OddballGreg - Things That Touch Our Souls

A rather artistic picture if I don't say so myself, but the repetitive use of the same tree detracts from the overall effect.

Have you ever seen something, had some thought or heard something that touched you? And I don't mean that in the Catholic priest with the small boy kind of way. I'm talking about the emotional rush you get from something that is profoundly meaningful to you, perhaps followed by goosebumps and and a shiver up your spine? Lets talk about that.

Before you moan, I've got nothing against Catholic priests. That joke was burnt out long before I got to it, just listen to some of Jeff Dunham's ventriloquism acts for proof of that. Anyways.

You've probably experienced the aforementioned sensation before. Perhaps you were watching a movie with a particularly touching story that meant a lot to you as a person. Or perhaps following a particularly emotional conversation with a loved one, you struck upon such a marked epiphany that your very skin rose upon it's end. Maybe you were simply realizing how easily things could have just gone wrong. There are many things that can cause this feeling, and they tend to be somewhat specific to the individual. Few people are affected by exactly the same things.

A while ago I watched a video related to this feeling as it was discussed by Rhett and Link on their YouTube show: Good Mythical Morning. In their video "Give Yourself The Chills" which I have linked below, they discuss some of the things that can give you this feeling.

It's a really hard thing to explain as even they noted in the video. There's plenty speculation about why we feel it, but really, all we know is that we feel it. As inexplicable as it is, perhaps it's fitting that the sensation we associate with these intense emotional reactions is such a mystery. That when we hear things like a woman crying, or read the harrowing tale of a man who gave up on a woman who had based her life upon him, and promptly gave up on life when he broke it off, our bodies react as much as our minds, our bodies real as much as our minds; like having a frozen tongue glide up your spine. (At least, those are some of the things that cause me to have "The Chills" as Rhett and Link call it.)

I like to think that this is not some pointless evolutionary vestige of trying to look bigger, but more proof of our humanity. That upon experiencing or learning of something that is clearly so significant to us as individuals, our very bodies react to that unnamed feeling that lies somewhere between shock and amazement. If nothing else it proves that despite whatever it is you've just seen, or heard, or thought about not having impacted you directly, it still touched you deeply as a person. It's proof that as a person, there is far more to you than meets the eye. Like an onion. The outer layers may be papery and inedible, but as you move closer to the center, the layers become thicker and juicier and more nutritious. But just like a person, stripping an onion comes with it's own consequences, usually tears. (It also comes with the risk of sounding like you're talking about Shrek, but sssshhh.)

So perhaps there is something unique and interesting that gives you chills or goosebumps, as there are many for me, which more than anything prove that you are interesting and deep as a person. If so, do be sure to let us know what they are down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Consider your feelings my friends.

OddballGreg - The Price Of Life

Coins. Words. Paper. The irony is that this may be one of the most apt headers I've made, and that's just because the topic has a vague scope.

Life has costs. From the soda you might be drinking right now, to the electricity running your device, to the time you're spending reading these words. Everything has a price. Lets talk about that.

Have you ever taken a moment to consider the price you pay to live? Sure you've sat down and thought, "Darn, Coke is expensive." or some similarly phrased sentence with a different subject. Whatever it may be, you understood that for that item or service, there is a price that you have to pay to enjoy it.

The question is, have you ever considered that such a statement exists for everything in life. No matter what you do, how you do it, or who you do it with, there is a price. Writing this blog post costed me time and energy that I will never get back. Your reading of this post is doing the same. Charity costs effort. Crime costs innocence. The world is in an unending flux of give and take, and the only guarantee is that nothing will stay the same.

As I said in a particularly sage moment with a friend, not wishing to do something that might not have any useful long term rewards is not laziness. It's acceptance of the price of life. That every action bears weight, meaning, and a personal price. That every action bears a toll on our life that will be collected, no matter how. We pay for stability with our freedom. We pay for strength of spirit with our ability to feel for the world. Everything has a price.

To sum it all up, think of your life, those finite 70 years of life expectancy that you might not even get to have, as a wallet full of money. Every moment you spend doing nothing, or every deed, good or otherwise, requires you to pay from that wallet. If you knew that the money in your wallet was the only money you would ever have, what would you spend it on? Similarly, if this short life is the only one you have, how shall you spend it? If you wouldn't pay an exorbitant price for a sub-grade meal, why would you spend a large amount of your life doing something you don't even care about?

The most successful people are those that know how to effectively plan their finances, or at least are careful enough to manage them in a self-rewarding way. So take a moment to consider if what you're spending your life on is truly worth it's price. You might find that it's time... for some change. (I'm sorry.) 

Hopefully, this has made you think about the things you're doing with your life. Perhaps you've realized something that builds upon this whole concept, or simply wish to tell me to stop being so preachy. If so, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback.. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Spend your lives well my friends.

OddballGreg - Immortality On The Internet

This wonderful screenshot, slightly edited for the privacy of everyone that isn't me, is from that website everyone's always talking about these days... what was it? Oh yes. www.facebook.com

Do you suffer from questions of the "existential crisis" variety? Do you often question what people will remember about you after you die? If so, rest easy knowing that provided no apocalyptic event brings down the human race and it's technology, then your online footprint will immortalize your memory... possibly forever.

A statistic I read a few years back discussed the great many people that will be outlived by their Facebook accounts. While the original article is long lost to all but my vague memories, I did find a similar article which corroborates my memories and substantiates the topic. blog.1000memories.com spoke here about how many ghosts there are on Facebook, and how many there would be by 2015 in a American-centric but world inclusive look at the statistics of death and Facebook user by age. While mathematics is more JovialJman's forte than my own, their work seems solid enough to at least conjecture that currently, there may be around 40 million Facebook accounts whose owner has since passed on. For interesting point of comparison, the average amount of people you can maintain a proper relationship with is about 300, and on average will meet roughly a less than a 3000 people in your lifetime. (Basically, there are more dead people on Facebook than you will ever know, as astounding as that sounds. Also, apparently i'm good at being sarcastic to myself.)

So what do these statistics have to do with Immortality? Consider every biography or account of a person's actions you have ever read. How it dictated their lives and actions. Our Facebook accounts, and Twitter, Myspace, blog's, etc, all these things on the internet that we pour our lives into will stand as memorials to our lives when we are no longer alive. Every relationship you had, every heartbreak, and accident, success and failure. Your frustrations, inspirations and painful jokes will all stand and represent who you were and what you lived for to those who wish to know. In the future, your great-grandchildren might not peruse an old newspaper when they want to know who you were, they will look for your memorialized online footprints, and see first hand just what kind of person you were.

It's as equally frightening a prospect as it is exciting to those who wonder why it is that they do what they do. To be remembered by the world after you are gone by every silly picture and inspirational quote you thought was worth sharing. A long time ago I heard the quote that "A legacy is not the things that you leave behind, but the story's that people will tell about you when you can no longer hear what they have to say." Perhaps that quote is now truer than ever? Or perhaps it is slowly become a debatable point as the evidence of our existence in the form of pictures, statuses, videos, tweets, instagrams, blogs, websites and comments stand as potentially ever present examples of who we were.

So I suppose the question is, what kind of legacy do you wish to leave behind for those to personally see for themselves on your Facebook accounts. Do you like that people will have such an in-depth view of your life based on what you shared, or do you think that it really doesn't matter since you're going to be dead anyway? If so, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Live how you want to be remembered my friends.

OddballGreg - The Necessity Of Contrast

Black and white are the most common contrasts you'll hear about. Ironically they just serve as the basis of the metaphor.

In a world filled with so many doubts, one might wonder why it is precisely that our world is so precariously based upon choice and options rather than definitive fact. Why can we die? Why do we live? Why is there dark and what is light? The answer is a strangely apt one: Contrast.

The other day, an interesting question cropped up from one of my friends on Facebook, in which he asked: "If the speed of light is c, what is the speed of dark?" While his reason for defining the speed of light as "c" remains unbeknownst to me, I had, of course, learned some interesting things about the way the universe works from my ever-mentioned favorite YouTube channel for all things Science or otherwise; Vsauce. 

The video I referenced is below, but essentially, I made the argument that "C < Dark". Which is to say, Dark is faster than the speed of light. Why? Consider for a moment that light moves at the speed of light, while dark is simply present wherever light is not. Switch off a flashlight in a dark room and the change of illumination is not gradual, but rather instantaneous as dark fills the room at a speed faster than we can perceive with our naked eye.

The reason for this is not that dark is faster than light per se, more a technicality in that it appears to fill space faster than light according to our perception of the situation. What is in fact happening is that once the light source is removed, there is simply nothing left to perceive and so we see darkness. Essentially, darkness is a lack of information, which is interesting since physics dictates that information cannot move faster than light; and light is technically information in the form of moving photons refracting off of surfaces and molecules to produce colours. So what happens when you switch your flashlight off is that you are simply eradicating the presence of information, and darkness fills the information-less zone that was lit up.

But, why then, you may ask, does darkness exist? Shouldn't everything be information, including the darkness itself? While that would be an interesting paradigm, it would be an unrealistic one. Consider the act of swimming. In order to do so, you need to in something that provides you with the buoyancy needed to move like that. A medium, much like the paints and canvas of an artist. Well, in similar vein, darkness is the medium in which light becomes apparent to us.

Which brings us to the axiom of this article's subject. The Necessity of Contrast.  Without a contrasting medium, something cannot be perceived due to it's lack of comparison. (Veritably incomprehensible, at least to the human mind.) Think about anything. Life, Air, Children, Fire, Evil... all of these things have a definable contrast which allows us to define them. Life and Death, Air and Space, Children and Adults, Fire and Ice, Good and Evil. These things all have some definable contrast that allows us to subject them to comparison and comprehension. They are each other's mediums against which they can be shown to the world.

Imagine a world without Evil: could any act be defined as good? Not really. Without a comparison, those acts would simply be acts, devoid of moral definition. A world without Death would be a world without life, and without Adults, children would simply be people, as we could not define them as anything else. Existence itself is not only based on contrast, but justified by it. We live, to die, and there is death so that we can live. People are cruel so that others can be kind, and fire burns so that ice can freeze. (Though those last two technically have more than a single contrast if you're into the whole earthly elements paradigm.)

In any case, I'm sure that this article has given you a very interesting new perspective on the world, or at least made you want to yell at me about your counterargument. If so, do be sure to let us know down in the comments below, or via Facebook/Twitter. We here at TCSA love to hear your feedback. And of course, if you enjoy finding out about awesome stuff on the web and world then do please be sure to like the Official TCSA Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter using the associated buttons on the bar to the left to get all the latest posts as they're published. Also, do be sure to share posts you enjoyed with your friends as it helps us out a great deal. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Think carefully my friends.

OddballGreg - The Challenges That Define Us

Nothing more challenging than climbing up a 90 degree wall right? Well, except for getting out of bed early.

Life is difficult. Few can say that they have never had a moment of hardship, suffering or strife in their lifetime. So it's fair to say that most people's lives are defined by these challenges that they have to face. What's interesting, however, is that it is often the people with the most challenging lives that turn out well.

You've probably seen them everywhere, especially Facebook. (You, that place where people share everything, bowel movements included. *facedesk*) "The happiest people have had the saddest lives, the strongest people have had the hardest lives" etc, etc. The list goes on. The point that they all seem to be trying to make is that, strangely, the most virtuous people are often the ones who have struggled most in life.

Image from abegailrosales.wordpress.com I've seen this on Facebook more times that. Also, congrats for continuing the stereotype that grandma's  in woolen coats are poor.

So why is that? Why is it that people who struggle turn out to be the most likable people? Well, like always, I look to two things for all my seeming wisdom, (apart from my own head, since I can't really look at that.), YouTube and Movies. Namely, in the YouTube video Why Do We Feel Nostalgia by Vsauce's Michael Stevens, and the movie Little Miss Sunshine from 2006.

In Michael's video, apart from multiple other subjects as he typically does in his video's, he explains that people are, essentially, a series of linear experiences, even when the individual atoms they started out with are long gone from their bodies. (Sound crazy? Watch the video. Michael is brilliant with his explanations.) So what does that mean? Effectively, it means that we, as people, are the cumulative sum of our past experiences which have taught us to be who we are.

In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, the teenage son of the dysfunctional family flies into a rage after realizing that cannot pursue his dream due to colour blindness, and eventually find himself speaking to his uncle who had attempted suicide prior to the movie's plot. In their conversation, his uncle mentions a French writer, (who's name escapes me.), who, in his old age, having lived a difficult life with no money or success to speak of, decided that "All these years he suffered were the best years of his life. The years where he was happy were wasted and useless to him, since he'd learnt nothing from them."

So how does this answer the question? Quite simply, as people, we grow and are formed by the challenges we face in our lives. Those of us who suffer know what it is to suffer, and would not wish it upon others. The hungry waste not, the thirsty savor each drop, and the poor treasure all they are given. Essentially, they appreciate the things they did not always have, and what it took to get them. (The value of Hard Work is a good one to learn.)

The challenge of survival is one that changes a person definitely. Coddled children and fortunate son's, while perhaps good people despite it, often lack lessons in life that turn them into respectable adults. It's like asking an athlete and a bookworm to run a marathon. The bookworm will obviously be unprepared to meet the challenge. In the same way, those lucky enough to grow up with all that they could want suffer in their own ways as they never develop the ability to deal with their own challenges.

A rather apt joke that I've known for years more or less depicts the issue. As the story goes, a man notices how well his boss is running the company and decides to ask him how he manages to do so. The exchange goes as follows:
Man: "Sir, how is it that you manage to run such a successful business?"
Boss: "Good Decisions."
Man: "And how is it that you make such good decisions?"
Boss: "Experience."
Man: "And how does one obtain said experience?"
Boss: "Bad Decisions."

Even the joke details the necessity of strife in our lives, albeit in a more lighthearted manner. It is a fact of life that the mistakes we make define our future decisions. Our failures make us work harder in the future and our clumsiness makes us more careful. Part of being human is the necessity to learn from ones own actions and act upon the lessons you have learnt to ensure a better future for yourself. 

Consider for a moment, Italy, who for thirty years under the Borgias experienced some of the worst brutality that the world had to offer, and yet produced historical greats such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and was even the origin of the Renaissance. Why is that? Because suffering brings out the best in humanity, as sad as it sounds. Humanities greatest moments are found where people have struggled the most in their lives. 

King Louis XVI of France was an aristocrat born into the lap of luxury, and was promptly deposed and beheaded for his somewhat lax leadership skills. Martin Luther King was born into a time of intense racial discrimination and yet through his hardships in growing up, (having even attempted suicide), he became the historically heroic figure that many in the world know him for as a paragon of civil rights and equality.

So the next time you're feeling down and wondering why you bother, just think about the fact that these challenging times of suffering, more than anything else, are what define you and mold you to be a better person in the world. If you have any stories of personal challenges or any suggestion in general that you would like to share with us here at TCSA then be sure to let us know in the comments section below or via Facebook or Twitter as some like to do. Also, if you have friends who are going through a hard time in their life right now, perhaps consider sharing this post with them to help them through a rough patch. I'm sure they'll appreciate it. And of course if you would like to read more interesting articles like this one, do be sure to like TCSA's official Facebook page and/or follow us on Twitter so that you can get the latest posts, as they go up. Regardless of what you do, I thank you for having taken the time to read this post; hope that you have/had an absolutely FANTASTIC day, and I will speak again soon.

Stay strong my friends.