Denmark's a prison

As I was reading Act II, I was struck by how archetypal Hamlet is in terms of adolescent emotion. He exhibits many of the same teenage angst type feelings that modern teens do. For example, he gloomily tells his friends, "Denmark's a prison." He goes on to complain about how it is so confining and how it is the worst place in the world. With a Shakespearean translator, Hamlet would sound just like many modern teens. This shows that as time changes, human emotion, and even human nature, does not. Human nature remains static throughout changes in language, culture, and knowledge. We are inseparably attached to our basic nature just as we are attached to our arms and legs. For this reason, I often find myself believing that things such as murder and war are not a result of society's influence, but rather an inevitable consequence of being human.

Gandhi and Hitler

This week, I ended my essay on law asking the reader, "Is pursuing one's individual moral or religious law justified if it comes at the expense of others?" I spent most of my essay looking at sources that said that religious law was supreme, and at the end I brought up this question. However, although I intended the question to be for the reader, I was also asking myself the same question. Sometimes I think that "you should do what is right," but "right" is only a subjective notion. People rarely agree on what is true or right. Furthermore, even if one believes that it is absolutely right to do something, it can easily come at the cost of hurting others. As Mary Stange said, terrorists do what they think is right, just as Gandhi, Hitler, and Martin Luther King Jr. did, too.

Ants

As I sat outside desperately trying to think of what to write, hoping the quiet midday suburban atmosphere could stimulate some ideas, I was distracted by a single dominating thought: ants. The ants fascinated me. I watched they scuttled across the rough dirt terrain, on a journey to a destination unknown to me. I contemplated terrorizing them with my imaginary rifle known as my index finger. My finger's shadow overtook them as i steadied my weapon. The targets were centered in my crosshairs, and the barrel was loaded. All was in place, and I was about to pull the trigger, but then I hesitated. I pulled back, and struck by an epiphany, I thought about how much we are like ants.

Ants live in communities together, depend on each other for survival, and work together to achieve common goals. They perform acts for one another that could best be described as altruistic. Ants are also incredibly intelligent. They never fail to find their way back home despite my finger wiping out the scent trail they follow. Also, they probably do not realize that they are just a small piece in the puzzle of the world.

After watching them for a while, I had my eyes set on this one ant set apart by a distinctive bright red slash against his abyssal black abdomen. I started thinking about how much I do not want to be an ant. Despite their phenomenal performance as a community, I could not find a trace of substantial individuality even with my ant. They all conformed to a single path, both physically and mentally. As a society, they shared the same goals and the same pathways to that goal. Although I almost changed my opinion upon finding him wandering alone, he quickly regained his sense of direction and headed towards the others. I empathized with him (yes, an ant) as I often feel bound to a prescribed path as well. Just as the ant, i feared that the consequences of being an individual would be getting lost, being alone, and having to survive.

Suddenly, I felt invigorated by the idea of freedom. I cradled my red-tattooed ant into the palm of my hand, ran to the other side of my yard, and then carefully let it down on top of a rock. I felt empowered, almost even obligated, to do something about my constriction after watching the jailed existence of the ants, so I set him free. Hopefully he would feel the same.

The Middle

I scanned the surrounding area. I looked left and right, up and down, and that's when I saw it. Suddenly, my excitement deflated like a loose balloon, and I was left with a flat, lifeless feeling weighing down on me. Somewhere along the way, I had made a mistake. The error devastated me; two 9s in the same box, and I felt that my efforts to complete the Sudoku puzzle were now fruitless.

I was frustrated. I felt that all that time I had spent trying to solve it was all for nothing. I had trekked and climbed and struggled, yet in the end I never reached the peak. I fell. Simple as that. However, something weird happened. The sudden flood of disappointment I felt after knowing I failed was only knee-high. Above that, I felt...happy.

Why? Because of the journey. It was about the excitement and the fun in simply doing it. Every time I accomplished something, I was overcome by a rush of happiness. It isn't about reaching the destination, but rather the the journey to get there. In the end we all fall from the mountain, we all die. We choose how magnificent or meaningless our falls are through the paths we take. What matters is the journey of our existence, not just the end of it.