Vivat Libertas

Why do I try to be a good person, even if I frequently fail? It's a question I frequently ask myself - but why should I be asking myself at all? Shouldn't I be secure in the knowledge that I am  trying? Is my questioning a sign that I'm a bad person? I don't know - but what I do know is that I question myself to find reasons for things, to help me understand myself a bit better and to clear up the murky waters of my mind. And I suppose I'm questioning myself, too, to prove something to myself - to prove that my motives are pure. Maybe I will succeed in that, maybe I won't. I don't know; this is mainly a thought exercise. I know what aren't  my motives, though... 1. I don't try to be a good person because I get off on the warm, fuzzy feelings.  Well, to be honest, I do  get off on the warm, fuzzy feelings I get when helping someone else out - but that's not my motive to be a good person. It's a nice...a nice side-effect, if you will, but...

Apparently, ideas are dangerous. In a way it sort of makes sense; an idea is, essentially, a plan or model for doing something. If that plan or model is developed and then carried out, it could...ahem...upset people, from the grey shades too frightened of change to even consider it to the people who have vested interests in resisting certain changes. And ideas are intangible, so (the line of reasoning goes) you can't kill them/evict them/whatever the slogan is at the moment. "Books, pamphlets, newspapers, plays are burned" Pardon my cynicism and my bad language, but bollocks to that. (Actually, that's probably an insult to bollocks.) Ideas can and will die; people are silenced or killed, or they simply change their minds. Books, pamphlets, newspapers, plays are burned, locked away, or forgotten; people, too, forget, as do ages. Music dies and disintegrates. Art fades. Maybe some future generations happen to chance upon those ideas, but few seriously revive the...

Call me a dirty hippie (actually, on second thoughts, don't - I wash and your insult just makes you look like an idiot), but I love nature, and it is there I feel happiest and most at peace. I remember when I was young my parents and I would frequently go to parks, or, if I'm honest, they would drag me there. There's a park within walking distance of my house, too, where I sometimes go just to take a walk or to lose myself in a book, and where my dad and I used to fly kites when I was a child. Besides, I've never liked pootling around settlements or sunning myself on the beach with other people as much as I've liked pottering around in the middle of nowhere, without a person to be seen. I suppose it was only after trying to kill myself for the second time that I really began to appreciate nature; I would have a stroll in the park and just admire the sun shining through the leaves of a tree or striking the surface of a pond. To me, nature is so much more beauti...