Karma

I have three major personal philosophies.
Two of them I am aware of.
The first has to do with the general tendency to analyze and judge categorically, this being inversely relative to the expanding human consciousness. I’ll go into that later.

The second, and probably the most pertinent on a daily basis, deals with process.
If there is one thing I’ve noticed in moving through time, it is that nothing begins and ends at the same moment. We never remember the exact beginning or the exact ending of an event - it is what leads to these beginnings and ends (which for the purpose of my thought are one and the same) that makes a point in life memorable. Try and think of a single moment in your life that you remember clearly. Immediately, one tends to wonder why one remembers it.
It is part of our inquisitive nature as humans; I like to think of that curiosity as a subset of this philosphy, because that is what drives these automatic reactions. I remember reading Sophie’s World (an excellent book if you ever get the chance to pick it up); there was a part in which an object is rolled through the room towards a cat, who immediately locks onto the object and watches where it goes next. A different form of curiosity; humans see an object roll into the room and, as the book notes, look to the object’s origin and not its destination. This is why history is necessary to us, why science looks to debunk the whole thing, and why so many look to faith: we need an explanation of the process. Simple answers like “We are alive, and that is all” are not enough.
Life is about process.
The most important part of this, though, is far more personal. We measure our life in terms of experiences, not necessarily in knowledge gained. It is a strange phenomenon in adults, however, that when we reach a certain age, we feel the need to pass on what we have accumulated so far to the generation below us in the hopes that perhaps they will not have to go through things in the same manner we did. What we forget is the importance of process in that child’s life. The answer will not be enough for such a young and inquisitive mind, and we are hard pressed to explain the sequence that led to these conclusions, especially when it may seem different in retrospect than it did at the time. Memorable events are going to have a larger impact on a child than simply delivered answers that were perhaps not what they meant to ask for.
Children are simply an example, really, of a more over-reaching idea. In modern Western society, we are very individualistic and goal-oriented. Often we lose sight of what we go through in between until much, much later. So my philosophy of process is, I suppose, to gain as much from the process as you might from the end result; or perhaps, to be careful about taking the process for granted.

The third philosophy is a mystery to me, at least so far. I like to think that in a roundabout way, this alludes to my belief that not everything must be explained or understood; and I can accept this, which further indicates that it’s alright, and perhaps it isn’t necessary anyway.

I always feel the need to defend my philosophies against nihilism for some reason. I suppose it’s because as I write and attempt to debunk any questions that one might have about what I am writing, the first objection to leap to mind is “Well bugger all then, we can just leave things be and not bother doing anything, is that it?” This is not necessarily so. I suppose it could be in the harshest of interpretations, but one would be missing the point.
One misses out on a lot by simply disengaging and assuming the world has nothing to do with them. Above all else, without ourselves, how would we appreciate anything?

I feel like I’ve been losing track. I haven’t been writing much, and what I have written seems shallow and less connected. I keep looking to the world for inspiration in case something jumps out at me. Nothing lately has. But honestly, something has been irking me for a while. It is another church sign, though from a different church this time. It reads:
"WAL-MART ISN’T THE ONLY SAVING PLACE"
You may read this and wonder why it bothers me. I’m rather obviously not Christian, and never even in my discussion of religion have I lauded the sacred necessity of being "saved". But somehow, this sign seems to be in terribly poor taste. It has been up for a long time now, and perhaps no one has complained about it. Maybe it’s because enough Christians shop at Wal-Mart to see the connection and find it funny. It’s a connection I don’t see, and I don’t find it funny - I find it tacky. Saving a few cents on poorly made items in a work environment where its employees are unfairly compensated and the business is drowning out other local family-owned businesses doesn’t seem to fall in line, anywhere, with the Salvation in the Christ. If, in order for people to make the memory connection to their place of worship, it is necessary to call upon an infamously cheap chain retailer, inadvertently (?) advertising for them at the same time, then our nation’s poison commercialism has reached a new level of saturation. Of course, it’s not like this honestly means anything to me; I’m not looking for a church, and I don’t need to confirm my personal beliefs against those people. But it seems to me that a person’s theistic perspective should be something that is not only personal to them, but remains "sacred", if you will. In that way, a sign like this is twisted and insulting.