Soon I can take public transportation again. I could go explore the NGA like I've wanted since I got here. I could find a coffee shop and hang out. I could go do some urban sketching.

I'm trying to cheer myself up because I am super bummed about the news lately. What a depressing pile of rot. I'm so discouraged about the future. What are we even doing anymore. Doesn't seem like there's much hope at all. The simple solution would be, just don't check the news if it's so depressing. Since when was burying one's head in the sand a good solution? But the other option is just be miserable with no solution, no resolution, just an awareness of how much you can't do and how little anything you do matters. It feels intentional, doesn't it? Or is that just me? Like they want you to feel helpless and manic on purpose so you'll consume shiny things to distract yourself from the yawning void?

I have this theory that heaven and hell aren't separate from earth (I blame it partly on the movie What Dreams May Come - the book is pretentious twaddle, movie is tolerable). Not separate planes or dimensions or whatever. Nobody "goes to heaven" when they die. They make their current mortal existence into heaven or hell depending on how they perceive the world around them and how they choose to react. "Heaven" isn't made with riches or fortunate circumstances. "Heaven" is a mindset, like enlightenment, I suppose. So is "hell". And it's much much easier to suffer helplessly in "hell" than have the will and discipline to understand and hold "heaven".

This is hell, this greedy materialistic shithole we've been dumped into. Yes, I understand, as countries go the US is very privileged and a much nicer place to live than some other places. Yes, I like flush toilets and hot showers and food access so reliable it is taken for granted. But like a rich person, we have a better chance of passing through the eye of a needle than getting to heaven, just because of the extra complicating factors and the sheer frustration of knowing things could/should be better and they aren't. We have access to too much, and thus, always too much we aspire to purchase and posses.

The asshole part of my theory is that it puts the burden of achieving real happiness ("heaven") on the individual, when there are so many horrible things that can happen as a consequence of others choosing to be selfish or vindictive. Or plain random bad luck, like devastating illness. It doesn't seem fair that some people should be given so much hardship to overcome through no fault of their own, and then expect everyone to arrive in the same blissful headspace. If you're not in "heaven" it's your own fault, etc. Never underestimate one human being's desire to feel superior, or capacity to be a dick, to another human being. Esp if they're in organized religion.

I guess I figure if happiness is REAL-real, it is independent of luxuries or possessions or money or companionship. If I had the kind of happiness where I could be happy sitting by the side of the road, alone, owning nothing, no idea where my next food and shelter would come from, no need for company - would that be heaven? Would it just be about what I was experiencing in the now, and what resources my immediate environment held? Would it be about having no fear of bodily harm or hunger or discomfort or even death?

In THE DEED OF PASKENARRION by Elizabeth Moon, a fantasy trilogy, the main character develops from being a merc soldier to being a paladin of the Really Good God. In the third book the main character volunteers to take the place of some people captured by the followers of the Really Bad Evil God. The book is graphic about the torture she endures. She triumphs not because she fights back and escapes, as one would assume, but because her mindset is so strong that she outlasts her torturers and they come to realize that nothing they can do will break her, and they end up shamed. They (and their evil god) have no power over her except what she has granted. You'd have to read the books to grasp the impact (def worth reading), but that's sort of the mental level I picture when I imagine someone living in "heaven" on earth.

Obvs I am nowhere close to being like a paladin, happy with no possessions and without expectation that the world will pull its collective head out of its ass. Buddhists say life is suffering caused by attachment. Well I have plenty of attachment, like my attachment to a sane government that functions, or a decent future for my young nieces and nephews. There are some really fuzzy borders between apathy and acceptance. Do we just accept that corruption is inevitable because those who covet power will always seek it, and thus ALL governing bodies are destined to abuse their citizens? Do we pity those people, because anyone who seeks power through abuse is suffering in "hell"?

I have been doing some thinking on the cycle of abuse, especially regarding the whole USA pluto transit thing. About the roles everybody plays, be it persecutor, rescuer or victim, and how that's playing out in a large scale politically what with democrats, republicans and their associated groups, like Qanon or BLM (I don't mean those are equivalent, I just mean Qanon is an anti-democrat group and BLM is anti-republican). Broadly sketched, Qanon believes they are the rescuer to the GOP victim from the democrat/antifa/BLM/whatever persecutor. Etc. So basically everyone goes round and round, switching roles wildly as it suits them, gaining fleeting emotional satisfaction from each role but unable to create any lasting solution. But that's what the system is designed for. Perpetual blame, perpetual justification, perpetual backpats. Nobody changes.

Like global thermonuclear war, the only winning move is to not play.

Is spiritual calcification (abuse cycle) more-or-less "hell", and spiritual adaptability (lack of attachment) more-or-less "heaven"?

Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.

Nothing is new under the sun.

This was interesting too.

I'm not a scholar. I just find bits of things that interest me and try to cobble together some crude understanding that will help me make sense of senseless things in senseless times. All I have is myself, really. There is no guaranteed afterlife, no guaranteed god of any flavor, no guaranteed higher meaning beyond the biological imperative to exist and breed. It's all wishing and hoping we're more than meat. What we choose becomes who we are for the brief time we wander on this mudball. I would like to be happy. I want to figure out my own "heaven".