Albert Einstein

"A human being is part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness." This reading was pretty cool. I especially like this quote. It's sort of crazy to think that our lives, everything in our lives, how ever big it may feel, is really just a small tiny portion of this universe. everything we see everyday, the people we meet, the things we do, is just a small portion of what else is out there in this world. sometimes its hard to realize this, but i think it's really good to. we need to realize that we're not the center of the universe. growing up i remember i used to think that everyone around me was a robot, and that everything is just planned out and fake and i'm the only real human being on the earth. kind of like that move with jim carey, except the people around him were not robots. it's pretty silly. but i think traveling has really opened my eyes to see that there's an entire world out there, besides my little world here in california. whenever i'm in a bad mood, having a bad day, i try to think of others out there in this world really truly suffering, as i'm sitting there with this bad attitude in my head because of a bad grade i got or something. This reading goes on saying that this sort of thought is a prison to us. that we need to go out embrace every living thing and nature.

Simone Weil

One thing that really stood out to me in this reading was probably the very first part where it says "every time we say "thy will be done," we should have in mind all possible misfortunes and all possible blessings.." I've said "thy will be done" many times growing up in my religious home & school, but never really thought too much into what i was really saying. I mean i knew what i was saying, but i never really thought about how it could be either a blessing or a misfortune. we don't often think that when we pray to God, that he would put misfortune in our lives (even though you're told as a child that God causes earthquakes cause you were a bad girl..). I guess its just interesting to think about because God can cause terrible things to happen in our lives, but I just don't know if He really would do that. This blog is starting to remind me of the presentation we had the other day on the book called "When bad things happen to good people." once i graduated high school i started to realize how brainwashed i had been my entire life at that christian school. and then some of the most life changing events in my life occurred. up until that point i never lost any family members or any friends. then my grandpa passed away and i had a friend commit suicide, and a friend who died in a crash. i guess it was easier to understand my g-pa's death because he was old, but my friends? they were so young. why would God let anything like that happen to me, to my friend's families and other friends, or to them. I don't think their loved ones deserved it, and maybe they all learned "valuable" lessons from these incidents or whatever, but just thinking about the pain that their parents will feel every day for the rest of their lives because of loosing their child, it just seems so completely unfair to me. This is something i still don't understand to this day. and it is something that has completely made me re-think my faith.