Friday 12 November 2004

Pic of the day: Satisfying oneself, when compared to a more meaningful encounter, is revealed to be inferior. At least in the anime Narue no Sekai.

Somewhat like masturbation

No, this entry is not about masturbation. I color it yellow anyway because it presupposes at least a theoretical knowledge of masturbation, which is inappropriate if you are a child or a Southern Baptist. I don't really think you need to have the practice.

I was too sick to go to work today. Even now, my throat is covered with a thin dry crust every some minutes, which I then have to cough up. I guess the infection is moving on to its last stage, but it is a creepy one. I have a certain anxiety about things that impede my breath, because of my childhood's asthma. So, "excuse the gloom". (I forgot who said that. Oh wait. It was the beginning of the intro movie to Daggerfall. Perhaps not so very deep wisdom after all, but eerily appropriate to the topic.)

In the afternoon I got me to the physiotherapy, though, and also stocked up on fresh food. But that's not the point. The writing is the point, and the computer games. In this case, City of Heroes, since I mostly soloed. Well, duoed with myself (I have two accounts, so I can team up two characters at a time).

***

Playing City of Heroes is fun. The imaginary city has an abundance of villains, starting with simple street hooligans threatening innocent bystanders or nabbing their purses. I have never liked bullies, so it is my pleasure to flatten them, over and over again. It feels good. But the sad truth is that out there in the real world, the real bullies keep bullying. Even though it feels good to beat up imaginary thugs, nothing comes from it. Somewhat like masturbation, don't you think? I am basically satisfying my own urges, only this is the urge for justice rather than for sex.

I also thought about my novel. I am still typing at it now and then, although I am not quite to 20 000 words. So finishing the quota is not exactly certain. But, I think to myself, does it really matter? Even though I am uploading it in PDF and HTML format, it's not likely that anyone else will read it. The others are writing their own novels, and have no more time to read mine than I have to read theirs. Anyway, writing a novel that no one reads ... Somewhat like masturbation, don't you think?

Yeah, you can think of NaNoWriMo as practice for the real thing, but you can think of masturbation that way too. I am sure thousands and thousands of young Christians have thought that way. But there comes a point when one realizes that I am not going to make anyone happy this way, except possibly myself, and even then not a lasting happiness. I guess I haven't yet realized that when it comes to writing. Not with my heart.

Yeah, I actually have a message. But I could probably write the entire message on a single page. The rest is just me fooling around with my characters, or they with me.

I like chapter 13 though, which I am writing now. Rita is kinda funny in a childlike way. She may be smart but not particularly mature even for a 13 year old. Her mother, however, sure is mature. (Then again she is 89. It doesn't make sense unless you know the story.) The mother defined love for her in this chapter. You guys (well, two of you I think) probably remember that I have written about the nature of love from time to time, at least three entries over these 6 years. But I totally missed the obvious, which this imaginary character explained without hesitation:

Love is when you want good things to happen to another.
Hate is when you want bad things to happen to them.

The most common, of course, is "neither of the above". The most common is to Just Not Care. We generally don't lose any sleep over strangers who die screaming, as long as they don't do it on our doorstep. This makes sense, because there are well over 6 billion people, and none of us could possibly carry them all (or even 6 thousand of them) in our heart. That's why even God told his people to love their neighbor, rather than the whole world. Of course, if everyone loves all their neighbors, and the neighbors love their neighbors again, then (disregarding some rather large bodies of water and such) the whole world would eventually be loved.

But that's not how it works. We don't quite love our neighbor like ourselves. When the neighbors don't live up to our standards, we stop loving them. When we ourselves don't live up to our standards, we quietly adjust the standards, or even more quietly just forget the whole episode. But loving just ourselves, that's somewhat like masturbation, isn't it?