Onward through the night I ride...

I haven't spoken much lately. Not here. Not in this place. Because THIS place is the place I made. This is MY place. A place of order and of reason. Nothing that has happened to me lately can be given to stand for anything like order or reason, much less logic or justice. I place my thoughts into this arena to be read and scrutinized when I am sure that they have been properly considered and well cataloged in my mind. I use this place for, among other things, the ability to draw upon these volumes of thoughts and opinions and scrutinize them myself. "Was I right?" "Do I still feel that way?" "If I knew then what I know now, would I have still written that?"

I have to do these things so that there is continuity in my thoughts and opinions. I must be intimate with my own viewpoints enough that I know how I got here. How did I arrive at this place? Why do I feel the way I feel about this particular thing? How can I possibly defend my stance on anything if I cannot reasonably state that the views I have today are better, more reasonable, more logical and more evolved than the views I had yesterday? And so I come back and I read and I think and I digest the Jason of yesterday in order to become a better Jason tomorrow. For the most part, I am happy to report that it appears that my mother didn't raise a fool. Most of my opinions and viewpoints can be defended even easier today than at the time they were written. I seem to be a pretty well rounded fellow... but not always.

Those who read this blog on any sort of regular basis, know that I am a firm believer that anything under any circumstance can be categorized in one of two labels, "wrong" and "right". Well, last week, I was wrong and today, I shall endeavor to be right. People do things that knowingly hurt other people for none other than selfish reasons. It doesn't matter specifically why they did it, just that the answer to that question will be a reason that benefits the doer and not the recipient. Most people are selfish. When you get right down to it, the fact is we all are selfish. If I do something nice for you because it makes me feel good... is that act of selfLESSness not in fact derived out of selfISHness? Let me put it this way: If making you happy, makes me happy, then why do I do things to make you happy? To make ME happy! I'm not saying that every selfless act is rooted in selfish gain. Not the case at all. But I am saying that in almost all things we do, we consider first ourselves and how we will be affected. But better is the person who derives his own pleasure from that of another than he who would stand upon another in order to benefit himself. Both are philosophically selfish. But one promotes harmony and the other promotes discord.

I made the mistake of assuming that everyone is selfish and that that selfishness is always wrong. It is not. There are people out there who are good and wholesome and well rounded just as I fancy myself to be. My work tends to make me skeptical and distrustful of people in general and though I prefer to term myself as a "realist", the simple fact is that I have the tendency to be a "pessimist". I have met a few of these people this week. Good people. People like me who have been dealt a shit sandwich and have chosen to diet instead. And so I will try to restate my post below in a way that is befitting of the way I feel today.

Dating is not stupid. People need other people. We want to feel needed and valid and useful. Not everyone is out to only please themselves. Many people are and I have learned to be wary of them... more now than ever before. But most are just trying to find their way through the same dark woods I find myself in. Some don't know they are there. Others don't want to get out. Still others, like myself, trudge along hoping that all is not in vain and that we will find someone who seeks to meet the needs of another in order to have that person meet their needs in return and exit the darkness together. It may suck.... but it is most definitely not stupid. So onward through the night I ride...