I Work Better Under Pressure...Do You?

It's as if the universe has put us here for a reason.
That reason may benefit us, and it may not benefit us.
The universe seems to be giving us messages and signals and hints.
The universe may not really be giving us any messages or signals or hints.
The universe has, however, given us a sure fire deadline.
What we are supposed to do until then is undetermined.

Our deadline: The day that our precious sun will cease to give off heat and light and collapse in on itself.

I suppose we should be finding a way to inhabit other planets or galaxies or nebulae or things like that.
Maybe we should find a habitable planet and migrate there.
Maybe humans have already done this before but we just cannot remember.
Maybe that is the story on the mysterious Rosetta Stone. Of  how we, as creatures, came to exist and how we ever appeared on this little blue dot.
I think it would be best if humans didn't spend their time blogging (I'm not a hypocrite, I'm only pondering possibilities) and instead of simply pondering ideas, should test them and make something of their speculations.
I think I might be wrong.
I think there's no concrete way to tell what is wrong and what is right in this inexplicable bundle of energy we are in.
I think that there is definitely something beyond that horizon that we simply cannot reach.

This has been a post. A post about my thoughts. And now, I leave you.

Prove the Stars Wrong

But if I could simply justify why I had to sit here for 3+ hours with this tab open, doing nothing but staring at it, then perhaps I would've gotten a slightly better introduction written.
Beyond introductions however, let me jump straight into the action for you, dear reader.
Yesterday I attended my first college expo at a hotel here in Jordan. It was one of those expos where college representatives from colleges in the United States come to Jordan looking to offer scholarships and international admittance to Jordanian citizens. I wasn't looking for a scholarship or international admittance but I did go to hear about the programs they had to offer and get a head start on my college search.
I stayed and talked to representatives for about an hour and a half, seeing over two thirds of the tables in the conference room. On my way back home, my dad was driving and he asked me how long I intended on being in college for. I explained to him that I was going to take the basic 4 years in Undergrad majoring in Biology and then going on to Grad school and studying medicine for maximum 7 years. He asked me if I was completely committed to that and absolutely sure if I wanted to handle all that studying. I told him I've been sure about it since I was eight years old. He made a comment about how half of my life was going to be wasted in school.
Now, this isn't something that unexpected to hear from my father. Don't get me wrong, he completely encourages the idea of going to college and expanding my horizons and learning all that I can but all the while, he grew up travelling and living his life a lot more than I've been doing so far. He's simply concerned that I would regret my decision later on and he doesn't want me to regret the first half of my life, considering that you only get one shot at being young.
See, I've never taken things like that seriously before. It wasn't even something that he intended on me taking seriously. But his words just kept echoing around in my mind and they're still there and I still hear them and they're just going to drive me insane.
It's true that most people spend half of their lives preparing for work by going to school and building up their resume and then the other half of their lives is spent doing that work. What's left at the end?
If the basic life of an American is half school, half life, and at the end we make room for a little sickness and elderly fatigue, then what does it all amount to?
If you think about the population of the earth, it's a pretty big number. Billions of people. Every single one is believed to be an individual with their own personality and their own dreams and hopes and opinions and goals and values. 
The statistics alone are enough to cripple the mind. Billions of people strive to be something in the world. Billions of people have an end goal that they probably will not reach. Billions of people slave over every single day to make a name for themselves. Billions of people put all their time and energy on this little blue and green pixel to be remembered. Billions of people want to be famous and have their name live on forever but the thing is is that when you have billions of people who all want the same thing, you're gonna inevitably have billions of disappointed people. It's all for nothing, really.
I mean, if put some thought into the idea, then you realize that everything your mortal soul does in this lifetime amounts to nothing.
Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to cure cancer or figure out a new math rule or invent something spectacularly awesome or achieve extraterrestrial travel. There are people who have done great things and we still remember them today. Nikola Tesla for example or if you want an even more popular example, Benjamin Franklin, the inventor of the patented light bulb. Franklin died over a hundred fifty years ago yet his name and achievements are still familiar to us.
I'm not saying that it's wrong to try to do something that will be remembered.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't work hard.
I'm not saying that you shouldn't try in general.
I'm only pondering the possibility that the human race will die out or be replaced with something else and every single thing we've come to create and discover or invent will be all for naught. 
Because one day all of this might turn into dust. 
And so why waste our time trying to succeed when at the end we're all still rats trying to win a race with no tangible prize.
Or maybe I should be thinking the complete opposite. Why shouldn't you try to make a difference since all we have is this one lifetime and nobody knows how long our species may survive. We should make the best of our time while we still have it, right?
We may never know.
That's probably the biggest challenge of life; accepting the fact that we simply may never know.

Today Started Out Ordinary

I'm being completely and totally serious when I say that today started out as nothing special. Today started out as every single other boring old day would. And then things got weird.
My parents were going up to my dad's construction site today to check out the progress on the new building and they asked if we (my brother and I) wanted to come with them. We had nothing better to do, considering it was a plain boring day and so we said yes.
I went to my room to get dressed. This is the climax, are you sure you're ready for this? Proceed with caution.

I got dressed and as I was putting on my usual Keds, the ones I've worn basically every other day for this past year, I noticed something stuck between the tongue and the laces of one of the shoes. I pulled it out and it's this super super old, practically archaic folded up paper with writing all in Arabic. My heart nearly stopped, and I took it outside so my mum could tell me what it was, since she understands Arabic and I don't. Well, believe it or not, this odd piece that miraculously appeared in my shoe is a very very old and very rare page from the bible. They say that if you receive this paper from a holy place or from a priest, it's the best kind of luck you can get and they don't hand them out to just anybody.

Nobody knows where it came from
Nobody knows how it found its way into my shoe
We can only assume that it's some sort of a divine message

Is it a miracle?
I'll leave that to up to you to decide.

Well...

Honestly, I came here today to write out an absolutely fantastic and wonderful and well thought out blog post and then I lost it.

Just gone.

It's been two days now and I've been trying to figure out what I was going to write about.

Nothing even comes to mind.

What.

Batman Rises

I'm sure most of you have heard of the shooting at the Batman Rises premier in Colorado by now. And I'm sure that some of you know who the shooter was. But, for those of you who don't know who he is, his name is James Holmes. He is believed to have a genius IQ. People who knew him described him as a loner and intelligent. Now, if someone described his personality to you and you had no idea that he shot up a movie theater, you'd assume that he's a very well rounded man, right? Well, regardless of what you think, that's exactly what I thought.
Which made it all the more unbelievable that a person like him would do such a thing. For the past week, I've been trying to figure out his motives. It's not like he did this spontaneously. It seems like he's been planning something crazy like this, considering he booby trapped his apartment. I'm just dying to know what drove him over edge. What was the thought process or the series of events that led him to do something like this.
I'm not only purposely trying to psychoanalyze James, but I'm looking for reassurance. Reassurance that normal people don't just snap and commit crimes of this magnitude. I'm just afraid that any one of us normal people walking down the streets, or grocery shopping, or bringing in the mail, or doing any other mundane thing won't just let insanity take over so easily. I'm afraid that some of us might be clinging to the edge of reason.

What Makes People Ungrateful

This is going to be my first actually philosophical post (I am good at these, okay, don't worry) and I've been meaning to get this across for a while now.

When I lived in New York City, I always thought of the stars and planets and everything beyond the elevation at which planes reach, as fairy tales. But the kind of fairy tale that only exists in science books. Anyway, my point is that New York is the city that never sleeps, and that phrase is not the least bit exaggerated. I'm serious when I say that everything is open 24 hours a day. Nothing closes, nothing stops, traffic is always moving, people are always awake. Therefore, lights never turn off in the city. The sky is so bright at night that the moon is barely a speck and the moonlight is just something in romantic stories or on the north pole. I never saw more than three stars in my entire childhood living in Brooklyn.

When I moved to Jordan, everything changed, even the sky. I would look up at the sky during the daytime and I could never so much as find a water droplet, let alone a cloud. At night, the stars are so bright and beautiful and abundant that they look like freckles on someone's face. But more majestic. They seem like impossible miracles. Something sacred and untouchable, forever perfect and untainted by humans.

When I first moved here, people used to ask me to explain the differences between America and Jordan, and I used to respond with, "Everything."

"Everything? That can't be possible. Something's gotta be the same."

"Nope. Even the sky looks different to me."

Sure, I felt like I was on a different planet completely but lately I've been looking up at the stars and finding the constellations with ease. I did research and now I'm able to tell the difference between a star and Jupiter. Or Jupiter and one of it's many moons. I'm finding out that each star has a name and a place in the whole making of everything. That outer space is not just fairy tale stuff. It's real and it's there, even if you can't see it, it will always be there.

It just amazes me to think that the earth is forever rotating and the planets are forever orbiting the sun and if you look up at the night sky tonight, the stars will almost never be in that exact same position with the planets ever again. I like to think that it's an ever changing story. That the next time the planets align this exact way again is in millions of years. I like to think that I'm very very small and irrelevant in the great scheme of things. It's a comforting idea; the idea that none of my problems mean anything when you look at the big picture. I am simply a fraction of a fraction of the people on this earth. The earth itself is a fraction of a fraction of endless expanding space. It's a thought that comforts me and helps me relax, forget my problems and not worry about things. I feel carefree when I look up at the stars and find where they fit in and read the stories that the constellations tell. Age old stories that can't be contaminated by humans (for now at least).

Homecoming

Hello readers,

(all none of you)

I am finally back home after a month long vacation at my cousin's house and the blogging shall commence (seriously this time)

That's all for now, just felt like posting. I'll have more to say later, I'm sure.

Always, Natali