Yes-in-fucking-deed!

It's true, humans can truly be happy. I am sure of it; I think it's happened to me. 

'Things' aren't going to be great for many of us humans, and especially never all at the same time, but there comes a point where many of big 'things' are going wonderfully...so much that, it snubs all the lesser-negatives. 

Right now in my continual bliss, I have realized just how unhappy and unsatisfied I had been. I can see that now because of how positive and content I am with 'things' today. How did I get there? I don't know, piss off. I don't have answers. I tried to stay as optimistic as I could and just kept fighting the good fight. Due-diligence and part-and-parcel efforts to get what I wanted. Maybe that's the formula?

What I do know, is that I can't give myself much of the credit. In life, there is good fortune and serendipity that create successes, but can we attribute so much of it to that? Is some of it God? Is it just arbitrary blessings? Is it all God? I also know that as a rational human being, good things happening in my life make me feel happiness, and indeed, that is happening. But what I am finding now is that I feel this awe and gratitude for everything in my life--both positive and negative. If I am happy not only in my emotions, but in my heart, then I feel like by default I have to attribute it to something bigger and unfathomable. If I am thankful for the obstacles and struggles that I face, something seemingly non-human has changed in my logic. I then find it not only necessary as a Christian, but very reasonable as a human to give credit and praise to God for the blessings that I have.

United States of Effing America

This is what America's first team of players was like. No, better yet, this is what God's first team looked like. A 6-4-3 double play was the likes of a ground ball to John Jay, flip to Pat Henry, and a hard throw to a splits-stretched George Washington. John Adams had a cannon for an arm in right Field. Once they tested his arm against Brigadier General Henry Knox's artillery, and having out-gunned Knox's 12lber cannons, Adams was commissioned to lob cannon balls in the Battle of Yorktown, single-handedly earning America the victory.

I challenge you to prove me wrong. Tom Jefferson threw more no-no's than Declarations of Independence. Ben Franklin caught more games than French whores, and yes, they did start the game of baseball with the Designated Hitter. Why? Because they knew it would yield a better fan-base and generate more offense. How did they know? See Above--God ordained them to play this way. Paul Revere could smash. He whipped more home runs in a season than ponies at the break of dawn on April 7, 1775.

I bet you didn't know that actually Alex Hammy killed Aaron Burr in the famous duel...between double headers no less. That day, Alex robbed Aaron Burr of a potential home run, then robbed him of his life. It was little known until now that Jim Madison and Tom Paine formed the 4 and 5 hitters of the lineup, earning themselves the nickname duo of "MadPaine" because of their relentless onslaught of both insane banter and pamphleteering during games. Once in international play, they killed an entire British Redcoat ball club in front of a sold-out crowd in Leeds, England by cramming paper down their throats one by one...after hitting 8 home runs each. 

So there I was...

Me: A serious question: Do you believe in destiny?  Fate?  Or just something that YOU are meant to do or become?  Let’s hear it!

Her: I still battle with this…But believing in destiny is absolutely just as irrational from an intellectual point of view as believing in God or in anything outside what you can physically see or experience. But if I didn't believe in either of those things, I would have to believe that my life were an arbitrary/coincidental/accidental occurrence. And I can't imagine why I would have my personality and my soul and my way of thinking if it weren't in order to fill some role that I am meant to. It's sort of like that Einstein quote about there being two ways to view the world: as if everything is a miracle, or as though nothing is. I don't know for sure, Ryan, but I am willing to bet on the first. Your turn! What do you think about all of that?

Me:  I differ on the perspective that it has to be either of two ways.  You, and many other minions, refer to the fallacy that something is irrational because it is not tangible.  Ask yourself anthropologist Jr., is it really irrational if human beings all around the world share the common notion that there is something bigger and more sacred than themselves?  That there are places where our ancestors and loved ones go?  Is that ignorant and irrational if there perhaps is a complex in our brain that wires us to imagine such a thing?  I think even atheists want to believe in something, they just need more proof.  I do not think that everything happens for a reason, but I feel that there are currents and flows that lead in a deterministic kind of way.  I don't know if we have destinies, and I'm glad that I don't know; it leaves more room for free will, but at the same time encourages the fact that we may have the ability to be parts of something significant.  And I think that is what humans want.  We want our lives to be significant...that our struggles, works, and experiences matter...to know we left a mark.  This ties back into the belief in something that you can't see, because since most of us are unsure that we are significant while we are living on earth, we hope that there is something beyond us that will resonate and give us the ability to look back and see that we did matter.  

Her: Wouldn't it be sort of nicer if everything were already set in some semblance of a plan? I'm on a date with Library, and this existential crisis is distracting me. 

I can most certainly see "destiny" from your perspective. Especially in terms of the idea of deterministic currents and flows... I don't mean to say that I think every little thing in my life is laid out in some master plan. Of course I can choose what I do on a day-to-day basis... but there's so much we don't have control over. Like, for example, the fact that we exist in the first place. I didn't choose to be here, and no one even told me why I am! But that doesn't change the fact that I am. So that tells me that I'm not the one calling the shots on a the most fundamental level. Which is in large part why I believe in God.
I don't disagree with you that it is part of the human ego to want to be significant and to feel the need to invent the notion of a "purpose" in life. However, in terms of our individual personalities and roles in the lives of others... I feel like everyone in my life has taught me specific things at specific times...  of course that could just be in retrospect that I can assign a role to all of them. But at the very least I think we choose our paths and tend to gravitate toward people on similar paths.  

Also, in nature there is order. Everything is logical and symbiotic on some scale, but sometimes it takes a microscope or an aerial view to see the way things fit together. We're just not able to see exactly how we fit into the grand scheme of things... and therein lies the futile quest to understand it all.
I think the reason I'm a pretty happy person is that on the whole, I think that what we do in life isn't nearly as important as how we do those things. So I try and make my "purpose" to live gratefully and be as kind to others as I can. And that's enough for me. 

Me: Everything you said is wrong.

Her: You just made me laugh out loud on my "date" and now some Asians are staring at me. 

Me: I like the way you think...yet you ran laps around my question without answering it. Do you believe that a person is meant for something or no? A destiny? I like your moral take, but are we just shaped by our experiences in our lives for anything? Or something in particular?

Her: To answer your question, I think we are meant to be the sort of people that we are, and then we decide what to do with that. And that's where a purpose comes along. I suppose that we decide whether to really make use of our lives or not. But the anthropologist in me wonders, would I be saying any of this if I were one of the first Homo sapiens just trying to survive and not get eaten by a lion? Probably not. But then again, life was simpler back then in the good old days.