Write Back Weekend "I See Dead People"
So I never much pay attention to my Bloglines or Bloglet subscriber buttons on the lefthand sidebar, but the other day I noticed it said I had no subscribers via Bloglines. I know there have been less readers lately, but imagining that I'm not on at least one person's Bloglines list is a bit depressing. As for Bloglet, I'm not even sure if it ever worked. If you subscribe to AOGB via either one of these services, can you let me know via email if they are working for you? Thanks!
My new renter is World of Chad. I'd like it if those of you who still visit here would pay a visit to him too, but the truth of the matter is I'm not gonna play you Chad. Rent might be cheap, but one little click has been a hard sell most days. Let's be optimistic and prove me wrong guys, k?
In honor of Halloween, last week's TITMT asked you the layered question, Do you believe in ghosts? I didn't expect to get very easy answers from those who participated, and in turn, my response is not clearcut either.
When one talks about things such as ghosts, God and even Santa Claus a key word pops out at me: B-E-L-I-E-F. The fact of the matter is (and I'm sure I'll get some sort of argument on this) there are certain things we believe in throughout the course of our lives blindly, without having any proof of their existence. Ghosts and the supernatural are those sorts of things.
But then if that is true, what about the saying, seeing is believing? Well in a way, that is true also. This is where belief and evidence go hand in hand. If you believe you have evidence of something's existence, than you are more likely to feel it is true. As a result, I think it's the people who have had experiences that they can't quite explain that are more open to believing.
When I was a kid, I had a few encounters that made me question the presence of Casper and company. The most prolific occurred after my favorite aunt died when I was nine. It was the first big loss that happened to me at an age where I was old enough to comprehend but still feel confused at the same time, not that loss in general really gets any easier with age.
Shortly after her death I remember coming down from upstairs, turning the corner in my house and for a split second, swearing I saw my aunt sitting on the couch in the family room that we always used to sit on together. Of course I blinked in disbelief and when I opened my eyes again, the image was gone. Even then it was easy to rationalize why I saw what I saw. I was sad at the loss of someone close to me and had her on my mind. But is that what ghosts want to us to believe? Are they really showing themselves to us when we are at our most vulnerable so that we will continue to question their existence and they will keep their "elusive" credibility?
Before you discredit my theory consider this, most of the time when people swear to seeing things that just don't sit right with them, it's when they have gone through a hard loss. Another time when this is common is when you are feeling tired. When I was in my early teens, I hated going to bed. So often I would sit up in my room, in the dark, thinking to myself. One night while I was doing this I looked over to my right and I swore I saw something sitting on the right side of my bed. It's hard to explain what it was since it wasn't someone or something I clearly knew, but it was something. Sufficiently creeped out, I quickly crawled under the covers and tried to go to sleep, pushing the image out of my mind. In that moment, I could justify being tired as the excuse the image was there in the first place, but was that really the truth?
Besides being distraught and dead tired, there's yet one more prime time to question the unknown. This comes in the time we are at our most vulnerable, and most unable to express ourselves and what we see. This is when we are babies.
Think about it. Have you ever watched a baby just talk to or stare off into what seems like thin air? Maybe they are really just are looking at nothing, but maybe they a privy to something they can't explain, precisely because they can't explain it. The same goes for animals when you think about it. Sometimes it seems like animals will freak out at nothing. We yell at them to calm down, but what if they know what we do not know? What if we all as babies had that sixth sense but just like when we are tired or stressed out, do not retain what we saw into adulthood?
When you think about it, there are people who seem to truly retain and holdfast to strong imagery. And what do we do with these people? We commit them to insane asylums and psychiatric hospitals. We feel sorry for them and try to get them help, but what if, and this is a big if, their warped sense of reality is actually right and we're wrong? Just think about how many psychological thrillers have been made where the bad guy is trying to frame the good guy and almost succeeds. What if being in touch with the afterworld as an adult pushes you over the so-called edge? It would be ironic if that were the case and that in order to truly know what you believe in, you have to give up others believe in YOU.
Most of all, when I think about ghosts, I wonder if they get to pick and choose their destination. For instance, if you do believe in ghosts or an afterlife, do you think the ghosts that surroud you are necessarily people that once knew you? In a way I find this comforting and I hope that the people who did know me, are proud of what I've become and what they see. But on another level it creeps me out. Nobody's perfect. Think about every little thing you do in your life. Do you really want your life to be essentially VHS'ed for your deceased grandfather to pause and repeat? I don't think so!
Of course if you do decide to believe in ghosts, what do you believe in? Do you believe there are good and bad ghosts, just as there are good and bad people living on Earth? If we believe in mysterious forces helping us out, couldn't there be just as many forces working against us? After I had a car accident a few years back that I blogged about here, I truly believed I had a guardian angel with me that day. Did I really? I don't know. But I take comfort in the fact that believing there is something or someone out there looking out for me.
Even if I'm wrong, I believe there are worse things to being duped in than believing itself.
My new renter is World of Chad. I'd like it if those of you who still visit here would pay a visit to him too, but the truth of the matter is I'm not gonna play you Chad. Rent might be cheap, but one little click has been a hard sell most days. Let's be optimistic and prove me wrong guys, k?
In honor of Halloween, last week's TITMT asked you the layered question, Do you believe in ghosts? I didn't expect to get very easy answers from those who participated, and in turn, my response is not clearcut either.
When one talks about things such as ghosts, God and even Santa Claus a key word pops out at me: B-E-L-I-E-F. The fact of the matter is (and I'm sure I'll get some sort of argument on this) there are certain things we believe in throughout the course of our lives blindly, without having any proof of their existence. Ghosts and the supernatural are those sorts of things.
But then if that is true, what about the saying, seeing is believing? Well in a way, that is true also. This is where belief and evidence go hand in hand. If you believe you have evidence of something's existence, than you are more likely to feel it is true. As a result, I think it's the people who have had experiences that they can't quite explain that are more open to believing.
When I was a kid, I had a few encounters that made me question the presence of Casper and company. The most prolific occurred after my favorite aunt died when I was nine. It was the first big loss that happened to me at an age where I was old enough to comprehend but still feel confused at the same time, not that loss in general really gets any easier with age.
Shortly after her death I remember coming down from upstairs, turning the corner in my house and for a split second, swearing I saw my aunt sitting on the couch in the family room that we always used to sit on together. Of course I blinked in disbelief and when I opened my eyes again, the image was gone. Even then it was easy to rationalize why I saw what I saw. I was sad at the loss of someone close to me and had her on my mind. But is that what ghosts want to us to believe? Are they really showing themselves to us when we are at our most vulnerable so that we will continue to question their existence and they will keep their "elusive" credibility?
Before you discredit my theory consider this, most of the time when people swear to seeing things that just don't sit right with them, it's when they have gone through a hard loss. Another time when this is common is when you are feeling tired. When I was in my early teens, I hated going to bed. So often I would sit up in my room, in the dark, thinking to myself. One night while I was doing this I looked over to my right and I swore I saw something sitting on the right side of my bed. It's hard to explain what it was since it wasn't someone or something I clearly knew, but it was something. Sufficiently creeped out, I quickly crawled under the covers and tried to go to sleep, pushing the image out of my mind. In that moment, I could justify being tired as the excuse the image was there in the first place, but was that really the truth?
Besides being distraught and dead tired, there's yet one more prime time to question the unknown. This comes in the time we are at our most vulnerable, and most unable to express ourselves and what we see. This is when we are babies.
Think about it. Have you ever watched a baby just talk to or stare off into what seems like thin air? Maybe they are really just are looking at nothing, but maybe they a privy to something they can't explain, precisely because they can't explain it. The same goes for animals when you think about it. Sometimes it seems like animals will freak out at nothing. We yell at them to calm down, but what if they know what we do not know? What if we all as babies had that sixth sense but just like when we are tired or stressed out, do not retain what we saw into adulthood?
When you think about it, there are people who seem to truly retain and holdfast to strong imagery. And what do we do with these people? We commit them to insane asylums and psychiatric hospitals. We feel sorry for them and try to get them help, but what if, and this is a big if, their warped sense of reality is actually right and we're wrong? Just think about how many psychological thrillers have been made where the bad guy is trying to frame the good guy and almost succeeds. What if being in touch with the afterworld as an adult pushes you over the so-called edge? It would be ironic if that were the case and that in order to truly know what you believe in, you have to give up others believe in YOU.
Most of all, when I think about ghosts, I wonder if they get to pick and choose their destination. For instance, if you do believe in ghosts or an afterlife, do you think the ghosts that surroud you are necessarily people that once knew you? In a way I find this comforting and I hope that the people who did know me, are proud of what I've become and what they see. But on another level it creeps me out. Nobody's perfect. Think about every little thing you do in your life. Do you really want your life to be essentially VHS'ed for your deceased grandfather to pause and repeat? I don't think so!
Of course if you do decide to believe in ghosts, what do you believe in? Do you believe there are good and bad ghosts, just as there are good and bad people living on Earth? If we believe in mysterious forces helping us out, couldn't there be just as many forces working against us? After I had a car accident a few years back that I blogged about here, I truly believed I had a guardian angel with me that day. Did I really? I don't know. But I take comfort in the fact that believing there is something or someone out there looking out for me.
Even if I'm wrong, I believe there are worse things to being duped in than believing itself.
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