YEAH! Thank you Christine!!!! YEEAHHH NOW I HAVE A NEW TEMPLATE!!!!!!!! OHH but the sad thing is that I have no clue how to edit the profile.. so now there's some weird weird stuff on it. Like Aries? I'm a SCORPIO:D haha. Wow. I'm so hopeless with blogging that it's unbelievable:D

haha tomorrow is a school holiday!!!! Followed by the weekend and two public holidays!!!!!!! AWESOME!!!! Chinese New Year!!! Oh yeah and HAPPY AUSTRALIA DAY!!!

(wow lots of CAPS) Life is strange. One minute you're hyper. The next minute you're pensive. Anyway, here's an essay I wrote last time... about life!!!! It's a few pages of pure crap... just because I was in one of those crazy pensive moods again...

Dominic stepped out of the car and stepped towards the railing that stood on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. He sighed softly and leaned over the railing, clasping his hands in front of him and resting his foot on the bottom rung. The wind was blowing and he could feel the chill seeking into his bones despite the jacket that draped over his shoulders. He squinted against the wind and looked at the waves crashing into the shore below him, clear and blue, shimmering under the sun. Closing his eyes, he let himself think.

It is not a perfect world that we live in. Everyone knows that, yet we do nothing to improve it. We live only once; one short chance to enjoy life for a few score years. But we waste it. Or at least many of us do. We spend most of our adult life working hard, working to earn more money. Working to earn more money so that we can live comfortably; live happily. Truly ironic. We spend so much time and effort working so hard without joy so that we can enjoy our lives. The trouble is, we spend so much time trying to be better than we are so that we can be happy, that we are unhappy most of the time, because we work too hard. Granted, there is nothing wrong with working to your utmost best. That’s a good thing. What’s not a good thing is to focus so much on succeeding; on being successful, that every single thing we do has to be for a purpose.

And this mentality is carried on to the younger generation. We are taught by those who are they themselves floundering in an empty void, unsure of what to do with lives, but to work and work and work. It is a chain cycle that never ends.

He ran a hand through his wavy brown hair, looking down at his clothes. He was wearing a suit. Black suit, black tie. He had just come from his mother’s funeral.

Just before we die, what is our last thought going to be? Will we mourn that we were not so successful as we could be? That we could have been more famous, richer? Or maybe we will repent, and regret all the days we that we spent worrying about not being the best, the richest- all those days we could have truly lived; all those days that we could have smiled, laughed, talked, and just plain lived.

His favourite book, ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’, lay on the back seat of the car parked on the road behind him. His best friend sat patiently inside, waiting.

‘Know how to die, and you will know how to live.’ His favourite ‘Morrie’ quote. He knew what the professor meant. He had seen his mother die. He had seen the power- hungry woman, the woman that had been in his life for fifteen years, but only really around for a year or so, succumb to cancer. He had barely talked to her, much less known her properly. The times that his mother did talk to him, was to complain about the society, or to scold him.

Complain about the society! How ironic. She complained that people were too aggressive, were too selfish, and would complain at every trivial thing. Strange thing for her to say. She, who had fired her secretary, just because she asked for more leave so she could care for her ailing child. She had said that her secretary had ‘got her priorities wrong’ and ‘was not responsible enough, nor trustworthy’.

He shifted his foot uncomfortably, and pulled his jacket collar closer together. He bent his head and started at his suede shoes. He suddenly felt sick of the world, sick of the way that humans live.

What would a perfect world be, then? Is there really such thing as a perfect world? Hardly. Perhaps we can start out living in a perfect world, but we, homo sapiens, are born with the ability to adapt. The only problem is that we all end up adapting the world to our needs, and not adapting to the world. As humans we are born with the desire for more, we will not be happy staying stagnant at one place. We will want to improve our living conditions. But that is just the problem. We want to improve our living, physical conditions; to fulfil our need for more material things. But in doing this, we forsake our happiness. Our price for a better physical life is our pure soul.

Everyone has experienced great joy at some point or another, the rare joy that makes you feel like everything is perfect; makes you yell and shout in joy. The happiness that engulfs your soul, and is the most beautiful thing that you have ever experienced. Such joy that is impossible to describe because you feel it in your heart, your soul. What if that joy was our way of life?

Dominic reached a hand up, unconsciously rubbing a scar that stretched along the side of his mouth.

What drives people to fight? To battle? To make war? War has always been around. Perhaps right in the beginning of human life, there was peace between all. But somehow, something came between them, and the first war began, to far back in time to be recorded. Maybe it was for a territory, and if so, then the tempting fingers of power had already reached out and dealt its first blow on man. War now is mostly caused by the fight for power.

Why is power so tempting? Why do people always seek to be better than others, to succeed, to be the best, the most powerful? Suppose we imagine power as a person. Does that not mean that power itself is the most powerful? Power corrupts people, drawing them ‘into their service’, it is as if people are working for Power, to gain power.

He looked down once more at the beach. It was devoid of human life, but certainly not of life. Seaweed clung to the shore where the waves burst out onto the sand. At the bottom of the cliff that he was standing on was a beautiful array of wild flowers, leaning in the wind. Here and there, a few bushes stood out against the soft, white sand. Rocks adorned the beach, and plants grew on these rocks. You could barely discern the crabs that scuttles to and fro on the sand from such a distance, indeed they looked like little moving dots.

Sometimes we even believe that we can conquer Mother Nature; that Mother Nature is adapting to us and not the other way around. We think ourselves fit to be the rulers of the Earth; that nothing can take us down or destroy us. We change the face of the Earth- we destroy plants, cut down trees, we even use natural things as a lure for tourism. But we are deceived. The Earth belongs to Mother Nature, not to us. When natural disasters strike, we are powerless, hopeless against Mother Nature’s wrath. We are but tiny, insignificant ants that teeter on the brink of death. We are nothing in the face of nature. And yet, even more ironically, with our activities to the Earth’s surface, we cause more of these natural disasters to happen- disasters which we can never be sufficiently prepared for.

His pocket beeped. He rifled through his pockets and retrieved his mobile phone. He fingered it, and spun it around with his long, slender fingers. He had the sudden wild temptation to fling it down below. He could imagine his hand drawing back, then letting go. It was another of those times that he came so close to succumbing to temptation, where he nearly crossed the line of what was sane, and insane.

Technology. A ‘must-have’ in today’s world. After all, who could live without phones, or computers or televisions? But humans had lived without it before, and they survived. After all, how would they know what they were missing, if they had not even known that there would ever be such things? Power has led to the desire, the thirst for more things-more inventions, like computers, televisions, electricity itself. It is not war that has led to this, but more power in itself. In other words, the belief that we human beings can conquer anything; can achieve anything we want to. Everyone depends on technology now. There is rarely a household that is without a phone, or a computer.

Perhaps in the future, war will be fought by computers. Perhaps the world will be run on computers, and the most dastardly weapon would be sending computer viruses from one computer to another. That would be how war is fought. And since people depend on computers, mankind will fail, and the world would crash down upon our very heads.

He rubbed his finger along the metal railing.

What would the world be like, in a few hundred thousand years? What would happen to the cities, teeming with life? Would they disappear? Would the world return to its original state, as it was before mankind arrived? That would be ironic: that man’s attempt to improve man’s life was actually the cause of the downfall of man.

Plants had been stripped away. Buildings had been built. Computers had been invented. Yet, after all that hard work, the Earth would return to its original state. Long before man had roamed the Earth, back to the age where animals thrived. Would that be mankind’s fate?

Maybe it was meant to be such. Perhaps man should have left the world as it was, where plants grew and thrived. Perhaps man were meant to adapt to the surrounding, instead of the Earth being cut down to adapt to man.

He shook his head slightly. No, he was thinking too far ahead. Mankind’s time would come, but it would not be now. Now was the time to live, the time to enjoy ourselves, to be happy, and to be who we want to be.

Someone touched his shoulder lightly. Billy, his best friend, smiled at him warmly.

‘Dominic? We should get going,’ he said softly. He nodded in reply, before following him back to the car.

Yes, now is the time to live. The world may not be perfect, but we can make it happy. We can live, with friends, with family, and with love. That is the only way to live. Friends and family are most important. It is with them that we feel those short bursts of pure joy, when we laugh, smile, grieve and celebrate together. It is with them that we enjoy our short lives on Earth. Perhaps sometimes it is better to let things happen, and not to worry about what will happen to us. We live our life as it goes by, as happily and lovingly, as we can. And we cannot expect to solve all the problems in the world, because of who we are. It is our human nature to wish to be better, to improve our lifestyle. Maybe it is just better to live our lives best as we can in this world that will never change, to change everything to our advantage.

Yes, mankind can detest one another; can kill one another; be prejudiced against one another. But mankind can also love each other, cherish each other, live happily… together.

What will our choice be? To embroil ourselves in being the best, but lonely, and forlorn? Or to live and love? Because we know, that what matters most is in our heart, and not what achievements we hold dear in our heart.

END

We have the craziest amount of projects ever. bleaugh

~Fin~