Sometimes, things just come to me.

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You're just moving along, life is wonderful, life is great. Lots of things finally seem to be working out and falling together. Questions are being answered, wishes are coming true, the seemingly impossible is finally happening. You can do no wrong. Life is good. Things are definetly looking up. You believe you had finally found what you had been looking for.

Then BAM! something happens. Maybe it wasn't even anything very major. Maybe it was even something that you anticipated probably would happen. In fact, you expected it to happen, you had even thought yourself prepared for it. You had considered the consequences of the event, the good, the bad, and thought yourself prepared for the bad that may come out of it. It may on the surface of things seem like a very minor event, one to be forgotten about in a few days, one you won't even recall ever happening a couple years from now. But this event triggers something within you. It triggers a thought process that begins slowly, and works its way out into everything you know. What started as simply a disappointing, disturbing, or enraging event directly related to just one thing causes you to begin thinking about everything else.

It affects everything you do and everything you think about. You can't get away from it, can't get it out of your mind. It annoys, distracts, impedes you. Every moment your mind is unoccupied, it springs out of the darkness to remind you that it is there. It causes you to question everything that has been going so well, to wonder as to the genuineness of what's going on around you. Perhaps you were mispercieving what was going on. You saw one thing, misinterpreted it, and thought it was another. You allowed your hopes to get too high, and now they've been trampled upon. It exists to remind you that all is not as good as you thought it was, as you hoped it would be. It reminds you that were foolish enough to believe you had found what you had been looking for. It sharply brings you back down to earth, and firmly entrenches you back in reality. You are reminded of who and what you are, and who and what you are not. You are reminded that you have yet to find just what it was you had thought you had discovered, and that you will probably never find it, and that you are a fool for thinking that you ever will. You are reminded that everything you do is in vain, for you have very little control over what it is that is going on around you, no matter how much you delude yourself into thinking that you do.

This thought process works its way through everything that is you: your family, your friends, to your dreams, your desires, to everything. You start thinking about love, about money, about education, and are told the same thing every time: You're a fool for believing that you've found it, and a fool for believing that you ever will. You can now no longer take anything at face value; you analyze, re-analyze everything. You can no longer take anything as it appears to you on the surface. There must be a hidden meaning, a hidden motive to it. And maybe there isn't. There probably isn't. But you're not sure. You can no longer look at things you had thought good and pure, and still think that they are, despite the fact that they haven't changed. That nice kid who's always helping you out on your homework or lending you a buck for lunch, now has other reasons for doing so, besides the fact that he's just a nice kid. He's really trying to get at another friend of yours through you. Or he's lending you money so he can come back a month from now and request a huge "favor." That charming girl you met the other day is no longer the charming girl you met the other day. She just feels sorry for you, and she's just trying to be nice to you.

Now that you doubt everything around you, this force feels its influence no longer needed. It begins to fade back into the recesses and darkest pits of your mind. Things start looking up again. That nice kid down the street becomes the nice kid down the street. That chraming girl you met is now that charming girl. Life starts going good again. And that force just waits in the back of your mind, waiting for you to let down your guard just once, waiting for you to once again start thinking that things have finally turned the corner. Waiting, so it can strike again.

Being a cynic sucks.


The Other "This wonderful philosophical moment brought to you by" Matthew