So after a week and a bit of some pretty bad anxiety, I finally got myself out of the rut and managed to get some work done. Part of this "work" was finishing my Biopsychology essay, but the other, less traditional, part involved making some life changes. These life changes started with what I eat, and how often I eat it. But I'm not going to talk about my diet. I want to talk about hope and how sometimes life can throw you curve balls at inappropriate times.

A few months ago I let a friend stay with me for a little while. He had no money, no job, and his dad had just kicked him out on the street. So, I let him stay with me for a bit. We agreed to a price and few conditions up front, which he agreed to. One of the conditions involved his getting a job. I told him not to worry about paying me right away, that he could get his feet on the ground first. I also let him eat my food. Another expectation was that he kept cleaned up after himself - nothing unreasonable.

After a bit of time watching him procrastinate his job search, and getting after him a few times to clean up, I realized it wasn't going to work and so I gave him 10 days notice for him to find somewhere else to stay. I also told him to not worry about paying me right away the money he owed me for the time he had already stayed with me, as I would wait until he was financially stable. At that point he started telling me how he felt like I never accepted him or treated him like a friend. You can imagine why this wouldn't sit very well with me, and I calmly told him to pack up his stuff and get out. After everything that I had done for him, I felt like he had just slapped me in the face. After some minor arguing, I knew I wouldn't see the money he owed me, and that our friendship had just gone out the window. With that, I figured he would move on with his life and I with mine.

A little while later I learned that he was staying at a street shelter, feeling pretty bitter about the situation. I soon got a text message from him apologizing and what not. It was a pleasant surprise. That was the last I heard from him until today. Today pretty much stunned me.

Friend:
by the way, i just needed to remind you of your absolute pussy nature, you have no balls. you will never get a girlfriend cuz you are too afraid to aproach one. you shook in your fucking boots when i talked to girls. youre a coward. so i just wanted to say my goodbyes right to a man like you, fuck you and have a good life of well calculated ballless risks, and enjoy a life of loneliness with your obsessive compulsive idiotic fat lazy boring self.

Friend:
i still will keep u unblocked for a bit so i can see ur pathetic retort

Me:
Well, _____. I can honestly say I never expected this from you. I guess I thought you were better than this. I really hope you find some kind of inner peace in your life.

Friend:
I hope you eat a dick like I know you want to. You are really gay I know it

At that point I reported him for harassment because I was not willing to play that kind of game. Normally I would laugh this kind of thing off, but I can't think of a worse time for him to send such a message. Going through the amount of anxiety and stress that I am right now, and with finally seeing a ray of hope, this message was quite the side blow, an unexpected haymaker.

On the one hand this only confirms to me the end of this friendship. On the other hand, I can't help but pity the guy. I don't feel pity for too many people - I prefer empathy - but in this case pity is exactly how I feel. I would like to see him become a better person, but I doubt he will.

So, I think this will probably end up being not much more than an unexpected push that makes me take a couple of sidesteps to regain my balance before I move forward. I really hope that's all this is. I feel like I've taken the high road in every situation of this circumstance, and I don't know if I can keep it up. I really hope I don't see him in public, and if I do, that he won't come up to me and talk. I fear if he doesn't let up I might lose it on him. I might have to prepare myself for walking away if I see him.

It is interesting to see the apparent dichotomy between things we consider events and things we consider journeys. Last night I experienced an event that was - that is - part of a long journey: I delivered a letter to the bishop of my old Ward declaring my resignation as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. That's right, it means I'm officially no longer a Mormon.

I've been doing some research on the subject for some months now. Apparently the moment that letter is received it is considered legally and immediately effective. This means that if church officials try to drag it out any longer than is necessary or try to persuade you otherwise or even try to subject you to church discipline (i.e. excommunicate you), they are out of order. In Canada and the U.S. there are laws that protect against this sort of thing from institutions who might otherwise be less than scrupulous. My understanding is that many church members in the States have experienced a lot of grief and problems with getting their names removed from church membership record. I also understand that Canadian members don't have nearly these kinds of problems. Is this indicative of Canadians as a whole, or is it indicative of how distance from church headquarters can influence the process? Hard to say I suppose. Regardless, I guess this is one of those small perks of being Canadian.

So less than 24 hours later, I don't really feel any different. I guess that's the difference between an event and a journey. This journey away from Mormonism and into something else - for now it's atheism, and could very easily stay there - has been filled with events like this. I don't know if actually becoming an atheist was an event, or more of a journey in itself - probably the latter. Once I got there, though, that's when it became a true journey. I suppose one can't truly begin such a journey without first feeling the need to search; if you believe you have all the answers, what's the point in searching?

So with events like having my bishop stop by and my telling him I no longer believe, like taking off my garments and cutting them up, like packing up my church books and getting them ready to ship, I suppose this is another in the series. I think I prefer to look at my journey out of Mormonism and my journey into atheism as parallel process rather than one preceding the other. Truth be told I'm not entirely done my journey out of Mormonism, and I'm still looking at atheism and other, more spiritual, avenues to see if there is any merit in it/them. I don't feel like I'll have total closure until I have these books shipped off. I suppose I need to get a letter of confirmation from the church stating that my name has been removed before it's really final, but in my mind it's already done; the confirmation letter is merely a formality.

I got a letter today. It had a cheque inside. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed to see a cheque for $100 with my name on it. This means my application to become a Freemason has been declined.

I remained open to the idea that this would happen. It's kind of hard for an atheist to be accepted into a fraternal organization that requires a belief in a supreme being. But I suppose I would rather be turned down for being honest than accepted under false terms. I struggled with this one a great deal, almost considering trying to find a way to justify a belief in God, but to no avail. I don't believe in God, or anything that could be considered such, and I will not subject myself to denial-type thinking or cognitive dissonance. I just don't work that way. The entire reason I became an atheist is because I searched exhaustively for answers and reasons to believe, and I ended up empty-handed. If my identity, value- and belief-system, sense of purpose, and spirituality was abandoned for sufficient reasons, why would I want to go back on that just to join a particular organization?

So, here I sit, disappointed and feeling let down. I don't know why. I should probably have expected this. Perhaps it's for the best. I mean, how comfortable would I feel around a bunch of other people who all advocate something that I consider to be irrational and illogical? I don't know if I'm saying that just to make myself feel better, or if it's a valid consideration.

It's kind of difficult to describe how I'm feeling right now. When I was in the middle of my application, I was open to certain ideas, like the oneness of the universe and a universal mathematical harmony. Now I just feel slightly bitter, and I want to embrace my atheism even more even though I feel like I've lost something because of it. But I'll never be one of those people who views loss as a valid reason to not believe something. Realistically, I gave up a lot of things when I was a Mormon, and I would give up a lot of things if I became any other religion. Hell, I give up a lot of things just being a student, and I would be giving up a lot of things if I weren't a student. It's just the nature of things I suppose.

Truth be told I don't blame them one bit. I knew full well what was expected when I applied. It's just that things changed for me from the time I first applied until the time when I was visited by the committee. It sucks that it turned out this way, but I don't feel the need to apologize for anything, least of all for who I am and for what I believe or don't believe. My ultimate loyalty is to the truth, and even if I am way off-base, I am pursuing it to the best of my ability.

So, California’s decided to re-ban gay marriage. And rightfully so, people protest it. Things even went as far as the LA Police, in their usual way of handling things, deciding to beat a protester. But this isn’t about the civil rights and liberties of homosexual couples in California (or anywhere else for that matter) or even about the police brutality. This is about self-examination.

From what I understand, this protest began outside an LDS temple in Los Angeles. I’m not sure where it ended up, but again, that’s not the point here. The point is how I would have viewed this entire situation a year ago and how I view it now.

Having recently become an atheist, I’m still trying to weigh and measure many different points of view, paradigms, and philosophies of life. Now that I no longer have this dogmatic lens that tints my paradigmatic glasses, I am free to choose what I value, what I see, and what I consider right or wrong - even if it disagrees with “doctrine”. I am now free to be able to look at things objectively, to analyze them, look at them from all different sides, and figure out what I feel good and right and proper. It wasn’t always this way.

Many times in life I’ve been often confused because, for the life of me, I could never figure out how some people could see the world the way they did. I could never understand seeing someone as inferior simply because they had a different skin colour. I could never understand why people would subject themselves to addictive drugs. I could never understand why people would choose to be gay. Then I would tell racist jokes and laugh (I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with racists jokes if we laugh at all races, including our own, and if they’re not overly hurtful). Then I would smoke my first joint at 15 and experience several years of chaos and misery because of my drug habit. Then I would learn that homosexuality was as much a choice as my heterosexuality - no one chooses who they’re attracted to.

So over time I slowly learned tolerance and acceptance. Part of this learning came with being open-minded to the fact that I didn’t have all the answers to life, part of it came with dealing with the issues that lead me to escape in drugs, and part of it came with simply growing older and learning more about life. Ah, the cock-sured nature of youth!

I remember considering myself to be fairly liberal and tolerant of many things. When I accepted that homosexuality wasn’t really a choice, I felt like I was being understanding and tolerant – even though I recognized that attraction wasn’t a choice, I believed that practicing a homosexual lifestyle was. It was this kind of justification that allowed me to feel tolerant and accepting while still supporting the suppression of gay marriage. How could I do otherwise when I submitted myself to the authority of an all-encompassing institution that dictated my beliefs (I’ll address the issue of social coercion in a later post)?

After experiencing some time away from Big Brother, I now look at things like these protests and suppression of gay rights, and I can’t help but shake my head. I shake my head at the fact that there is still this kind of intolerance in the world, but mostly I just shake my head at the fact that mere months ago, I probably would have voted in favour of rebanning gay marriage. And that thought horrifies me.

Now that I wear a more objective lens (at least according to my best judgment), the ethical problems surrounding these issues become self-evident. The only reasons why people are against gay marriage are either because the church tells them so, or because it disgusts them – and somehow I feel like those two aren’t entirely disconnected. So, if I eliminate the institution of the church, and I begin to exercise more tolerance, there’s no reason I should ever consider why the civil rights and liberties that I now enjoy should not be extended to everyone. But again, this isn’t about that (although somehow I fear my point is getting lost in it).

The bottom line, the entire point of this post, is that I look at the kinds of things I support now, and the kinds of things I supported when I was religious, and some of them are vastly different. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am humbled to a very deep level that I could ever be capable of such intolerance – especially when it was disguised as its opposite. I don’t beat myself up over it, however. I may look back on it with regret, but more importantly I am beginning to recognize some of the things I learned in Social Psychology – how the power of the situation is often more powerful than the individual; how social persuasion and coercion can influence people to do things they might not otherwise do. It saddens me that I was ever capable of such thinking, but I try not to be too hard on myself. In recognizing this, it helps me to be less judgmental of those same people who now exercise that same intolerance, and to not judge them for it. I was once like them.

This doesn’t excuse intolerance or prejudice behaviour, but we can combat these without hating those we combat. You never know when fighting for what’s right, with compassion and understanding for those you fight against, may cause a soldier to cross over. And that, I think, makes it worth it in itself.

Courted Wit

In true blogger fashion (does that even mean anything?), I'm going to share a poem I wrote. Hopefully that one reader who stumbles across this blog years later will enjoy it.

Courted Wit

A chap addressed his lady muse,
“Oh joy that I should bear such news.
Thy father bid me late last night,
That we should wed at dawn’s first light.”

The dame looked in the young chap’s eyes,
“Good sir, I will not hear your lies!
My father, he died yesterday.
I bid you do the same today.”

The chap replied, “It pains me so,”
That you think me a man so low.”
To take advantage of a maid,
And think it right to serenade.”

“Good sir,” said she, “it’s obvious,
That you don’t take me serious.
Your serenade is plain as day.
I beg you now, please go away.”

“But lady, please, I beg you so,
To listen to my tale of woe.
My love for you, it knows no bounds.
Please join me now in wedding vows.”

“Oh sir! I feel I must protest.
Your lofty goals of wedding bliss.
You dream of souls who ache apart.
I dream that you will just depart.

Most men, they lack a certain sense.
Tis no small stretch to call them dense.
Dear sir, you are a man apart:
An ass who’s put before cart.”

“Oh miss, your words, they strike my cœur.
I cannot bear, please say no more.
Tis plain as day, I fear I see.
My love shall not return to me.

But gentle miss, one last request,
Before you reach inside my chest.
I only ask that you be kind,
And keep my heart til end of time.”

The lady pondered with great care.
“I fear I’ve judged in haste and err.
Good sir, tis true your love’s concrete?
Am I the fool to be discrete?

Then truly let us be away,
And marry at the light of day.
Oh sir, that we would happy wed,
And live in love until we’re dead.”

“My lady makes me truly glad
To lift a heart that once was sad.
Oh hark! Is that another maid?
Good dame, I must bid you good day.”

First Post

So, yet another blog. Seems like I start these and then abandon them. Hell, I only keep my LJ because of the communities. Who knows, maybe if this one is less socially connected than my other ones I may keep it. Who knows, maybe if no one reads it, I might write more and write more personal things in it. I suppose we'll see. Regardless of anything else, this is my first post (duh!).