"I think, therefore I am." -René Descartes

My flight was canceled – again – and the recommended next booking is Tuesday. This gave me plenty of time to return a movie I had rented, Little Man Tate, as suggested by my boss. Given the blizzard, there were few people outside, and even fewer cars, and I had a chance to enjoy the serene beauty of a nigh silent, white world.

And it reminded me of how far we have come as a people. Mother nature throws one of her challenges at us, again – a blizzard which drowns animals in over a foot of ice and snow, and continues to rain down chilled feelings for an illusory eternity. A display which tests the survival of Earth’s creatures, halts the movement of water, and obstructs the path of all that flee, and, yet, we see it as only an annoyance – an inconvenience. Man does not fret or flee, he does not stockpile food for his survival, he does not shell himself for months until the cold departs. Man simply turns a dial which uses the very forces of nature against herself and warms the shelter he has built from the materials she has also provided. Man simply adorns an extra layer of animal skin or carefully woven plant fiber and walks his usual, daily path. Man simply takes his needs from a giant warehouse of food without worry, stress, or doubt. Survival is not in question.

Such capacity is a testament to our species – to what it means to truly be a man. A true man looks a raging maelstrom in the eye and smiles when others organisms would flee in terror. He smiles because he knows that the maelstrom rages because it is afraid. It knows that its might will be free only until man chooses to bend its will towards his end. There is no question, only inevitability. A true man bends the will of the world around him as he walks the Earth. His head will never permanently bow to any element this universe commands.

A piece of my daily inspirations comes from this immense potential and responsibility. I am a man. I am a representative of this species. I will not dishonor such a proud line of creatures through a life of lazy pleasures; I will exist such that any who look upon me will be able to see the might of the human race within my soul, and know that man will conquer any challenge and face any foe.

“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”

-Aldous Huxley, English writer.

There are six days until Christmas. Two days until I fly back to Maryland. I have not seen my family for nearly seven months, now – a meeting I have been postponing as long as possible. They have been integral to my psychological situation.

I would instinctively say that they are a significant root of my condition, given the way my family exists: each strewn to his own corner of the house – forever to keep to himself or risk stirring the irritable beasts within the others. A house of short-sighted logic, where one’s thoughts were not one’s own, and privacy is a word with superficial meaning. A dynamic of hypocrisy criticized in thought, and idolized in action. A house where any word, emotion, or deed without justification is prohibited.

I am the guinea pig child, as my parents say. I help them try new things, figure out what they can do better, or what they’ve done wrongly to ensure they don’t repeat the same mistakes with my sister. These parents have long been my greatest demons, but even my own memories can twist and bend reality. My condition has prevented me from forming any happy memories up until this point, so I have only half a picture to reflect upon. Perhaps these people are my family, and I will finally be able to see and feel it, now. Or, perhaps, they are the destructive, black behemoths of taint within my soul.

I have always known that this day would come; a spiritual war for survival against an intangible enemy without reason and without mercy. I will need all of the strength and cunning I can muster in the coming days. I have faith, though, that no matter the outcome the eternal flame which resides within me will still manage to burn – even if only a flicker to be rekindle in the future. And, as it has carried me through life to this day, I will continue to ride the raging passion of my spirit. So hopefully, if I am able to find, make, or earn enough luck, I will return with great triumph and few scars.

“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, US essayist and poet

Fear can exist without courage, but courage cannot exist without fear. Courage is the slow, steady war against fear, not the absence of it. It’s the series of battles from the voice on your pillow at the end of the day saying, “I’ll try again tomorrow,” to the grand confrontation against your darkest demons. The spark in your bosom, as you stare that demonic fear in the face, as if for an eternity, that spark which forces you to hold your ground for five more minutes that is true courage. And those five minutes reward you time and time again throughout the rest of your life. I speak of courage because someone tried to test me, today.

Today, Student Support Services tried to scare me out of my decision. I came to show my progress and finalize most of the paperwork involved in moving forward, a decision they do not support, and they tried to intimidate me by bringing up the rare past cases where students were forced to remove themselves from school without even an academic warning. They tried to cite other sources which indicated I should take medical leave.

There are two counts that I find amusing about this particular situation. One, they feel they must resort to primal tactics like fear because they cannot hold their argument logically. Two, anyone who is well-informed on the situation supports my stance, completely. I must emphasize these points because the person with whom I spoke still has not tried to learn about the entirety of the situation, opting instead to try fear-tactics to convince me otherwise. I am reminded of some wise words of Albert Einstein…

“Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.”

- Albert Einstein, German Physicist, discovered Special Relativity

There are two types of men: those who change to fit the world, and those who change the world to fit them.

Every person faces this choice. Every person must decide. Most people choose to fit the world. They believe that such a large, abstract concept representing billions of people either cannot be changed, or should not be changed. The other group carves out a home in whatever chunk of the world they see fit.

Without a doubt, the easier path is to fit the world; it already has a nice niche ready for you – it tells you what to do, and may even pat you on the head for following each step of the way. You have surrendered your choice for the illusion of choice; you accept without question that everyone else is right simply because they are not you. You will most likely lead a content life. After all, this process of niche-filling has worked for millennia. And I must extend a great deal of thanks to you, you make the world run, so, “Kudos!” to you.

But there is often a pressing sense that something greater lay just around the river bend. This is a more uncommon path, laden with rapids, rocks, and dangers. Those who choose this path pay great costs and receive great rewards. Those with excellent pathfinding skills can even weave between the dangerous path and the easy one. They push themselves, then rest and share their experiences on the easy road, and eventually find themselves pushing the very limits of mankind and expanding the possibilities for all of man.

And then we have the peculiar case of those who must take the unbeaten path. There is a surrealism to these folk. An sense of eccentricity and oddity emanates from them like odor from a compost pile. They tackle the same challenges of the pathfinder, but without pause. They are the wild men and women. They are the hunter gathers, the secret finders, and the guide persons. They know the rough and dirty side of the world, and they accept it because it is all they know. The easy path is strange and unappealing – it does not fit them. They are the one thing that is not like the other.

There is an unending endurance to the latter. We have a stronger stride, a drum with a unique beat. We have a tremendous threshold for pain and capacity for compassion. We can take the harshness of life and even the burdens of others’ because we have a unique source of energy: ourselves and our wilderness.

Three blue pills.

The thin wire fence that keeps me from the brink.

Something as simple as three blue pills. Who would think they could rule a life?

My mind is chaos filled fear. I can see doom. I can feel nothing.

My energy is str gone g, and my will is dead fierce.

I can fall go from the grace distance, I cannot slay the demons.

Hope drainsfills frommy soul.

I am not who I want to be.

As long as I have my three blue pills enslave me.

To think that something as simple as three blue pills can determine a life. Imagine only being alive for twelve hours a day. The eye of the mental maelstrom. Each night, transforming into a husk of what you are. Being crushed under the weight of a crashing wave. The world is spinning, and all you can do is sleep… and dream of the next morning… when you can have those

three. blue. pills.

Oh well, a start is a start. And once you start, you’re halfway done.

Man invented machines to free himself of repetitive laborious process. Inventions eased the burden of life on humanity. Our time has expanded tremendously in only a few centuries.

Without worries of survival or repetitive tasks, people could free their creativity! No robot can replace that! Yet, when I examine how my time has been spent, I see the threat of work consuming it.

The world has many competitors, and much stress to distribute by chanting, “Use every minute to try to get ahead!” Creativity needs time to flourish! But accomplishment takes time, as well.

But what life would this be? A life without beauty, without creative flow, without reflection. I do not wish to be rushed away in the river of life, I wish to ride atop its rapids. I can be as far ahead as I want, it will only take a little more time. After all, life does not happen all at once, let the others rush to meet their goals.

Life is not a sprint. Life is not one long race, either. Life is a series of small races which constitute a journey. I, for one, look forward to each race, and don’t worry about how far I am on the journey – only that I am following the right path.

A poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

Those held most close to us, often hear not what they’re worth.

Today, I faced a question that most recognize only in hypothetical discussions. Today, I was given a choice between an easy path and a right path. While combating my mental illnesses throughout the semester, I failed all 6 of my registered classes, 3 of which I intended to drop. Speaking with MIT’s Student Support Services yielded me the two options:

1. Path One: I submit for Medical Leave with MIT Medical’s support. I will be refunded the entire semester’s tuition. All failing grades are wiped off my record. I do not attend MIT in the Spring, but I continue to receive treatment from MIT Medical, either directly or indirectly. I am expected to cut myself off from the rest of MIT, and to continue treatment and engage in a stable activity to ground myself until Student Support Services deems me ready to continue my education when I have, “Pulled my act together.”
2. Path Two: I file for Late Drop petitions with my professors to drop all of my extra, failing classes and take three failing grades. I must justify why I am dropping the classes late to the Council on Academic Performance (CAP). I continue to attend MIT with an Academic Warning – meaning, if I do not drastically improve my performance, I will be barred from MIT until I am deemed qualified to reapply. I continue, unimpeded, as a continuous student into the Spring.

MIT versus Lusby

My immediate reaction is that Path One is not an option. I quickly choose Path Two. The dean is taken aback not only by my decision, but also the swiftness with which I delivered it. He further explained that the effect this would have on my GPA would be devastating, and that even significant improvement across all sectors would still merit me doubtful glances by employers or fellowships that eyed my transcript.

“Grades are not important to me,” I reply.

He stammers, “B..But what about when employer’s request your transcript?”

“It’d be quite an interesting story to tell,” I state.

I was not going to be noncompliant, however, so I agreed to take some time to think about the decision, and research each option. Further investigation with the dean and the head of the CAP, revealed something interesting: The fact that my mental illnesses rendered me so unstable, before the official drop date, I could have, theoretically, dropped all of the classes in question. Doing so would cease my status as student of MIT, forcing me to reapply, but retaining a single class would allow me to remain as a continuing student.

I am satisfied beyond belief. Everything has gone according to plan. I acknowledged early on that focusing intently on my treatment would result in failing classes. I acknowledged that I would pay a cost in the form of a GPA. I understood the costs of my actions, but I understood the benefits of my actions. I would regain myself in life. I would remove the taint that has held me back for so long, and I would be reborn to live life anew, to fulfill that aching pain which moaned, “There is more to life than this. This is not it.”

Well, I did it, and now I must pay the cost and accept the consequences of my actions. My time was invested in researching the psychology and cognition behind full recovery of individuals like myself. I thought through every ideal, value, and goal I held. I got my act together mentally, and the recent medication has supplied the biological answer. So, I see the easy path, Path One, where I take 8 months off to work and earn money, even move back to Maryland. I could have all of my grades erased. I could have all of my connections to the class of 2012 severed and stalled for 8 months. I could take this time to ensure my treatment is fully realized and that my illnesses will not relapse. There is more stress at home, though, than MIT. A return to Maryland would cause a relapse, not MIT.

Or I can choose Path Two, the difficult path. I can go on with life without a hiccup, without an asterisk. I can maintain my flow with relationships and direction. I can risk relapse, and have only confidence to support my treatment’s realization.

The dean does not understand my decision because it is not logical based on his assumptions: 1) Easier is better. 2) Safer is better. 3) Students want high GPAs. And because he has not given me a chance to explain my decision fully, nor been been informed on the situation entirely.

Part of my decision to choose the right path, the hard path, over an easy one comes from some of the most powerful and motivating words I have ever heard,

John F. Kennedy, a giant trapped in a man's body.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

-John F. Kennedy, thirty fifth president of the United States of America

Such is the nature of true men. I choose the higher path because I will not live like a sorry soul who knows not the passions of great triumph, nor the sadness of great defeat. I will test my new resolution and capacity against this challenge that life throws at me – and I will succeed.

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.”

-Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States of America

I had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine, Anthony, today. He began by trying to establish a debate around the existence of free will versus fate. He worded his initial argument as follows.

1. Stance One: Free will does not exist. Everything in the world is causal; every action is a result of chemical reactions in the body; he defines fate by this.
2. Stance Two: Free will exists. Namely, everything occurs from randomness. There is no causation — this stance is the antithesis of Stance One.

I challenged the very nature of this argument. I learned from Atlas Shrugged that checking or challenging premises and assumption is key to solid foundations and logic. I disagreed with the absolute nature of the argument, the limited scope, and the rigidity of black and white views forced onto a highly fluid topic. My belief is that both free-will and causation exist to allow the universe to function, so I attempted to pull the argument further out to a universe view at least. We ventured quite deeply into a multiverse discussion.

After we both defined our views of fate and free-will, the discussion deepened based on my initial statements:

1. First, essentially all of the universe functions in a cause-and-effect manner. Since the dawn of the universe, the laws inherent to our dimensions governed body interactions. Everything physical that we see today is a result of some interaction between particles which has occurred before, and follows as a logical conclusion. Our emotions are caused, biologically, by the different balances of hormones, neurotransmitters, and chemicals within our bodies. Our thoughts, actions, and personalities are all heavily influenced, shaped, and even entirely created by the cumulation of all of our life experiences. Everything is an effect of some cause, some stimulus from our environment. Each stimulus is, in turn, also an effect of some previous cause, and so on and so forth until the origin of the universe.
2. Second, the reason why my first statement says, “essentially all,” is because there are a few highly significant exceptions to this rule that are integral to humanity’s existence as it is now. The origin of the universe is said to begin with the Big Bang. Well, I further conjecture that the Big Bang was created due to one or more reactions between Virtual Particles due to Vacuum Fluctuations (also referred to as Vacuum Energies). Vacuum Fluctuations basically describe the phenomenon of energy, and even matter, spontaneously, randomly occurring in the presence of absolute nothingness. There seems to be no cause whatsoever to enact this initial effect.
   

   Big Bang, Conceptualization

   Additionally, we have yet to discover the biological base of consciousness. I believe the origins of this may have a very abstract origin, if any at all. I consider the seat of consciousness to be similar in inexplicable origins to Vacuum Fluctuations at this moment. This realm of intangible thought is held aloft from the law-bound tangible universe – in our minds, anything we can conceive of is possible, so is anything we have not conceived. I hold these causeless phenomena to be at the foundation of what I refer to as free will. Human choice is influenced, if not determined by outside forces, but the fact choice exists at all is an indication of free will, in my opinion.

The rest of our discussion centered around exploring the possible existence of two separate universes interacting with each other – the tangible and the intangible. Anthony speculates that one can view these interactions from two different perspectives, one as viewing the tangible world affecting the intangible (your environment and experiences affecting your thoughts and decisions) and the other as the intangible affecting the tangible words (your thoughts and ideas made into actions and objects). Furthermore, he believes these two perspectives formulate what may be a new interpretation of free will and fate for him – fate being oriented around the intangible affecting the tangible, and fate representing the opposing view point.

I personally believe the universe to function due to regular feedback between the two, originating with the intangible nothingness affecting the tangible universe. But again, who knows? The nothingness of the tangible world may have affected the intangible to cause its Vacuum Fluctuations in the first place. At this speculation, Anthony began to question whether we can truly know anything? I staunched this train of thought, as my faith is firm and foundational in this respect,

“I completely believe that human beings can know anything and everything. Regardless of our current or past comprehension, human beings will always find a way to acquire knowledge of our universe and others, should they exist. In this, I believe without logic, reason, or evidence. This stance is my faith. This ideal is my God.”

“Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
-Nikola Tesla, Electrical and Mechanical Engineer and the inventor of modern day electricity

I was looking out at the Boston skyline, amongst the stone lion maws, and surrounded by the ornate columns and buttresses of MIT’s dome. I thought to myself, “This is all mine.”

The most beautiful aspect of this thought, is that everyone can share it. Everything you see before you… every building, every road, every car, every lamp post, every bridge… from the idea, to the designs, to the physical object itself … they were all created by people who existed before you did. They were all created by people who were experienced than you are. They were all created with the knowledge that the creator would reap the least benefits from his own creation.

He creates for all those that will come after him. These dorms were made for students to live in comfortably, fully. These institute halls were constructed almost a hundred years ago so that you could have the privilege to learn from the brightest minds in the world about some of the most esoteric and magical information that mankind has gathered and organized from the universe.

It is all for you. Anyone can become immortal by leaving their legacy to the next generation. A man who teaches a child is made immortal by that child’s memory. A man who invents a wheel is made immortal by the very existence of the wheel. Everything is made for you because you represent the entirety of our species’s struggle to survive for thousands of years – because you represent the culmination all of the knowledge and application of science, art, and industry – because you are the one whom the world must be passed down to, completely – because everyone trusts you to do the best you can with that responsibility.

Boston Skyline

I am constantly surprised by how short-sighted people can be when they get carried away in the pedantic details of life. In actuality, according to Carl Jung, a typical person does not gain the perspective of generativity – thinking beyond one’s current life and generation to the next generation of children – until middle-age, around 30 years old.

I believe this is an injustice to mankind. We have come to learn so much about psychology and the insurmountable potential of the young that we cannot afford to leave them to wander aimlessly and eventually stumble upon foresight. We should attempt to be more active in encouraging the emotional and mental blossoming of thought and action toward long distance goals and objectives. An expansion of thinking on this part tremendously boosts critical thinking skills, and paves a golden pathway to divergent thinking – a critical aspect of innovation.

So the next time you feel a bit rushed by the speed of every day life, you might want to try taking a breather to recognize that the world as it is today is yours for the taking, and you can grab your slice when you see fit. And that effects of true importance and magnitude lay on a timeline far longer and far deeper than the relative moments that you may be stressing about in the presence. Suddenly, you may find that what was worrying you before, doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore. :)