Christmas

Well, it is officially two days after Christmas but for the first time in as long as I can remember, it doesn't feel like Christmas has magically disappeared after 11:59 pm on December 25th. It feels like the spirit is still in the air, which I find to be great. First off, I didn't even feel like Christmas was approaching at all this year with all the hecticness of final exams coming to an end on December 22nd. By the time I got home there were only two full days left until Christmas. And for my family, Christmas begins on Christmas Eve, so I effectively had one day to get myself in the spirit (and to do some last minute city Christmas shopping). Then it came upon me "like a tidal wave" and suddenly I felt myself filled with the spirit. I didn't care about gifts or money as much as I did about re-connecting with my family and sharing stories with them about old times and new times. It was good to finally just be able to relax and let the spirit of Christmas guide me through the holiday. I think that's what Christmas should always be about. Back with more later...

About The Hiatus...

Last post you'll find here I was promising to deliver the third part of my time-travel rant early in the second week of June. So yeah... epic fail on my part. This would be just about the eightieth time on this blog that I would be apologizing for my slacking. But this time... I'm not saying sorry. Mainly because I'm writing this to a very small audience (if any), but also because the past three months have been kind of hectic for me to say the least. By that, I mean, I was transitioning from confused high school graduate to even more confused college newcomer--- not that I was especially busy throughout the summer, but just... distracted I guess. Welcoming the thoughts of my future college experience (which I'm now living out here in Loudonville, NY at Siena College). So that's the reason for my lack of blogging all summer long. Eventually I probably will try to decipher the time travel theories for a third time but first I need to re-familiarize myself with the theories I was trying to prove, which is a very time-consuming process (at least for me). So don't hold your breath. This post right now is mainly concerned with these logistical issues that I'm not saying sorry for, so if you saw this new entry and got super excited for more of my ingenius insight, then you already stopped reading. If you are reading this far, however, you deserve SOMETHING. So just for you... here's an update on my college experience.
I arrived in Loudonville with my fair share of hesitation and anxiety, but with a greater amount of hope and excitable energy that I think even rubbed off on some of my family. The campus was just as I remembered it, except now it was a bit more hectic. Kinetic energy abounded. Nervous students flocked to get their room keys; agitated parents unloaded refrigerators and TVs from their cars; my grandmother sat in the rented van with a window cracked like a dog (the way she wanted it). My new life, little did I know, had officially begun. I met people that day who were complete strangers. A day later, we were inseparable. We knew each other since birth, or at least so it seemed. I joked around with them like I would with my own family. Two days later, we were going to the mall and to the movies together. Giant games of Apples to Apples ensued; running around from dorm to dorm to dorm; having dinner with so many people it made my family's Thanksgiving dinner table look small. A new family started. I met brilliant professors who have already made an impact on me. My room really isn't as bad as a jail cell. The food here is pretty great. But all of that means nothing without having people to share it with. I consider myself lucky to have such great people to begin the most important journey of my life with. And in the immortal words of Mr. Sherman Klump, "Good morning!"

The Gameplan

2 posts in one day... I'm busy (and bored) tonight. This is just a quick update about what's going on here at Resistance of Salvation headquarters (by headquarters I mean my laptop in my bedroom) in the coming week. Last week I made some promises about what I would be posting on the blog each day, which kind of didn't work out so I'm not going to do that again this week, and probably never again. I'm not a very organized person, and I'm definitely a procrastinator so I tend to put off tasks I assign for myself until I feel like doing them... which I'm sure will help me immensely in college. So anywho, here's a quick rundown on what I may try to do this week. I definitely will finish up my time travel series hopefully early on in the week. I really never imagined it would be so hard to write about the time travel theories as presented in the Back to the Future trilogy and the Terminator world, but it's pretty damn confusing so I've split it up into a few separate blog entries. Third, and final, entry is coming at you in the very near future. I also promised to do 2 other Terminator related entries last week which I never got to. Rest assured, those will be delivered as promised, again, sometime early this week (hopefully). And, of course, any spur of the moment ideas I come up with that I think will make for fascinating viewing will pop up on your computer screens as well. May also do a couple things on college life this week... expectations, etc. We shall see. So the basic message I'm trying to convey is "That Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with, it can be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop... ever... until you are dead." Oh, right, I was talking about what's going on at the Blog this week. Hard to believe I'm such a disorganized writer, huh? Good when I put my mind to it though... and, yeah, seriously, that Terminator is ripped. I would hand over my clothes if he asked me to. Otherwise, he may kind of, well, kill you in cold blood and imitate your voice on the phone. I'll be back... and sooner than you'd like me to be.

Here At The Crossroads of Time

I'm still a little bit shellshocked that I'm a high school graduate. I've been one for a good 32 hours now, but still can't get over it. It's just like, wow, it's all over. Completely. The past couple of years all's I've been talking about is how much I can't wait for college and how much I wanted out of high school. But now it's all starting to come to me... I'm going to miss it. I'm not saying I think I should spend another year in high school... I've paid my dues (in the form of IB exams and Extended Essay), and I deserved that diploma. But what gets me is that the teachers that mentored me throughout all of this... are no longer going to be a part of my life. And neither are my peers from Xaverian High School, except for maybe a couple more get-togethers. Chapter One of my life has officially closed. Chapter Two won't truly begin until September up in Albany... right now we're kind of stuck in the middle. Kinda still in chapter one, kinda in chapter two. So I figured what better way to sort my emotions than right here on my nifty little blog?
Well, as the saying goes, everything happens for a reason. And the purpose of yesterday's commencement was to introduce 350 able in mind, body, and spirit individuals into the world to attempt to change the face of it. Hope for the future was unleashed yesterday... potential. And that's the word I'm going to focus on in this entry... potential. That's what life is all about. We all have the potential to be great--- to live in God's image. To live respectful, yet fun, lives. To venture into life experiences you once thought you'd never have. And that's what college is. A life experience like no other, where the potential is literally limitless. That's what I'm striving for in college, to reach my potential. My one regret in high school was that I waited until around Junior Year to really start being social, and I feel I may've paid for that the past couple of years as I've tried to make my way into the social circles that were already established four years ago. I love you all at Xaverian, but I really do need a fresh start. In many ways, we all do. College is just as much about redemption and renewal as it is partying and having fun. I hope to combine all of these things, actually. That'd make for a great college experience. Always remember your potential can not be used to help you in life until you realize it's there. It's always there. The road to a successful, happy life is just a crossroads away.

Stopping Time

It doesn't happen. Never. Even in the quietest moments of our life, the few parts of it that we have to sit back and meditate on life's greatest mysteries and questions, you can never completely stop time. It may seem like it pauses slightly during said moments of reflection but the reality of life is that time doesn't sleep. It doesn't take vacation days or call in sick. It doesn't take a break every couple of centuries to rest on its laurels. Time's sole purpose in this world is to be the universe's constant. Something that can never fail it. Something that can never fail us. We take breaks, hiatuses, vacations, respits... power naps, cat naps, naps under our desks at work for you Seinfeld fans out there... coffee breaks, lunch breaks, work breaks. But time does none of this. And it never will.
We, however, will stop... someday. Right now we just take pauses, like the ones listed above. But the reason we never truly stop until natural death is because we have a zest for life. We have an inherent, inevitable part of our soul that quenches knowledge and discovery. We want answers... we want questions... more of the latter than the former I believe, too. We want challenge, and formidable tasks to be presented to us. We want to help the helpless, shepherd the lost, clothe the naked, guide the blind. We want to be microcosms of Christ Himself. We strive to beat on so we can discover all that God in His infinine mercy and wisdom has in store for us. Not so we can wait and see how much riches and prestige he bestows on us. To see how he wants us to serve his ministry in our daily lives. Yes, that's right. Daily. We may not all realize it but we all have powerful destinies planned for us by our Lord God. He sees in us things we never even thought we'd be capable of. He counts us worthy to proclaim His name, though not by screaming it from a mountain top. Here's how he wants us to do it, and how we in our heart of hearts, want to ourselves to do it as well: counsel a confused friend; give food to the hungry; secretly give money to the poor, not wanting any recognition or acknowledgment; talk to the lonely; give someone a shoulder to cry on; use the best of yourself to bring out the best in other people. And most importantly, listen. Listen to the elderly, the poor, the sick, the meek, the hungry. To those who are reaching out to you. To those who need you, though they'd never admit it. Reach out your hand to your fellow man; pray he takes it.
So I graduate tomorrow... and that's why I write this blog tonight, at a time when I really should be resting up for tomorrow so that I don't fall asleep in Walt Whitman auditorium tomorrow while diplomas are being handed out. If anyone's actually reading this, and caring about it, you probably are asking: why did he just do that? Wax poetic about how we should treat others how we would like to be treated and about charisms we learn about in Church weekly? Simple. Because even though we've all heard that stuff before, it needs to reverberate in us. It needs to have a lasting affect. It needs to be remembered. Especially by the Xaverian graduating class of 2009. We've all had our personal trials and tribulations, but the bottom line is we all brought out the best in each other at SOME point of our academic career in Xaverian High School. And we can all bring out the best in other people in the same manner as we did in that building in other buildings, in other cities, in other states, in other countries, in other ways. Our service to the world and to God wasn't completed when our Senior Involvement time ended. No, sir. Service and commitment are necessary for all aspects of our lives... professionally, academically, spiritually. And before I get off my soapbox, I'd just like to make one more point:
Service is integral to our spiritual formation and life experiences in general for one specific, non-negotiable reason. Helping others helps ourselves. It enrichens our life experiences. It makes life worthwhile. It gives us purpose. It humanizes us. It forms us, and shapes us, and molds us. It is what makes us the manifestations of Jesus Christ we all want ourselves to be. And remember, while we have a definite end, time does not. It will keep on ticking until there is nothing left to tick for. Which is to say, forever. Human beings have the capacity for great things, all of them, if they just set their hearts to it.
It is with mixed emotions that roughly 12 hours from now my commencement from Xaverian High School will begin. I will miss my friends, and the deep bonds I have formed with my brethren there. I will miss the teachers who were so integral in my formation as a man of character and maturity. But as time ticks on, I also realize that there is another constant I can always rely on: my family. Who were there when I was introduced to this world some eighteen years ago. Who worried about me when I refused to eat when I was two days old and had to be fed intravenously. Who held me in their arms when I was an infant and sang me to sleep. Who baptized me in the name of Jesus Christ when I was 2 months old. Who nurtured me my whole life. Who was at my pre-school Graduation... my fifth grade graduation... my eighth grade graduation. All leading up to yet another Graduation to add to the roster: my graduation from High School. The surreal feeling that it seems just yesterday I was tearing up at my graduation from Mark Twain will probably leave me someday. Probably about four years from now when I realize how surreal it seems that it feels like just yesterday I graduated from high school.
The past fades away as the present, changing constantly, awaits the future. Nothing will hold back the night to paraphrase Billy Joel in "Two Thousand Years." So we beat on...

The Past Future, Future Past, and the Veracity of Time Traveling- Part 2

So we've already delved into the foundations of time travel as presented by the Back to the Future trilogy, where we concluded that there is only ONE possible, one true timeline, and any other ones other than that are temporary and will eventually resolve themselves, or there will be a major world paradox. Put in terms of the film itself, the only TRUE timeline is the one we see at the beginning of Part I. This can get kind of hairy, though, by virtue of the fact that the time machine, although it doesn't prevent or cause any lives to be initiated. Marty McFly was destined to be born, even though he started to fade away during "Earth Angel" after it seemed that all hope had been lost for George and Lorraine (Lorraine was too involved with "Calvin" to be bothered by the shy George)--- said "disappearing" act was a direct result of Marty's time traveling back to a time where his mother and father were teenagers. HOWEVER, true love always perseveres--- even time travel itself couldn't alter the ultimate FATE of the main characters, George, Marty, Lorraine, Dave, Linda. There was a predestined timeline that even Doc Brown couldn't intervene with. Even his and Clara's romantic involvement in Part III was a result of pure fate. They were meant for each other, even though they were from different times. The only major character whose fate kept changing throughout the course of the movies was Biff Tannen. In many ways, he was the crux, the time barometer if you will, of each picture. His wealth in the middle of Part II was the key to everyone's reality being so different (apart from the time travelers of course). In the first film, he is seen as just a big, old bully who bullied his whole way through life. By the end of Part III, he's a servant. In some ways, the character is a plot device, but in others he is the most fascinating character study of the whole trilogy.
"The Terminator" was one of 1984's most low profile, low budget, summer sleeper movies. You could tell from the get-go, however, that James Cameron had big ideas for this franchise. Although you could tell the effects budget was very small by today's standards and some of the script-writing for the first picture was a little weak, there was SOMETHING about this movie that James Cameron was passionate about. This was meant to be more than a great action flick (which it was). This was a horror picture. Machines taking over the world in a not-too-distant future. A waitress being told the weight of the world was on her shoulders. A soldier who was disillusioned by the horrors he had seen in the future, yet still had hope for the world when he arrived in 1984. His mission was to protect one Sarah Connor, the aforementioned waitress. What John Connor, the future leader of the resistance against the machines, presumably never told Reese was that he was his father. The mission was not only to protect Sarah from big bad Ahhnold, but also to father John with Sarah. A quiet scene halfway through the picture has Kyle telling Sarah "I came across time for you Sarah. I love you. I always have." At its heart, this first part to the mythos of the Terminator world is a love story. Sarah immediately falls for Reese and they make mad, passionate love almost immediately after Reese utters those lines. Big Bad Ahhnold is too busy killing other Sarah Connors and ramming through police stations uttering classic catchphrases to realize that he's as good as a godfather to John Connor. In fact, in the second installment, he will assume a father figure type of role for Connor (as Connor's father died before he was born, it was important for Termie to assume such a role). But Connor will meet his dad sometime in the 21st century. More on that later.
Had Skynet not have gone online (sorry to those of you who don't like T3, but said event happened in this movie) in 2004, John Connor would've never had the need to organize a resistance to combat them. Oh, yeah, and he wouldn't be around to do that even if he wanted to. The ultimate reasoning behind what I just said is that time travel in the Terminator world is cyclical. The future has to happen before the past does, kind of. If Skynet doesn't go online, Kyle Reese grows up to lead a happy, normal life. No need for time travel because Skynet doesn't exist. Skynet doesn't invent the time displacement field, doesn't send the T-800 back in time to kill the future leader of the resistance's mother--- and John Connor isn't born.
In this franchise, time travel does DIRECTLY affect the existence of people, and even, the state of the world itself. The third and final part to this blog is coming at you tomorrow... stay tuned. "I'll be back."

The Past Future, Future Past, and The Veracity of Time Traveling

Before we begin, let me just tell you all right now that this one's a head-hurter, so tune out now if you don't want, well, your head to hurt. So, here we go. In this blog entry, as promised, I will be comparing time travel theories as presented in the fabulous "Back to the Future" trilogy and what I believe is the best film franchise of all time, the "Terminator" series. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have enough time or energy to consider "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" in this particular entry, but be on the lookout for an entry in the not-too-distant future pondering the theories that show has put out on the table.
Let's start with the Back to the Future trilogy. There's a scene in Part II that many people may overlook but is actually quite crucial to the whole mythos that Bob Zemeckis sought to create from the get-go. It's a scene that occurs about fifteen or twenty minutes before the credits roll. Marty has burned the book (Gray's Sports Almanac) that caused Biff's richness in the alternate 1985 seen halfway through the film. Doc's getting ready to set the time machine for re-entry into the 1985 he and Marty remembered before the time machine was created. Earlier in the 1985A timeline, right before old Biff attempted to kill Marty in his hotel, Marty took a book of matches from Biff's office desk that promote the luxurious hotel he has built with his riches. So back to the scene where Marty has just burned the book. Right after he does so, the aforementioned match book immediately transforms into an Auto Detailing matchbook--- our indication that the 1985A timeline has effectively been deleted from history and the natural timeline has been restored. Marty and Doc will experience said timeline when they return back to 1985 (which won't happen until the end of Part III). The timeline has been altered without directly affecting their current selves, as Doc had said would happen earlier in the movie.
The Back to the Future trilogy works on events that HAVE happened already, and Doc's constant concern is that with his time traveling experiments, he may be interrupting the space-time continuum. For instance, Marty's purchasing of the Sports Almanac in 2015 was what resulted in the creation of the Alternate '85, where Biff was drunk with power, his mother was forced to marry Biff, and Biff had killed Marty's father. Had Marty not've burned the almanac, the space-time continuum would've been interrupted. But due to the book being burned in 1955, that ensures that Biff won't make the millions of dollars he made in the alternate timeline between 1958 and 1985. Traveling back to the future (1985) would no longer yield a horrible world where Biff Tannen practically ruled it. But Doc is struck by lightning and Marty feels obligated to go back in time to 1885 to save his time-traveling pal. In order to do so, he needs to uncover the time machine in a place where Doc has buried it after he arrived in 1885. He turns to the other Doc Brown, the 1955 one who sends Marty back to the future in Part I. DIRECTLY following sending the other Marty back to 1985, Marty 2 comes up to him telling him he's back from the future and needs to be sent back to the PAST. If your head's hurting right now, don't worry, mine is too.
In 1885, Doc falls in love, Marty nearly gets killed after making enemies with Biff's ancestor and it's up to Marty to convince Doc to come back with him to 1985 once they can find a way to get back to 1985! But nevertheless, Marty does end up getting back to 1985, even though Doc decides to live a time-traveling life with Clara by the movie's end. For all intense and purposes, the natural timeline is restored by the end of Part III. In 1955, George and Lorraine fall in love, with the help of one Calvin Klein (aka Part I Marty), Marty gets back to the future with the help of Doc, etc. In 1985, Biff is George's bitch due to Marty's intervening at the Enchantment dance (he convinces George to stand up for himself which Lorraine goes gaga over), Marty is a normal teen, his siblings are normal, and he's madly in love with girlfriend Jennifer. In this franchise, the time travel isn't essential to anyone's life per se, but rather it is essential to time itself (once a time machine is created, time itself is inevitably altered from the first "experiment". In this case, that first experiment is Doc sending Einie one minute into the future at the beginning of Part I). The case is different, however, for consideration number two: the Terminator films.

Stay tuned for Part II of this hopefully enlightening blog.

Sorry For The Hiatus... Back With More

I realize it's been nearly a week now since my last post so I think it's just about time to get back to business. This week's going to be a jam-packed week for this blog as I talk about new and exciting things that you probably never even HEARD of before! And by that I mean, I'll be talking about stuff that you have heard of before but ususally choose to ignore. This is the "Seinfeld" of blogs, my friends. They'll range from annoying to profound and then back again... Now as all of you know (if anyone's even reading this), I will officially be a high school graduate come Saturday at around 5:30 pm, if all goes according to plan. So basically, in addition to this serving as an outlet for me to emote electronically (clever alliteration, eh?), it will also serve as a springboard for lots of procrastination in a week where I probably should be getting ready for the most important day of my life so far. Bear with me.
Without any further ado, here's a tentative schedule for this week's blogs just to get you psyched and prepared for this epic week of blogging:
Monday through Wednesday: Comparing the Time Travel Theories Presented in the Back to the Future trilogy and the Terminator movies. A three-part entry.
Thursday: Why Terminator 3 was a better film than Salvation.
Friday: The Future Is Not Set--- Personal Anecdotes on High School, College, and life itself.
Pretty exciting, huh? I'm especially excited for Monday's blog as it's really confusing and challenges the reader (and me) to think about pretty complex ideas thrown out by movies that were supposed to be taken with a grain of salt. Stay tuned for that, and for all things "Resistance of Salvation" in the week to come.

A Reflection on Memorial Day

I'm going to take a break from my normal, kind of daily (even though my last post was Friday) rants on the Terminator world and all that cool philosophy stuff momentarily and focus in on why most of us are here today. Veterans. Our ancestors fighting for survival in new and dangerous places--- to fight for our peace and tranquility. Unfortunately, that goal has yet to be achieved. I am a very anti-war kind of person, ala Eugene Debs (former presidential candidate and workers' reform trailblazer). I think it's rather pointless and it often starts over trivial things like land settlements or oil or some other worldly concern that the rest of the world won't care about in a hundred years. OK, I am going to throw in a Terminator reference here, a quote from Sarah's co-worker in the diner from hell in T1: "Look at it this way, in a hundred years, who's gonna care?" Alot of people argue that it is necessary just in order to survive (see Darwin's Survival of the Fittest theory), and they have valid points. I'm not saying we should pull out of Iraq right now, because in the cruel and remorseless world we live in at the moment, we'd be viewed as weak and would thus become vulnerable to attack. I'm not condemning our ancestors who fought for our survivial, because as I said before, I'm here to honor them. They WERE in war... they knew that it sucked. They knew what pain was... what it was like to lose a close friend or a dear loved one... they knew more than we'll ever know. And alot of them made that ultimate sacrifice: death for their country... but not only for their country, for their family. For their friends. For their distant relatives and for people they never even knew. War has a unique toll on familial structure that causes a devastation that can be matched by no natural disaster... no other kind of untimely death. War is death, but death can lead to life. As I alluded to in my first blog, one door closes, another one opens. That's what our heroes fought for... life in death to counter death in life. They fought for us, they fought for our loved ones, they fought for our children... they fought for an end to fighting. They fought for Alpha to meet Omega.

"And in the evening, after the fire and the light, one thing is certain: nothing can hold back the night. Time is relentless, and as the past disappears, we're on the verge of all things new. We are two thousand years."- Billy Joel, "Two Thousand Years."

Dr. Silberman, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Terminator

Before I begin, I'd like to just preface this entry by saying that the title is once again an attempt to be clever, and I apologize to anyone who still has no clue what the hell I'm talking about.
Just about six summers ago now... I was in Kentucky for my annual trek to visit an aunt and uncle I have up there with my dad. A couple days into the trip my uncle suggests a movie (they're big movie people, they like to go at least once a week)... so I said "Yeah, sure, I'm game for a movie. Which one do you want to see?" or something along those lines. That part of the day is a little blurry for me, but what happened later on that day I still have vivid memories of. So my uncle was all hyped about "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines", and all's I could think of was: yikes. I really don't want to go see that movie--- the world prophesized by Jim Cameron in the Terminator mythos was way too scary for my tastes. Even to the point that I never even saw the first two installments. I never went in for horror flicks and I'm not really an action guy either. But, albeit begrudgingly, I went. I went and I sat and I waited, after getting my huge bucket of popcorn and 32 oz. water that I would later regret. I sat through the previews while devouring the popcorn--- and started to get just a little bit nervous at the prospect of the film I was about to see. My uncle had prepped me in the car about the whole timeline and who John Connor was, who Sarah Connor was, who Kyle Reese was... who the T-800 was. But it was so damn confusing I basically tuned him out very quickly. I soon regretted tuning him out as the film started getting underway... and suddenly, captivation. Pure, utter, captivation--- I was at the mercy of Jonathon Mostow's story within minutes. I never saw a movie quite like it... seasoned perfectly with just the right combination of bravada, thrills, testosterone, hotness (Kristanna Loken's "arrival" scene), and funniness. The action was mind-blowing even if you weren't an action junkie (and I would know, because as previously stated, I'm not an action/adventure kind of guy). The crane chase scene just had me going "Wow. This is a great film." Say what you may about the lack of Sarah Connor or Schwarzenegger's 60 year old Terminator, and say what you will about Mostow's directing style, but I thought the movie rocked... and most important, it made me crave more. James Cameron gave no words of consolation to Mostow... no support. He had felt the story had been told in the first two pictures and no more needed to be said for the franchise. All's I have to say is thank God Jonathon Mostow disagreed. Without T3, I may've never even discovered the first two glorious entries to this marvelous saga. And thank God I went to that movie theater that day. Last but not least, I thank my uncle for introducing me to what I believe is the best story of human survival ever told.
No fate but what we make. So what are we waiting for?

Beginnings and Endings

I have many mottos. We all do, and we always will. Most of them change daily based upon my current mood or circumstance. They run the gamut from the hopeful to the desperate to the necessary. At times my motto comes in the form of quoting a song, a poem, or a book--- but more often than not, my inspiration comes from the screen. One of the finest examples of such inspiration comes in the form of the recently discovered lyrics of "The Dick Van Dyke Show" theme, which states that "A smile is just a frown that's turned upside down, so smile and that frown'll get lost." I love that quote for so many reasons, but mostly because of its simplicity. Just smile, and that'll make your frown go away. Naturally... you can't smile and frown at the same time. So do the one that makes you happier and anything that makes you unhappy will disappear, at least temporarily. So that's one of my mottos. Another is that hope for the future makes all things in life possible. Another is that divinity in its most simplistic form is faithfulness. But no matter what mood I'm in or how Gatsby-esque I'm feeling each particular day, one of my mottos seems to have a definitiveness about it, like I'll never be able to not live by that motto. That motto is that when one door closes, another one opens. This quote can be interpreted many different ways--- the closed door can either represent something good that's gone out of your life or something bad that you want to get rid of, and the open door can either represent change for the worse or the better. But nevertheless... it's a constant of sorts in life, not even as a motto, as a philosophy--- but as a way of life. Life is unexpected and mysterious and we are constantly morphing, changing, thriving individuals seeking self-realization at even the darkest hours of our existences. We're always on the road to something else in the world--- never truly satisfied with whatever we have in the present. We try to fix the unalterable past or attempt to charter the undeniable yet unpredictable course of the rest of our lives... making idealistic game plans for where we are, where we should be and where we will inevitably be. Stillness for human beings is rarely an option.
But lo and behold, along comes the wonderful world of web blogging... forums for meditation, venting, organization, synthesis and a jumping off point for new discoveries, discussions, and dialogues. I'm a little behind on the times... blogging's been around for pert near ten years now, but I figure better late than never. Now on the blog name; I thought long and hard on this one (and by that I mean about five minutes) and in the end decided to name it "Resistance of Salvation." Why? Well if it isn't immediately obvious than I guess it was a lost cause but I'll explain it anyway. It's a direct allusion to the Resistance John Connor is destined to lead to victory in the future against the sentient machines created by evil computer virus Skynet in the Terminator mythology.... trying to lead the world to salvation. Trying to lead themselves to Salvation... just like we all try to do every single day of our lives, whether we realize it or not. We're searching for who our most inner selves are even when we don't realize it... fighting for survival and sustainment in a constantly evolving, increasingly frightening world. The wars don't have to involve big guns or huge, scary Schwarzenegger-modeled robots... they're internal conflicts that run rampant in our bodies, trying to control and shape who we are. The battle between good and evil, the battle between conformity and taking charge. Realizing that fate is a choice, not an inevitability, as most things are in this rarely comforting, cold to the touch world. Realizing who we are and who God wants us to be. It's all about the road, the journey, the discovery. It's about coming into our own, being manifestations of who we really want ourselves to be... it's about being John Connor.