Newsletter #00002

alright, my first newsletter, im not sure how im gonna go about it, but I'll give it my best, I will touch on some of josh's topics and bring up my own, I feel that he will end up being the political writer, I am personally not very interested in politics. so here goes:

All through last week and the week before it, SADD had been working on an anti-smoking campaign, and i was sitting at the table at lunch handing things out. This brought an interesting thing to mind, as I would look out across the cafeteria, I would notice just how many people i didn't know at all. This just struck me as strange, I always feel like I know alot of people and have alot of friends, (of course coming from holy rosary with a graduating class of 19, it could just be me) but looking out like this just seemed to be a bit of a realization, even if it does seem insignifigant.

To touch on Josh's little thing on religion, here is my thing-
-In my opinion, all religions are based on the same thing, being taught virtues and lessons of a sort
-Awhile back, i was sitting in church, and some of the things said made me think, and please don't think I am trying to say anything bad about any religion or that it is not true or anything else you can come up with, so please just read without your hard beliefs, or with an "open mind", or skip.....
anyways, i was in chuch, and i thought.."say none of this was true, say religion just gives us something we always believe we can count on, an assurance made to be beyond our understanding so that we can refute anyone that argues, say it is just a way of keeping people sane, a friend that we are always told is listening, then waiting until something good seems to come from it, and we give all the credit to the respective entity".... this just happened to pop up in my head.... like what if religion was made purely to explain everything science couldnt prove centuries, millenia ago....... but like i said, just one of my little "what if.." moments
-I belive that religion is a good thing to have, especially for the fact that it does teach life lessons, and how to live peacefully with other people........ that is, of course unless you go way over the top with it, which we have all seen happen.

Loneliness..........it seemed to be the "Theme of the month" for january,everyone I know was struck by it one way or another, and if you are in Ms. Pierce's class with me then i will say no, this is not because we wrote an essay on loneliness, but it sure goes with my idea of the theme now doesn't it? This is something i wish not to stay on for too long for a host of reasons......

so moving on-

Lately i have been noticing more and more of life's little cycles, the patterns, the little quirks in people and traits that seem to be constant, but always in a different way, these things that seem to apply to most everybody, if i manage to get a more concrete example of what i am trying to say, I will put it in next week's note. This is one thing that i thouroughly enjoy, watching, observing, and learning from things around me, not so much learning in school, but of surroundings.

Now to touch on another subject brought up by Josh, the ability to disagree, oh so important. it is something that is needed to keep any sort of balance, hey, if nobody disagreed, our government wouldn't work, there would be no checks or balances... of course i suppose alot of other problems would be avoided if nobody ever disagreed, like there would be much less fighting, things would get done quicker, more could be accomplished, I would even like to go out on a limb and say there would be less crime...but then again, there would never be that one person to see the fault in a plan and step out and say "hey, not gonna work, bad idea." This is something that is obviously vital, how many bad decisions could be made if everyone just agreed with the first person to voice his/her opinion? So to close this little discussion, i will say that i believe that disagreement is not only important to life but essential.

Have you ever noticed how complicated relationships are? and by this i do not mean boyfriend/girlfriend. I mean every kind of relationship, Friends, Family..... well, those are the two i know most about, but they can be split up into subsections quite some bit. Like friendships, I will start with them, I am going to leave out the boyfriend/girlfriend relationship because i really don't want to touch on that for so many reasons that listing them would be more redundant than writing this sentence in which i am writing about things that i am saying i am not going to write about... But to get back on subject, Friendships, all good friendships prosper in learning about each other and putting in that extra effort to really have a good time with a person. But i see it as much more than this, i feel that in a good friendship, there is always a comfort in the knowledge of a friend and much more in the presence and words of a friend, someone without judgement on you, someone who is willing to forgive mistakes, a true friend. Which brings me to the next distinction, true friend or not? I see a true friend as someone who does what is listed above, but there are many versions of this, i know people that may not be able to do what i said, but these people give their best effort, which is something that i think advertantly accomplishes the goal anyway. but the untrue friend is much easier to describe, i see this as someone who does not care, or is simply too lazy to put in the effort needed to maintain a good relationship. I also believe that to obtain a good friendship, you can never take someone's word on a person, you must cast all prior "knowlegde" of a person aside to keep an open mind. You also need to refrain from judgement, which i must admit, i do not do all the time, but i refuse to believe that anybody does. I may write more on this next week, we will see, i never did get to family, but i am done with this subject for now.......

Alright, here is one that i would like an opinion on:Is it possible to make the opposite of a person? or would the opposite simply be the same person? (And to avoid confusion, i am only talking about personality, not physical appearance.) The reason this can be debated is this:
-The opposite of recessive is dominant
-The opposite of dominant is recessive
-The opposite of good is bad
-The opposite of bad is good
The reason that those four things that could have been said in two bullets are relevant is this-
say you have an overall bad person, i believe that they are still going to have a small part of them that is able to be good. if you take the opposite, only looking at it that way, the dominant bad would become recessive and good, and the recessive good would become dominant and bad, thus replicating the person. So give me your thoughts.

Josh, perfect circles most certainly can exist, but i will hold off and let you begin what I believe will become quite the epic debate between our notes.

And so ends my first newsletter, tell me what you thought, and leave some ideas for josh and myself to touch on and write about in the future. Comments are very welcome (and truthfully asked for in a way)so long as its not one of josh's so called "YOU'RE WRONG! RANT RANT RANT" little deals, those are not appreciated, and i will send out the same threat of deletion to any that contain such things, haha. I am also going to attempt to throw in one of the questions like the "opposite of a person" one every week to get everyone thinking and just to get input.

February 3-2009
-by Brad