One of My All-Time Favorite Poems

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

-Sara Teasdale

A Brother's Advice

One day, my older brother was giving me a ride somewhere. It was a few years ago, but the memory is incredibly vivid. He suddenly pulled over, turned off the gas, and looked at me. It was a bit random, and I was very funcuzed.
Then he turned to me, his huge blue eyes piercing right through my body. "Let me give you a piece of advice," he said.
This was all very weird, because he's not the "let's randomly have a really deep conversation" type. At first, i thought he was about to crack some sort of joke (he does do that a lot.)
"Seriously," he continued, a bit awkwardly, his hands still gripping the steering wheel, "if you never remember a single other word i say, just remember this: If you are feeling so low down, so lost, if you feel that things can't possibly get any worse, then they have to start getting better."
It seems like a simple statement, but it's not. it is something so profound, so uplifting, that i have found myself returning to this memory again and again, every time i'm feeling down.

because it gives me hope.

my brother has gone through a whole lot. i'm not going into details, of course, but trust me on this one. on that car ride, i suddenly glimpsed the one thought that kept him going throughout it all. my brother is strong. this is why.
"if things can't get any worse, they have to start getting better."
I'm an optimist at heart, but sometimes, when you're lost in the darkness, it's easy to give up. but whenever i return to my brother's words, i feel renewed strength. it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes of all time:

"WHEN IT GETS DARK ENOUGH, YOU CAN SEE THE STARS."

-LEE SALK

Until

Until all hate, war, prejudice, jealousy, racism, and injustice are eradicated, we cannot call ourselves civilized.

Smart People

We are humans.
Well, at least i'm a human, and i'm assuming you are, too. but on this blog, you never know, so maybe i shouldn't generalize.
anywho, so humans have been around for a while, and we've learned how to do pretty incredible things. i mean, look around you! look at all this incredible technology we have!
We've acquired knowledge. we, well, we know how to do stuff. lots of stuff.
And what have we done with all of this information we have? Made the world a better place? made sure everyone was happy? eradicated crime? and poverty? and injustice?
yeah, right.
the single thing that we humans do best is kill eachother. it used to be, if you wanted to kill someone, you had to go over to him and run him through with a sword. no longer. we're not in the Dark Ages anymore! we're sophisticated now! civilized! we would never look a fellow human in the eye, then spear him. of course not! we wouldn't dream of it. that is savage behavior.
Now, all we have to do is press a button. we see a distant cloud of smoke on the horizon. we don't look a man in the eye, or see his body lying on the floor. we don't even hear a scream.
But we just wiped out an entire city.
Nowadays, we have the power to destroy our entire planet. we have the knowledge to crush continents.
it's kind of sad, don't you think? we have so much knowledge. there's so much we can be doing with it, and yet...this is where it brought us. to destruction. the poisoning of the planet and the genocide of the people. this is where all of our brilliant minds and incredible inventions and vast knowledge has brought us.
You know, instead of spending so many millions of dollars sending men to the moon and putting robots on mars, i think we should be a little more concerned with finding intelligent life on this planet.

Another little thing to ponder

Do we make the choices we make because of our personalities?
Or are our personalities defined by our choices?
That is, does what we do define who we are?
And if it doesn't, what does?

Quote of the Day

"I CAN'T GO BACK TO YESTERDAY-

I WAS A DIFFERENT

PERSON THEN."

- LEWIS CARROL

WE CAN'T CHANGE THE PAST.

BUT WE CAN

CHANGE THE

FUTURE.

P.S. Please check out my latest comment on the previous post.