this i like.

I feel already as if I will waste this post failing to adequately express a feeling I'd really like to convey. I am going to write this post while listening to Us by Regina Spektor , so if you want to read what's entering my ears while I write, check that out.

Basically, I have had a couple days of self-rediscovery and enlightenment. I didn't really realize the process taking place over the past couple days until I had a few minutes to quietly sit and think. I really treasure that activity. I was thinking about becoming a good person, while also becoming the kind of person that people enjoy being around. Luckily, I have a few good people whose company I enjoy surrounding me, so I can take notes from them. For instance, all my siblings and siblings-by-law. The more time I spend with them, the more I really learn about living well and doing good. I've been able to learn a lot from Bryce and Christina in the past week. I am consistently instructed and edified when I read about Hilary, Tyler, and the Lores.

Don't you like it when you feel like a part of you that's been sleeping for awhile is awoken by a beautifully written word or perfectly portrayed image? I've been reading some inspiring things and saw a fairly well done film today that have awoken my better slumbering parts. I bought a book called The Book of Dead Philosophers by Simon Critchley and saw the film 500 Days of Summer by director Marc Webb.

What is Simon Critchley's aim and direction in his book? Here's an excerpt that I value as a thesis:
"The main task of philosophy is to prepare us for death, to provide a kind of training for death, the cultivation of an attitude towards our finitude that faces-and faces down-the terror of annihilation without offering promises of an afterlife."
I mean, I obviously DO believe in an afterlife and a loving God that desires our obedient return to Him..but, if death is a transition and meaningful, then isn't philosophy's instruction on overcoming our fear of death, and ascending above our slavery to it, a good thing?
"To philosophize is to learn how to die".
"He who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave".
It isn't a morbid or grim book at all. It really has inspired me for some reason. A paragraph in the author's introduction might explain it best:
"Very simply stated, this is a book about how philosophers have died and what we can learn from philosophy about about the appropriate attitude of death and dying. My hope, to echo the epigraph from Montaigne, is 'to make a register, with comments, of various deaths'. My wager is that in learning how to die we might also be taught how to live."

It is just refreshing to awake. It is a fulfilling process and really the only pursuit that matters: becoming who you want to be through constant evaluation and reawakening.