Wednesday, August 12, 2009

perception, reality, and mind wandering

Thursday, January 18, 2007

weeelll... my mind is racing and it's about 6:01pm. Watching the news last night, they said something about less people dying from cancer. though at first blush this might come off as good news, I couldn't help but to ask myself... is this a victory or some false sense of security? I'm not trying to be a pessimist here but people not dying from cancer just might be dying from other ailments, or we might be keeping them alive (technically speaking that is) on funky machines. and alive by funky machine is not "alive" in my book. So what exactly did they mean on the news when they said that there are less deaths from cancer this year than ever before?? Aisha will never know b/c Aisha has A.D.D. and stopped watching the news immediately thereafter, lol...

and on to my next thought...

So while yapping with misse, she was telling me about her selfish desire to have children so as to have adequate support when she is in her old age. I think she admitted that it was a selfish reason to want to procreate, so no issue there... What I took issue with was the fact that she used an old couple that didn't have any kids as her example of some dark future she wanted to avoid. the uncertainty of their safety, their vulnerability in their old age are what bothered her... but while she was explaining their life to me, all I could think of was how glorious that sounded. Two people in their late 90's, still married, living on their own, both blind as bats, but together and still kicking - that's hot. I understand that at this point they are probably still together based off necessity, but does that matter really? No one stays madly in love forever anyways... At some point the butterflies get fat, lazy, old and die, so something else - whether it be companionship, comfort or sheer dependency - must kick in to keep them together. Misse reasoned that if they had children, they wouldn't be so vulnerable - vulnerable to what I ask? - to the potential of being robbed, raped, maimed, killed, etc... OK, but that's an outsider's perception of some other person's reality. It's almost like going to some untouched paradise, and feeling sorry for the man who lives off the fruit and vegetables that he reaps from the toil of his own land - "he's so poor, he has to grow his own food! Let's do him a favor and build a walmart in his neighborhood..." - maybe I'm a bit odd for comparing walmart to procreation, but then again, I don't want kids... that's all for now.

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