Questions and questions; where are the answers?

Too many thoughts mingling together in my head at once, it's not healthy. Time to straighten out some and send them on their way, out my ears and to some other poor soul's head.

I'm really tired, but I have to make sure I get everything out and hopefully find some answers before I forget these thoughts. Prepare for rambling and unanswered questions, if you still want to read. ---

It's so frustrating, when you hear a really good friend of yours talk about things you don't agree with. And I don't mean some small disagreement, like whether the colors on the walls are tacky or whether the latest hit record really deserves to be incessantly played on the radio, but I'm talking about completely opposite views on the purpose of life. It's frustrating because you know they're wrong. You want to tell them to cheer the hell up and find some optimism. Or to not be so hedonistic, and to think about others for once, even if it might not give him pleasure. It's not all about you.

But then, who says it's not all about you? If you don't have religion and you don't care about morals, then what's the point of following society or trying to be nice and honest? It does seem to make sense that people would think enjoying themselves should be the point of this life. If having sex with girls gives you pleasure, then hey, why not? If you like to gorge yourself with frozen yogurt everyday, what's stopping you? If you like to make fun of people, bring others down, step on them, then who's going to stop you? I used to think that there'd be some kind of conscience or moral figure hiding underneath the thickness of their brains, but when I really think about it, there's not really a point for them to care about a conscience at all. If they don't believe that God's real, then suddenly, everything becomes about you. Does that make sense?

And I don't know what to say to these people. I was speechless, honestly. How do you convince someone to care about other people? How do you teach an opinionated teenager how to have morals?

And then, another thought to dwell on- there really isn't such thing as joy without religion, is there? This is all a revelation to me; I've never really looked at things from a nonbeliever's standpoint. But when you think about it, how possible is it to really find happiness in a country where everyone goes to work in cubicles and ends up hating their jobs, where everyone ends up hating their spouses and family and decides to live the end of life on a couch watching football? It's so unlikely. Almost every adult hates his/her job. But no matter how much I hope for people who will love their jobs, the truth is, somebody's got to work in the cubicle.

And then, one guy mentioned that the only dose of happiness someone could get in this world was through drugs. And here, I get another revelation- people don't just smoke to look cool. They really are trying to escape something. It gives them those few moments of bliss, so that they can feel okay amidst this not-okay environment. I know it sounds terrible, but god, it's true. And what do you say to these people?

And another thought! It's just overwhelming, really, it is, but this one might be one of Ayn Rand's thoughts. Is it possible for someone to be truly altruistic and selfless? Because if you're that selfless, then you'll never be able to figure out who you are, right? And then, what's the point of that? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. All I know is that when you're altruistic, you feel so rewarded. You feel so great. But then, what if you're only being altruistic to feel rewarded? To gain a sense of importance? Then it's not completely selfless anymore. But for this one, I just figure that it doesn't really matter. It's probably impossible to reach complete selflessness, simply because humans sin, and that's that.

Here's something else that's interesting, if you want more.

So this one kid, who I always had the impression of being a lazy procrastinator who wasted his enormous potential, said something that blew my mind. There's actually reasoning behind his procrastinating, and that's that he's afraid. He's afraid of what will happen if he applies himself. That he'll be disappointed and not get the result that he had hoped for, after putting in all the effort. That he'll try so hard and won't be able to improve. And so by procrastinating, he has an official excuse that he can use, should he fail at something or do badly. He's able to just brush it off and say, oh, I just procrastinated. If I had tried, I could've done better. I never even knew. And it's sad, really. Because it's still wasted potential. I wish some people would just get over their fears already and step on it, because this world needs some changing.

I swear. I could ramble more about other various things that I think about, but these are the recent ones since well, yesterday. And I'm not even going to go back and re-read this post to make sure it actually makes coherent sense, because I'm pretty sure it doesn't make sense, and besides, I need to go to bed.

Sorry for the messiness. My name does rhyme with messy, after all.