Soldier over the Horizon.

His heart is beating violently. A euphoria engulfs him, his gaze fixed upon the horizon. There they lie, a thousand men, armed, ready to charge. His muscles stiffen, his pupils dilate, his back straightens and he roars, "This is the day of reckoning. To live this day is to live the dreams of our fallen brothers. Today is the day of martyrs, for tomorrow our souls shall transcend this land and together we shall feast in heaven". 

This he says to his men with a confidence only a leader can master. For they are only a dozen beaten soldiers of war, their swords tarnished, their leather ripe, stained with the blood of their enemies and their will dwindling with every battle. They have come far and it would be a pity to surrender now. No, surrender is no option, at least not for him. 

Now his thoughts sway from the fields of battle. His daughter and beloved wife walk in front of him. A memory bestows itself into physical form. They are laughing, running in tall grass glazed with the light of a morning sun. Their cries of joy expand through his mind devouring every doubt, they shed every fear. This is why he fights, for his daughter and for his wife. He knows he can never see them again, but he must secure their lives. The enemy will not get to them and he will give anything to ensure their safety. He is willing to die today, for them. That is the love he expresses.

The setting sun glooms over the horizon. The shadow of his enemy crawls downhill, taunting him.
"For our beloved", he shouts, "for those we hold dear! May the setting sun smile upon us."
"March to death I say! March! March and die in the hands of light."
And so his battered foot steps forward, and a dozen more follow, and together they march towards the horizon. Towards death and the setting sun. 

Letters

So I got this crazy idea pop up in my mind involving letters and a library. I thought about writing around ten letters with some words of encouragement, from words of hope, to ones of love and for those that are lonely. I want to empower people by words, make them smile when they read the letter.

So the idea was to print a couple of these letters addressed to no one in particular and signed by no one and put them randomly in the University library. I know most people do not lend books, and there are thousands of books around, but if a person finds the letter, then it is his to keep and read. The aim of this is to enlighten a person's day. If he or she feels that the letter helped in any way, then he or she will be inclined to write one and put it randomly somewhere in the library.

This way, with time, people will write random letters to make people happy and put them in random books, and those that find them will have something to smile about. Tomorrow I shall put my first batch of letters. Let's see where this goes in a few months time. 

A Moment to Cherish

When my grandfather passed away, I felt very sorry for his loss, but probably the most heart-breaking realization was how much my grandmother suffered during that period.

His death was very sudden and unexpected. I remember visiting him in hospital after University two years ago and he was all fine. I sat there on a chair beside him and opened my laptop to work on my report as he was tired and sleeping. Then as he noticed my presence he woke up and made an effort to stay awake because he appreciated me visiting. A nurse brought him food and he offered me part of his share because that's how he was. We didn't speak much, but I'm very glad I was present, and I think he was too. As I sat there, he fell back to sleep and that would be the last day I talked to him, for two weeks later he moved beyond. Life is given to us without us asking for it, and taken much the same way. It is this fragility that we should cherish and keep in our daily routines so that we do not succumb to hurting people, lying, doing things which we would regret doing if death knocks on the door.

However, death is not much of a burden for the person who dies but rather a suffering for those that lost a person to it. I may have spent eighteen years of my life knowing this person I called my grandfather, but his wife had spent fifty years or more. I cannot comprehend the agony she might have felt when he went missing. Every little detail in her life changed from one day to the next. From making toast in the morning to sleeping in bed and washing the clothes, nothing of this sort would feel the same ever again. As a wife, she lived to be happy by making someone else happy and when the source of her happiness vanished she found herself lost and abandoned. All the memories that she had formed now lead to a person she could no longer share them with. All the laughs, all the tears, all the struggles that she surmounted with the help of this other person she chose to be the wife of, were now a figment of the past.

And yet, she had to move on, for life is like this and there is no stopping but for brief moments of mourning. I'm sure that that she misses him more than anything in the world, for we are made like this, us humans. Our emotions drive us, they build us, and sometimes they beat us to the core of our heart and shake us violently awake to the truths of life. But we manage to surpass this grief by realizing how beautiful the time spent with those we care and how precious the possibility of being with these people was.

That is why we have to appreciate life at the present moment, before death descends upon us.

What is Fear?

Fear can be seen biologically as a natural behaviour developed over thousands of years and selected for through evolution used to make an organism aware of predators and danger, and make that organism react to it by either fighting or fleeing. When we are young, the brain is like an empty vacuum cleaner that works tirelessly to scoop up every bit of information it gains from its surroundings via the senses. When a baby puts a finger in a fire for the first time and gets burned, he quickly learns that fire means harm and will keep away from it the next time round. This means that the baby brain has developed memories inside it to associate fire with danger. But what keeps the baby away from the fire is fear. Fear is an emotion, a conjured thought of the brain that links danger with the physical world. 

So what about the fear of being alone or the fear of losing your loved one? Can that be considered a true form of fear? Again, if we look at this biologically, we can realize that a wild primate would be in much more danger when wandering alone than when it is in a group. This fear of being alone has been selected for through evolution along the generations, because that organisms that 'fears' being alone and is inclined to search for his familiars and stay in tight groups is more likely to survive than the individual that lacks this fear and is thus more susceptible of being preyed upon. Similarly, since humans form bonds between males and females the fear of losing a loved one, or being neglected or betrayed comes from the fact that being in a couple maximizes the chance of having offspring. In this case, fear developed so that a lonely individual seeks out a mate and remains with her to raise children successfully. Those which did not succeed to do so had no offspring, and thus fear was again selected for. 

It seems rather bland to see fear as something biological and not metaphysical or beyond our control. However, this realization that fear is in fact part of our thoughts and brain development has many implications on our health. Phobias for example, can be overcome by overriding the brain stimuli causing it, by reforming memories associated with danger that are causing fear to now cause pleasure, or in simpler terms, happiness. Hypnosis is a technique used to subdue fears by activating parts of the brain that are not usually used while conscious, so that we take control of memories tucked away in our brains causing fear and confront them,. In the process we realize that the dangers we are being warned about with fear are in fact unrealistic, and our fear is exaggerated. Becoming aware of this fact removes the fear. 

Artists such as filmmakers, writers and actors convey fear in various ways. Some depict fear as darkness. This kind of fear is also biological. Primates are diurnal creatures, that is, they forage and do all sorts of stuff during the day, while they hide away during the night in trees. Other methods used include howling and roars, conveying the fear of an approaching predator. The unknown also causes fear, because a primate that feels as if it is being watched but does not have sight on danger can become anxious. This method is used in horror movies depicting ghosts, where a screeching door causes anxiety because we are not aware of the person using that door. In the wild, a noise of a breaking twig could either mean that a predator is approaching or that a friendly creature has passed by. If the primate is not able to determine who broke that twig, then fear takes hold.

Overall, emotions have all developed biologically to serve a purpose. Without fear, we probably would not exist, because being too naive means getting eaten up. Or from a different viewpoint; it was inevitable for a primate with fear not to develop over time because those that did not have fear died and had no offspring while those that did lived on. This is simply known as evolution. 

Fear and the Wolf

I remember one time, when I was young, a kid of four or five when I walked in my parent's bedroom and they were watching a horror movie about this werewolf. Needless to say, I was very shocked, and considering the mediocre ways in which they depicted werewolves in those days; big black balls of fur with huge teeth and claws, I got really scared. I ended up having nightmares and waking up at night, yelling for my mother from my room. I used to stay still in bed until I slept because I thought that the wolf was watching from my bedside and would sniff me moving or something. It was close to becoming a phobia, when at some time in my life, ten or twelve years later, this fear vanished completely, and nowadays, the wolf has become my favourite animal. 

Nowadays, it is my dream to work for the conservation of wolves and I am fascinated by their nature. They are majestic intelligent creatures, forming lifelong bonds between pairs. Their characteristic howls are depicted in many scary movies or night settings in plays and other media. To me, howling is none other than a sophisticated beautiful way of communication. The wolf is also a runner. It chases its prey over long distance, its great stamina helping it to outlast. The mane it grows in winter is another beautiful facet of the wolf, and the colours they come in are vast, ranging from various shades of brown to grey and black, but probably the most spectacular are the white or the albinos. White wolfs blend and dissapear in snow environments, helping them to stalk prey or hide from danger. 

On another note, I pose myself a question; how did my fear change into this fascination? Is it possible to overcome your brain's way of thought and reconfigure your brain cells to form new memories that oppose your long life fears? What is fear? I will discuss these further on in the next post. 

Questions

As I sit in this room, trying to study the very molecules that make our bodies, I look at the people around me. Most of them are busy, or on a laptop, probably working hard on some problem that has no meaning in their daily lives. That is what I am doing now, studying something I will probably never use ever again. I do this, because it is a must. I can understand the reasoning behind it, because to become a master of a particular topic, you must first be exposed to it, learn its limitations, so that maybe, in the future, you will surpass them. But this is not the reason for which I have stopped studying to write. I write, because I was pondering if all these people around me ever had deeper questions than those that are imposed to them by their lecturer. Have they ever really thought about life, and about death? Have they ever questioned their gods, had doubt? 

I do not see awe in their eyes. Fascination is a rare trait found in only a few. Even for me, it is sometimes hard to conjure fascination, that lust to know about everything around me, but I try to live in awe, I try to go beyond these shackles of my daily life. For what are we but thinking molecular machines? And what is more beautiful than to question? I cannot understand why I am like this, why I always was like this. I have always been a person of questions, and this was not something that I was made to learn by my parents or tutors. Well, let's say, that a very few teachers ever tell you to ask questions openly, but even then, those that do are usually left with no queries by their students. It is very sad to be in a class full of students, and when given the chance to ask questions, no one dares to impose one. I always strive to know more, and to doubt what is told to me. I think that should be how we should all act. We should all try and be creative in a way that we ask about what we do not know, and learn from it.

So as I write down these words, and more people start to flow into the room around me,  I look in their eyes and try to see that fire kindling. I will keep looking, asking, and I will share this with the world, so that they may feel inclined to do the same. 

The Little Things Which Are Important

I never really prayed , or I don't want to remember to, but it has come to a point in my life, where I'm begging for enlightenment. I do not believe in God, a conjured essence of human weakness. I do not believe in miracles, nor do I believe in all the imperfections the church has bestowed unto a holy body. I do however, believe in a pattern of nature. It is something beyond my knowledge, a spiritual being inside every one of us, in every man, in every creature on this land, and in every stone and tree on our planet. It is something perfect, grandeur than a man-made god. The universal spirit is eternal, immutable. It is everything, and in everything. We cannot understand it because we are part of it. Our life, our existence, is the reason to be and the only proof of this pattern in nature.

I do not understand what I'm doing in life, or what I should be doing, except for the fact that I am living, and I need to live this life until I die. I do love, I despair, I can cry and I am able to become happy. Emotions flavour my existence and keep me going. Yet, I still cannot understand my place in all of this. I strive to learn and to make up my own ideas about all of it, but I have always come to one conclusion - that maybe I should stop looking. Maybe I should stop asking, doubting, questioning, and I should enjoy the very essence of being alive. I should be grateful of having the possibility of life - to be able to care for someone, to get angry, to laugh and  to smile, because a lot of people will lose this opportunity very early on in their life, or never had the chance of even existing in the first place. We are lucky, and thus, we should be grateful.

Beings of Light and their Coming

(Work in progress - this is an intro to an idea, a story, I will build upon)

As the Sirians descended upon the Earth, we watched in disbelief. Mankind had talked about this moment, about the era of contact, but no one ever imagined it would happen in our life time. Their ships, magnificent temples of  light, hovered over Zebbug. The visitors emerged slowly and silently out of their sanctums, and like angels they floated boldly towards us.

We were quite a large crowd by now. Their approach had been noticed for a couple of weeks, but no one, not even the government or the army dared to oppose or assault these beings. We tried to communicate with them through a series of different frequencies of sounds. Jet planes had encircled them in the first few days, trying to threaten them or at least observe a response, but the temples kept creeping in on us, omniscient, careless. I believe that the purity of the light emanating from the ships soothed our doubts and fears. It quenched our eyes and hearts with a sense of comfort. 

The remaining few religious sects on our island believed that the messiah had finally come, and came out in groups under the brilliance of the ships to worship their arrival. Other people just stared skyward, waiting. The moment of truth came on the twenty-first day of the last month of this third millennium. Five of these ethereal beings drifted towards the East, five others towards the West, and five step foot just in front of me. 

An eerie silence fell upon the crowd as we blankly stared in their presence. Their shape was humanoid, but tall and slender. Some kind of golden silk adorned with veins of silver wrapped around their body. On each of them I noticed seven rings, and on their ankle hanged a bracelet made of white beads. The beads extended to their index toe, somewhat like a Greek sandal, but barefoot. From the corner of my eye, for none of us dared looking straight towards their face, I could see that they were all bald. 

Stranger than that, was that they had no external ears or noses. Instead they had two orifices on the front and one on each side of the head. I later learnt that they had lost their papillae through evolution, for they no longer required them when their senses became enhanced by technology. These features made them somewhat alien to our accustomed looks, but they had a very benign nature in them, human even, and this made us feel as if they were our familiars. This feeling was much like looking at an ape in a zoo. You know that the ape is not a human being, but you can relate to it nonetheless. In this case however, it was us who took the part of the chimp and they took part of the masters, dawning upon us with prestige. It is also important to note that you could not make a distinction of gender in their form. They all looked elegant but strong, very similar to each other, but lacked any characteristic that could make me distinguish between a male and a female.

In a deep delicate voice, the middle one uttered, "Peta Babkama Luruba Anaku".
His voice echoed through the crowd, breaking us out of bewilderment, and turning silence into panic. The truth had struck most of us only at that moment, that we were in fact looking at real beings, not figments of our imagination. People started chattering, some screamed, some fled, but all of them made one big noisy mess. The visitors stood bold and did not react, when the middle one spoke again;

"Nahu", he commanded. It flowed through us, and we were all silent.
"Nahu", he said again, "be calm".

I only realize now, that in those brief moments of chaos, when most of us were yelling or arguing, the visitors studied us and in a way forbidden to my kind, they learnt our language.