Clear your damn eyes and see the world

I've always tried my hardest to not close myself to the world. I have seen a million people trapped by their processes each day, and I have always pushed myself to never settle into a groove.

I wish I could say, "Gosh I used to be so ignorant". I wish I could flaunt a moment of realization that changed my world. Instead, I am forced into a pattern of learning in which my own curiousity and realization of my own foolishness is constantly mocked by slaps in the face.

I never claim to know anything, yet it feels like I am being forcefully taught of my own ignorance. I never feel particularly in control, yet it feels like I am being stripped of whatever control I had. I rarely get ingrained in my own plans, yet it seems like I am being taught to not plan. Its all pretty confusing, and I feel like I am in a classroom where the teacher confuses me for another student, yet liberally forces lessons on me anyway, even though I obviously don't need them.

However, the paradox lies in the fact that I obviously don't need them. I pride myself in being open minded, flexible, willing to learn. So, if I think I am those things, than I obviously need to be taught that I am not. Its all so high school philosophy.

In this mindset, I am able to sit still and listen to the lessons as they either violently break my ribs until I am coerced into listening or they casually glide past my ears, gone forever if I don't particularly care to listen.

In the most confusing book in the entire Bible, Job gets his life shitted upon in a seeming cosmic oneupmanship between God and Satan. No human can claim to understand this, and I think this is entirely the way it should be. In the end of the book, when Job shockingly wonders why God did what he did, God basically showers the most kickass metal lyrics upon Job's frail ears about his indomitable creation, and taunts Job because Job doesn't do anything nearly as cool as command the oceans, or order Behemoths.

The book of Job has always pissed me off. It still does, and it always will. But I still read it and it invigorates me with awe for God. I cannot claim to have a special understanding or explanation of the book, other than it is a visceral, upsetting description of man's pitiful stature compared to God. One of the phrases God repeats before his verbal smackdown of Job is, "brace yourself like a man". I always took this to mean, "be a MAN, stick out your chest! Be a tough guy and take this whippin!". The most recent time I read this, I realized that maybe this wasn't what is meant at all. Maybe it means, "brace yourself, brace yourself like a frail little grasshopper clinging to a leaf in a tornado, brace yourself like a sparrow weathering a hurricane, brace yourself like Little Mac controlled by a first time player against Mike Tyson in Punchout! Brace yourself like a pathetic little lump of humanity against God, Brace yourself like a man".

Finally? I learn that man is pathetic and always vulnerable to immediate annihilation by any number of a thousand forces. In this epiphany, that man is unbelievably weak, is the path to man becoming stronger, wiser, more mature.