing unless they are crazy, stupid, or well,
rich. There is confusion behind their words, confusion in their eyes
too and wonder too. They have questions. And surprisingly the question
they want answered even more than the questions of “Why?” and the
question of “Why now?”  is the question of “How?” I didn’t expect that. I thought the whys would dominate. But no, they want me to
explain it them. How is it possible? That’s what they want to know.

The truth to the “how” isn’t anything impressive. I am far far from
wealthy, have never been wealthy or even reasonably well to do. I have
some savings but not enough to last too long unless I dig into
retirement accounts. Other than that I intend to rely a great deal on
the fact we live in a crazy insane culture that makes credit almost
trivially easy to obtain. I’m am sure it is quite possible to live for
almost a year, satisfying your basic needs except for housing costs
using just credit. I won’t have to do that, but it is very possible to do that. You can even satisfy a lot of your housing costs too
but it is more dangerous to do so. Of course the longer you rely on it,
the more dangerous it is in general, but I think it is altogether
rather a cool system. I have a newfound respect for the credit card
industry and the other credit providers be it college loans or housing
loans. They give people opportunities they would otherwise lack, makes
it easier to take risks, even if they make out like bandits the more
you fail at those risks. It is good that it is possible and even pretty
easy to do so, something you can’t do in a lot of other countries in
the world.

My strong suspicion is that most people I encounter have a lot more
money than I, if they don’t then I have no idea what they are spending
their money on because I seem to waste money with a recklessness that
often scares me probably a counter reaction because I grew up in a
family where the need to save always on our minds. Still, the fact is I
don’t (didn’t) make that much money now. Not much at all comparatively.
I do spend a lot of effort shopping for deals, more than most, but
that’s more of a game than a means of increasing my fortune. The truth
is all the effort hasn’t saved me very much at all in the grand scheme
of things.

No, if I’ve saved more than most, and I really doubt I have, but if I did than I wonder if it means I have lesser wants than most people, no desire for expensive clothing or expensive meals or to attend expensive events.  I did buy a car that was far too expensive than any sane person would with my salary, but then if there is any truth to tco, than I believe it was ultimately a bargain. At least I keep telling myself that. I do waste all kinds of money on random technological gadgets, computer hardware and the likes, but technology is cheap and ever getting cheaper. Nah, I think if I spent money on expensive food and expensive clothes it probably wouldn’t change my savings that much. I can’t see how my amount of savings could be all that unusual.

Truly though the only three things that seem to really kill our fortunes are health care, education, and housing. Housing you just gotta suck it up and be willing to live somewhere less nice than is your want if need be. Education is all about the loans because basically nobody can really afford it. Health care may ultimately prove to be a serious problem, but I choose to by force of will not think about it too closely.

Of course if you have a home or a family or are planning to start one
soon, then weather or not you do have a greater savings than I, I can
certainly understand the fact that you would have a greater desire to
keep that savings “saved” rather than spend it on some risky business
or to use it to survive. I’m not sure that is always in every situation
a good idea, but sometimes it makes sense and certainly it would make
any such decisions a lot harder to make. And believe me, it was
surprisingly difficult to make the decision for me who has no such
immediate plans or obligations.

But why do people think that way? Why do people think it so unlikely,
so unusual to quit a job for no reason and with no certainty about what
the future holds? Is it because they would never do it?  Were they
trained never to do it? Or are they just so terrified of the unknown
that they would never do it? Or are they being wise and careful and just making the most rational decision? Or are they shackled by responsibilities,
bound by the needs of others? If so, I am sorry about that. It is sad
that society does not create some level of leeway for everyone. Nobody
should feel any fear whatsoever to spend a year taking an irrational
and dangerous risk in order to better themselves. The world would end up with more productive citizens if it allowed for such a thing.

It is a common joke in most offices and most other places too, that if
you were to hit the jackpot you would quit tomorrow and go off to do
who knows what. I never joked that way. Whenever I’ve ever heard the
joke I would always wonder, why wait until you hit the jackpot? If you
want to leave. Leave. Let everything else sort itself out later one way
or another. Even horribly unpleasant and difficult experiences can be learning
experiences, can be adventures, if you face them without guilt or doubt
or self-hatred. There’s no cause to be comfortable if being comfortable
means you have to be unhappy.

I’ve always thought this way. I’ve always believed it. But I never
acted upon that thought until now. Maybe I was even starting to
convince myself that it wasn’t true. Maybe I was starting to think like
everybody else does. And that, as much as anything, was why I had to
leave.

Of course… if the US economy collapses next month then I am so
totally screwed so maybe it isn’t so crazy to want to be rich before
you quit your job. Then again, I doubt having a job will be as much
protection as people think it is should such a thing occur.

I don’t usually listen to country music but I think if I did I’d probably find a lot of songs that I like.  For instance, this one I heard recently amused me a great deal.

Have you ever had this feeling?

At night there is some thought or set of thoughts that you just can’t stop thinking about or worrying about and your mind twists and pulls at it over and over back and forth trying to make sense of something, to come to grips with something.  You just won’t stop, can’t stop and yet you make little progress. Understanding is elusive. Peace more so. You lie in bed or sit at your desk just thinking and thinking and thinking..

But then at some point you discover that your body just doesn’t give a damn whether your mind has finished  or resolved whatever it is that has been bothering it. At some point it just up and commands you. “SLEEP NOW!” it asserts and whatever that your mind seems to want to keep going, isn’t finished dwelling upon whatever it was that you were dwelling upon, you still cannot help but obey. Before you know it you are asleep. But it is a strange kind of sleep.

And then you wake up the next morning and your mind just starts right up right where you left off. No moment of break, no instance of peaceful quiet or calm. The thoughts just keep rolling over and over steady like the perpetual flow of a river.

You start to wonder were you really just sleeping? Because it doesn’t feel like it. It feels like you never stopped to truly rest and your mind feels exhausted as if you’d run a marathon in mental meanderings. Your body may have slept, but you wonder if your mind was just stuck in an infinite loop all the hours of the night.

And still no answers come to you.

Have you ever felt like this?

So I guess I could ask what is wisdom? The classic question. Everybody wants to know. Everybody’s got an opinion. I’ve got an opinion too but its almost incoherent and nobody cares anyway. It isn’t even all that interesting to muse on it since any particular explanation or definition will be so utterly incomplete as to be almost useless to anyone who happens to take note of it. Wisdom is just too big a thing for poor philosophers to have a hope of a hope of ever getting right.

But I think it is a little interesting to talk about the misconceptions about wisdom. Things that people think are core to the concept of wisdom or things that people mistake as wisdom but really aren’t. Let me go over one in particular that I have been thinking about a lot lately.

Caution is not Wisdom.

People think that carefully analyzing the pros and cons of a thing, weighing them, waiting until they are certain they know what the best course of action is and then acting on it is just naturally what being wise is all about. Reason and Analysis. Slow and steady. Carefully, carefully, carefully. Don’t make a mistake, don’t step on a toe, walk the wire, carefully, carefully carefully.  For some, that’s the epitome of Wisdom. And the wisest are those amongst us who live in perfect accordance with the rules that keep us safe and never step out of line, never err and never have.

The Greeks knew better. For Plato, Wisdom and Courage were intrinsically linked. Courage was in many ways a part of Wisdom, the part needed by the wise in order to keep their desires in line with their reason. For Aristotle being overcautious was as bad a thing as being rash. Maybe worse.

In that philosophical landscape nobody could truly be deemed wise if they were afflicted by weakness of will, no matter how well they spouted wisdoms unto others. Those who spoke wisdom but lacked the courage to implement it were nothing but sophists and the likes of Socrates would have nothing to do with their ilk. The wise amongst us had to act wisely yes, but more importantly they had to act and do and lead whether they wanted to or not, whether it was safe or not. If you didn’t do that, then you were not only ‘not wise’ in the eyes of Plato, you were basically a fool fit for nothing more than a life enslaved to the will of your betters.

Personally I’m a lot more forgiving. I think everybody has a lot of wisdom in them and wisdom that they can share and which others can learn from and I don’t think you have to even be particularly good at exercising that wisdom in order to be able to share it. We learn from each other when we are foolish as much or more than we do when we are at our wisest.

However, I do think you become wiser the more you act wisely. It’s like a skill you can practice. And with more and more practice you get better at it, you grow in both wisdom and courage. The more you have the easier it is to get more.

But if the way to get wise is to act wise, how on Earth can you do that if you don’t know what the wise thing to do is in the first place? Well its possible that you might just make really good guesses at what the wisest course is or have a really excellent intuition as to how to be and act wise. Or it is possible that you could have a great mentor or even a slave master who just tells you out right what the wisest course is and you do it. Or you could be born into a society with very effective traditions and laws that if you but follow them all perfectly will cause your actions to ever be the wisest course.

For most people, though, the answer is that they get wiser through the good old fashioned practice of screwing up. That’s right. You just jump in and do things, not necessarily with the greatest of caution or the best of plans. Sure you follow your intuition and the advice of others as best you can, but really the only way you are definitely going to act wiser is to do lots and lots of things! Some of which you’ll recognize as having been wise after the fact and thus you’ll know to do them again and some of which you’ll realize were really really mind numbingly incomprehensibly stupid. Those, hopefully, you won’t do again.

But if you are over-cautious then you won’t act much at all and you won’t learn and get wiser at all! You’ll stagnate. At best you can be a puppet of a wiser person or to traditions or even to your own intuitions.  At worst you’ll just barely manage to not do particularly unwise things but at the expense of never ever doing anything particularly wise.

Do you see what I am saying? Caution is not wisdom. It isn’t even helpful for becoming wise. Knowing when to be cautious and when to be bold is only the output you get after you have already obtained great Wisdom. And the only way to actually get that Wisdom is to be a lot more bold than cautious.

Many movies are creative but few show the wonder and glory inherent in acts of creativity. Bridge to Terabithia does. It’s strange to think that so many stories either take place in a world so far from earth as it is now that we cannot truly relate to it as if the characters lives were lives that we were leading or else deal with the mundane aspects of the real world as it is now. How to cope with our job, how to pick a career path, how to deal with changes in wealth or status, how to stand up to dark conspiracies, how to deal with racism and prejudice, how to try and fix the social problems that plague society, how to navigate the dangerous waters of interpersonal relationships safely. These are the topics of most stories. I guess these are the subjects that people most want to hear about.

I don’t. Not that those topics aren’t important or that I particularly mind watching and learning from movies dealing with various subjects. I do watch and learn and enjoy, but if I had choice it’d be a different type of story I would prefer to observe. A story not tediously bound to reality as it is, nor floaitng through reality that can never be. Rather,the story I most enjoy is the story that shows people living an inordinate life in the ordinary world. The story of people who live fantasies and love dreaming. People who live a life of wonder.

And that’s how I wish that more people would lead their lives even now. We should be living lives of wonder! All the time and every day. Our minds should open expansively so that we can see the extraordinary nature of the universe around us. See the wonder in it. See the glory in it. We should be riding on lightbeams and swimming through clouds. We should be playing catch with stars and hide and go seek throughout a forest of rainbows. A life of wonder! That’s how we should lead our lives.

It’s always been strange to me that human beings can create such wondrous things and then not let that wonder touch them in their daily lives. In the heart of our soul we are all artists and dreamers and musicians and storytellers. And so it is no surprise that we churn out so many beautiful works of art year in and year out, many of which is made for no other reason than the pleasure we feel in making it. But to walk down the street, to talk to people ally and stranger alike and you’d see no hint of the wonder within. No one will talk in terms of dreams or dreaming. Everyone will be so serious and concrete. They’ll talk of responsibility and duty and morality and politics and likes and dislikes and tell their own personal stories with seriousness and gravity and a deep sense of the importance of these weighty topics. Few will engage in rampant imaginings. Few will talk even in terms of what-ifs for fear of being deemed childish. None will simply speak tales of wonder, stories born of the minds wild wanderings. None will talk to people with words wrought from make believe. Not ordinarily, and not unless circumstances are just so that it seems appropriate.

Bah to that! We should be filled with wonder in every second of every day! We should see the amazing nature of a blade of grass, of a crack in the sidewalk and wonder at its nature. Whole communities should wake up and watch the sunrise together and spend their lunchtimes gazing out at the clouds and talking about what they imagine those clouds look to be. At birth all children should be given a sketchbook, a journal in which to write, and a musical instrument which to play and they should find opportunities to experience a thousand thousand other tools of creativity as they grow older. Nothing should bar that.

We can’t make sweeping changes to the world we live in. Nothing we do will stop the sun coming up in the morning and setting at night, at least for now. But we can change everything about the way we perceive that world. We can dream. We can wonder. We can imagine. We can see all the beauty and glory that is inherent in everything we experience and we can add layers upon layers of meaning and wonder through our creativity and imagination and grow all the more appreciative of it as a result.

Creativity is our birthright. The thing that really makes our species extraordinarily special. We would do well to never forget to exercise it.

I’m thinking I should do this.

 On Monday morning I walk into my bosses office and tell him that I am giving him my two weeks. Just like that.

I imagine I’ll get a lot of questions from him, from others on my job, from my family, from my friends.

They’ll ask:

“Did you get a better job? Where will you be working next?”

I’ll say, “Nope. No other job offers. I’ve got no plans to work anywhere next.”

“Then what will you be doing?”

“Beat’s me.”

“Are you going back to school, looking to become self employed?”

“Maybe. Maybe. Who knows?”

“So why now then?”

“Because today I had the courage. I can’t say I would have yesterday or will tomorrow.”

“What if you can’t find another job? How will you pay your rent, how will you afford to eat?”

“No clue. But it’s better to face hardships now while I can than later when I might not be able to. Besides, there’s something to be said for just trusting oneself.”

“Did you not like it where you were? Is there something they did wrong?”

“Not really. Everything was fine really. I actually was as happy there now as I ever was in the past. But I was never happy. And everyone who knows me has known that I wasn’t happy and what’s the point of that? I don’t like programming. It isn’t work that seems worth doing to me. 99.9999% of programming work should be done by machines. Will be done by machines in the future. So why continue to do it? I can honestly say that I am quite as content as you can be where I am when you are unhappy and bored out of your mind. That’s no way to live.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I’ve never felt more sane really.”

“Then why not quit right now? Why keep going for two weeks? Aren’t you breaking the rules a little?”

“Well, I thought that was the polite thing to do is all. I’ll stay for three or four weeks if they need me to as well. I’ve got nowhere to go, but at the end of that predetermined time, I’m out of there and I’m not looking back. If they don’t need me to stay well then sure I’ll leave tomorrow. Yeah I know most people have plans when they quit a job, some sort of career opportunity or another or an intention to go back to school or something unless they are quiting in anger. But why should I be like everybody else? I’m not angry at all. And I have no plans and that’s just the way it is.”

“Have you even been looking for another job? Where will you look?”

“Nope. Never even put my resume anywhere. Never once did I even try. I haven’t even looked at my resume in years. I don’t even know if I will yet. Maybe I’ll hitchhike across the country or something first. Who knows. Who cares. Maybe I will take classes somewhere, become an undergraduate again or something. I could do anything. That’s the point. Anything.”

“So ok, but if and when you do start to look for another job what will you tell the people you interview with? How will you explain why you aren’t working? How will you not come off as a fickle and unreliable person who is a risky hire?”

“I will tell them the truth. If they don’t want to hire me as a result good for them for knowing what they want out of an employee. Any place that I would want to work for would be a place that won’t use such an absurd criteria for picking its employees though.”

“Don’t you have other responsibilities? Isn’t it important and responsible to keep getting a paycheck and keep getting insurance and dangerous to live otherwise?”

“Yes it is. But I figure if I am going to do this, better to do it now while my responsibilities are small and manageable. If I wait until I am older who knows how large and how deep my responsibilities will be?”

“This is a really crazy and reckless thing to do!”

“Yep. So what? Everyone deserves their moment of reckless abandon. And if I don’t do it, I’ll never know what would have happened had I chosen to do it.”

I’m about a hair’s breath from actually doing the above on Monday, but I haven’t yet decided. I might go to sleep tonight and by tomorrow have totally abandoned the idea as crazy day dreaming. Or I may find my convictions solidified. I just don’t know.  But right now at this moment as I write this it just seems like a great idea to me. Best idea I’ve had in ages. Really it feels like a return to the way I used to think many years ago back when I thought more, cared more, and worried less. I liked that me a lot better than I like the one I am now.

Have you ever heard a story, a funny story, that you found funny and entertaining just as it was intended but at the same time it really bothered you?

I’ve heard such stories and they bother me so much that I can’t stop thinking about them. Was it funny? Yes. Objectively so. But at the same time even as I heard it the first time, I just couldn’t help thinking…. if I were the subject of the story… it would be sooo painful. Not funny at all really. I think it might be the kind of experience that if I experienced a few such experiences it might make me change my perspective on life, change my opinions about reality. And that only makes me wonder more at why the story is being told to me. Is the speaker asking my tacit approval for the telling of the tale? Does the teller suspect the tale is hurtful to the subject but doesn’t understand rationally how it could be so and is asking for my opinion? Or is the teller just trying to get other people to admit that it s funny so he or she can feel better about the telling? Or is it for none of those reasons but just a funny tale that came to mind, shared because it was thought that it would bring a moment of humor and joy to the conversation. The speaker could not have known that I would be a person who would be hurt were that story told about me.

The funny thing about funny stories is that the teller in striving to make them funny strives to sort of mute their emotional content. When we tell stories about embarrassing events even if they are stories about ourselves we don’t talk much about how embarrassed we were or how hurt or how hard it was. We just talk about how ironic the situation, how silly our choices are, were, etc. When we tell those stories about ourselves it is often a means of coming to grips with the experience, of reconciling our emotions with our reasoning. That way the story can become just a story and not as much a defining characteristic of ourselves. Indeed our coming to understand and acknowledge the events as being understandably humorous can become a defining characteristic of our growth into better people.

When we tell a funny story about others it is more difficult to discern the reason behind it. Sometimes it is to show off and feel superior to the subject of the story. Sometimes it is to illustrate something about the nature of the subject, maybe to help others understand that person. Sometimes it is told sympathetically in order to try and help the subject along in coming to grips with the story, to see the humor in it. Still other times, most of the time really, it is shear obliviousness of the emotional impact of the story on the subject. We just tell the story because we think it was entertaining and funny.

And most often, the subject laughs too and takes it with good spirit but on the inside that subject is deeply hurt both by being reminded of the events that hurt them in the first place and by the fact that the speaker is so ignorant and oblivious of their feelings on the matter. This can cause the humorous telling of a story to exacerbate someone’s healing process rather than help it along. The subject might even start to think that the speaker is giving this joke out of spite and become bitterly angry at the speaker but feel that he or she has no outlet with which to express that anger, no grounds upon which to base a defense or argument simply because the story is funny and the speaker hasn’t done anything wrong that could be argued against. What can the subject do, except swallow his or her pride and ignore it and hope that  it becomes less painful over time or that the teller might one day realize the pain they are causing the subject.

What can we storytellers do to prevent these awkward occurrences? Not much really except try and be observant of the impact the stories we choose, the subtle clues that someone might be hurt but trying not to be. We can try and pick the stories we tell as wisely as possible ever mindful that all words have the potential to do great harm, and apologize should we ever find that we have caused harm, even if we feel that harm might be for the subjects own good. When in doubt we can always ask if the subject minds our telling of this tale and talk about what the story means to that person with them. But of course that may not illicit a truthful response. The most important thing for the teller to realize that the harm caused by a story about a person, is as much that person’s responsibility as that of the teller. It is for them to come to grips with the events that hurt them so. All we storytellers can do is try and help in any way we can.

And what can we who have had the stories told do when we feel the stories being told about us are hurtful and bordering on cruelty? We can do a lot actually. We can be honest and tell the truth to the teller and maybe that will lead that person to be more understanding.  Barring that we can keep in mind that the teller most likely does not realize the impact their words are having on us and is not trying to be deliberately hurtful. We can try to steer the conversations away to things that we find more pleasant. We can even try to be a little more thick skinned and not worry so much and try and get over things faster. That last is the hardest I think, at least for me. I was the kid who hated watching the embarrasing parts on sitcoms. It felt so bad to me to imagine being so embarrassed. I wouldn’t want anyone making fun of me in such a situation. And yet, it was funny, and thus a valid subject of humor. A person should be able to take it in stride, right? A lesson easier said than learned.

It’s sort of strange that embarrassment is such all hallmark of humor in so many ways, especially in how it is portrayed on television in the form of reality tv shows and sitcoms. But maybe this is the way in which society tries to avoid these conflicts by providing lessons in becoming more thick-skinned by the experience of observation. If so, I think it is a pretty poor teaching mechanism. Only through real trials do we learn to face and grow from our experiences.

 

In transformers the major characters would consume these glowing cubes called “energon” which gives them the energy to face their enemies and makes them and their weapons more powerful. Energon is the most important force in the transformers universe and is the primary determinant of which side wins and which side loses in the great battle between autobots and decepticons.

We have something that serves a very similar function for we mere humans. It’s called caffeine. It comes in the form of tea, soda, coffee and energy drinks. And its pretty sick stuff. Especially the energy drinks and coffee. Both of which you consume pretty much just for the energy and not very much for any sense of refreshment or for the taste. And they are both big business. Sometimes it is even hard to navigate the great maze of how many different forms of these liquids out there there are to choose from.

I just could never get into coffee. It’s too much work. You gotta buy a special device to make and filters for it, it and you gotta add cream or milk or sugar, not too much and not too little to get it just to the point where you can enjoy it. What a pain in the butt. Usually when I drink coffee then it is premade from some store that specializes in it or I just drink it black. And I don’t like it in either case.

Energy drinks I have generally avoided, but I have experimented with them a little. They are really powerful and they really mess me up I think. I mean drinking like 3 quarters of an 8 ounce can throws my whole rhythm up. Sure I feel no need to sleep all night as a result, but still part of me feels tired. I can feel my mind working, fully active, but not working at 100% and degrading in functioning rapidly. I don’t get tireder just dumber. It feels pretty unpleasant to me. Worse is the next day when I find myself exhausted at the oddest times, like at 3 PM or something when I am usually pretty wide awake. I guess that’s pretty much when it starts to wear off.

But maybe that just means I need to find the right energy drink. I’ve only drank “red bull” before and that stuff is insanely expensive and really pretty must completely disgusting to me. Luckily it isn’t for the taste that anyone drinks this stuff. Still, I’d like to find one that tastes better and maybe is a little bit less effective. I don’t much like the idea of building up too much of an immunity to that level of energy augmentation too quickly. I’ve been pretty much immune to the level of caffeine in most normal sodas and teas for all my life. I mean I can’t remember pepsi or coke or even mountain dew ever keeping me awake or feeling more energized. It just doesn’t work for me. Truthfully I was pretty surprised the first time I drank an energy drink and realized that yeah this stuff really does work as advertised.

Here’s a website I found devoted to reviewing all kinds of different energy drinks. It may be interesting to those  like me looking for the right drink for them:

http://energy-drink-ratings.blogspot.com/

Honestly, the whole existence of this industry completely disturbs me. The idea that we as a species should struggle so hard to find ways to deprive ourselves of sleep is sort of absurd to me. And the use of it by some sort of forces its adoption by many because of the competitive nature of our social system. If you aren’t willing and able to pull all nighters on occasion you almost can’t compete. Someone dumber and less capable than you will accomplish more just by virtue of spending 20 more hours a week working than you do.

Maybe you tell yourself that they are trading short term success for their health, but it is small consolation. There’s no evidence most of these drinks are actually at all harmful, there’s only the intuition people have that messing with their biochemistry with augmenters of any kind can’t really be an entirely good thing.

But more than that, sleeping is one of the few simple pleasures that we don’t have to work for. We are lucky to get to do it every day, it just happens, and it feels good. It refreshes our mind, makes us more comfortable, less irritable, more alert, and generally happier.  Whether or not depriving yourself of a little sleep is at all physically harmful to you in the long term, it certainly doesn’t seem to me to be as pleasant a way to lead ones life.

Ah well I guess it doesn’t matter. I tell myself, just give up and drink the energon! If I don’t, I won’t be ready to face the decepticons when they show up. You know they’re drinking it.

This is an interesting quote in a book I am reading now on the very page that I just read:
“we might embody those qualities we desire to possess by embracing them, over and over, until the line between seeming and being is no more”

A nice sentiment of course given by a character who is a philosopher in the book. I believe in this.

But whenever I think along those lines, even though I believe it, I can’t help but wonder an itsy bit if maybe the line between seeming and being still exists in the end but rather only grows to “seem” as if it does not exist. Does that matter? Maybe not, but if it were the case it would “seem” awfully sad to me.

I wonder if there exists a kind of shouting range place. Basically it would be a place where you could pay to go and you’d travel out into the middle of no where in secret.  The place you would go would be somewhere beautiful and natural and with no other people for as far as you can see. No other people anywhere near where they could possibly hear you even if you shouted at the top of your lungs and let your word echo throughout the region. There’d just be no one there. No one could find you. Nothing. Just you.

And you could stay as long as you want and bring with you whatever you want, even whoever you want if you really want to spoil the solitude. But the main thing would be the true sense of absolute privacy and escape when you went there. Nothing you say would ever be recorded, analyzed, or examined unless something or someone you brought did those things.  So you could say anything. You could shout out all your angers and your fears, scream your rage, weap or pummel yourself. You could say things you wouldn’t ever say in real life, rehearse made up conversations that you wouldn’t want anyone to ever hear you say. You could do anything at all out there were only the world itself can see you without worrying about the consequences.  Nobody would ever know. Mostly you could just vent.

Is there such a thing? If not there ought to be. Really. You might argue that what’s the point. Anybody can just find a private place and do their venting.  Maybe where you live that’s possible, but around here is exceedingly unlikely. Everywhere you look there is the overwhelming pack of people . Every nook and corner of every park I’ve been through has filled with various people seeking a little bit of a reconnection with nature. Even if you go to the foresty camping grounds around here there are still always some other groups and families out and about camping. You may never actually run into them, but there’s a chance and that chance increases considerably if you happen to be shouting at the top of your lungs.

The key to the shouting range is that your privacy and anonymity would be guaranteed protected. You would know with absolute certainty that there is no one within the vicinity who could possibly hear what you have to say.

And you might say you can simulate the same thing with a kind of sound proof chamber which is the kind of thing that I am sure exists. But no.  I don’t think that’s the same at all. The feeling of being a part of nature is essential. Who really feels right shouting at a blank wall?  It wouldn’t make me feel better to do that. I’d just feel claustrophobic.

Maybe if you made the room into a giant interactive theater which would be projecting images of a beautiful isolated area complete with devices to emulate the sounds and smells and feel of the sun and breeze.

Even so I don’t think it would be the same. Everybody’d kind a know you were the in the chamber and have a sense of what you were doing. After you left people would ask questions. Also you’d have to wonder if the administrators of the experience are trustworthy or are they watching and recording and anlayzing whatever you are saying. Maybe they would even mean well, but it would ruin it to me.

Perhaps another option would be to develop some kind of portable device that works like an ipod only when you have this thing active anything you shout or say into it would not be heard from anywhere by anyone except yourself if you choose to put the earphones on while you are doing it..  So you could then find your own peaceful area that means something to you. A place to let off steam.

The problem is people would still pretty much know you are doing it if they saw you shouting into a device that is clearly not your phone. So we also develop some kind of holographic add on that can project a face as if you weren’t screaming even as you are. That might create some weird uses like people telling off  their boss or professor straight to their face without their professor or boss ever knowing the difference. I guess that’s a valuable add on but that’s not the point of the device and I wouldn’t really be interested in that part at all. Cheating at conversations isn’t the point. The point is rather to be able to relieve oneself of your haunting thoughts.

Anyway, so the shouting range seems like the best option to me. But I wonder if such a thing existed and I went there would I feel my concerns melt away in the vastness and beauty of the place I am in. Would I let it all go and just enjoy the peace and quiet and say nothing?  Or would I instead shout a truth tentatively at first but once I did the flood gates would open and I would scream and scream endlessly…

I wonder which. Since the shouting range doesn’t exist maybe I’ll never really find out and maybe that’s for the best. Still, I think if such a thing did exist I definitely need to go there.