Beliefs

Wow. Didn’t think I’d ever be doing this… Well, here they are, my beliefs, a long-winded typing up of my thoughts on the nature of what is.
Please, please, PLEASE, if you don’t agree with this, feel free to say so and why, but do not jump down my throat for different thoughts on religion and faith.

I guess, to me, there is no external ‘God’ figure watching over me, or anything like that. No Big Invisible Man In The Sky, no spooky spirit or risen corpse-son-god-thing. In a way, I support evolution, but I am open to the thought that there could be some design involved at the beginning of it. I think that if such were the case, that if we were truly meant to have free will, the process would’ve been started with all the various potential outcomes, and then simply left alone. A universe where the ‘God’ just started it up and walked off to go drink some beer and watch the game, or something along those lines. To me, we’re just one of any number of things that could have developed. May be because we were the smartest, or any number of random chances along the way, but what matters is that -we- were the lucky ones who came into being, and became what we are today.

Some people think me a total cynic, that I have a negative view of life, only look at the bad things, etc, etc. Oddly, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. To me, should we have been utterly random, should the -universe- have been utterly random, or just one of so many potentials, look what came of it.

Seriously.

Stop reading this, go to your window, or step outside, just take a few minutes and look around. Observe people walking around, or cars, or trees, or listen to the wind, anything. Do that, then come back, this’ll still be right here when you do.

Done?

Alright. Well, to me, I look around, and I see pavement, and trees, building and cars and people, the skies above.. I look around, and I see what has come of all those possibilities, at least at this point in time. There’s a whole world out there, full of people, places, things to see and experience, to live and know, or to not do any of that as you see fit. We’ve got a world of beauty and ugliness, joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, and each and every person out there has the capacity for any of it. We’ve got that free-will to do as we please.
To me, there is nothing more beautiful than that knowledge. We can do as we wish, and we have a whole universe in which to do it. We’re on a little blue orb in space that can, for whatever reason (or not), manage to support our particular style of life.
We’ve done a lot to this world, and events on it have changed us as well over time, but we’re still here, we still manage to survive, and be able to experience it in all its splendor. There are places of remarkable beauty, and people as well, even ideas have the potential to be beautiful things. The condition of life is such that we’re able to be aware of all of this, and it will never be the same for two people. Anyway, this is a tangent, I suppose, of my original talk about a lack of ‘God’, and I should be getting back to that.

In my eyes, we don’t need an external God looking over our shoulders, deciding where we go when we die, what we should or shouldn’t do, any of that. We have ourselves, we have our world, and that should be enough. The simple fact of existing should be all that is needed to be happy, that we -have- the opportunity to look around and make our own choices, for better or worse, and that they are truly our choices to make. We shouldn’t -need- some fear of punishment or craving of eternal reward to want to be a good person, it should come down to the simple point that we, along with everything else alive in this world, are able to live and enjoy or hate what we come into.

With that in mind, I don’t look for some kind of external guiding hand, some voice of god, or anything like that. I just look around, and look at the beauty in all that we have, in all that we -are- and have the potential to be, and that’s my ‘god’ right there, in each and every thing that exists, simply because it -can- exist. To me, there’s just too much that can be good if we just try to look at it that way, to worry about seeing the dark side of things, the doom and gloom and omgwtfih8u parts of the world.

My worship, if it can be called that, is simply taking joy in my life, and the happiness I find, and that which I can bring others, it is the capacity to love and hate, be right and wrong, simply live and know that I am. Worship is living, no more and no less. We’re all the gods of our own worlds, and what we make of them, that’s the real test of things.

I hope that those who read this, and find some bit of truth in my words are able to go out and look around, and just see that one spark of beauty where they couldn’t before, and try to spread a little happiness to others…

Night folks, and sweet dreams or good days to each and every one of you.

-Ryan Hanson