Martin Granite

“Congratulations! It’s a boy! He looks very healthy; let me go clean him up.” The father watched his wife take some deep breaths, then smiled as he kissed her on the forehead. She looked up at him and smiled between breaths. The doctor came back in the room quickly and gave the boy to the mother. The boy had already stopped crying, but it still had that scrunched up baby face. Both the parents wanted to say something to the other, but neither could think of anything worth being said. Silence was the suiting sound for the situation.

________

Sometime after the child had passed a year’s age, something unusual happened during one of his temper tantrums. When the mother came to the sobbing child to comfort him, she could not pick him out of the crib. Every time she touched him, she was burned. She was nearly about to panic, but the child stopped crying soon enough now that she was in the room.

She sat there with him for a little while, not touching him, watching him lie in the crib. After a couple minutes passed, she tried to pick him up again. This time the child was a cool, normal temperature. She walked him around for a while, but also decided to call her local doctor.

“I have a question.”

“Absolutely.”

“About half an hour ago my baby was very hot.”

“Um. Well, babies can get warm sometimes I gue-”

“No,” she pushed, “Really hot. Like, burned-my-fingers-hot.”

The doctor took a moment, and then said, “Well, how is he now?”

“He’s alright now, but-”

“And your fingers are alright?”

“What? Yeah, it’s just a burn, but-”

“Well I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.”

The mother scrunched her face and paused for a moment, as if the doctor could see the expression on her face. “You’re not listening, I burnt my fingers on my baby’s skin.”

“I’m listening perfectly fine Mrs…. Um…”

“Granite,” she managed to say without moving her lips.

“Ms. Granite, it sounds like neither of you are harmed or ill. I understand your concern, but it sounds like everything is fine.”

The doctor begins to sound as if he’s reading from a pamphlet. “Thank you for calling Vernicle Hospital, if you have any other concerns, please call us anytime.”

What Was I So Worried About, Again?

A lot has changed lately. I don’t see things the way I used to. “Doing something meaningful” has transformed into “trying something I enjoy.” I don’t have to “do” anything, nothing needs to be permanent. I simply need to give it a try. It doesn’t need to be “meaningful,” because nothing means anything. I may as well enjoy it.

I’ve undergone a very bizarre experience recently, one that made me embrace the concepts that I’ve always known. I’ve always known that in the vast size of life and history, whatever I do won’t mean anything. That sounds depressing, like “all efforts are futile,” but it’s actually a huge relief when you think about it in the right way. If life is meaningless, then I should be concerned about making my life as good as it can be while it lasts. I should do something wonderful with my life that I enjoy, I should build loving relationships with everyone I care about, I should create my own heaven on Earth.

None of that is going to come until I make it happen. Until I embrace facts for what they are instead of twisting them and trying to figure out what I’m not seeing. There’s nothing else there! Take people, take events, take concepts for what they are. There’s not some hidden meaning behind all of it. I was always looking for some ‘answer,’ what’s it all for? But it’s not for anything. They’re just there. Accept everything for what it is rather than what we think it means.

Right now I am committed to getting a job. That’s my first step for creating my own heaven. I used to apply to jobs thinking, “They’re not going to hire me, I’m too inexperienced, I’m too blah blah blah.” Gradually, I started applying to less and less jobs because I had myself convinced that it wasn’t going to make a difference. Why did I convince myself of that? There are probably a lot of reasons I’m having difficulty getting a job, but, first of all, I don’t know which ones are accurate, so I really shouldn’t get hung up over any one of them. And second of all, why should they stop me from trying? If I want a job, who cares what the reasons against me are? I’m trying to make my own heaven on Earth here, so if I want a job, I better damn well go and get one!

That’s only the first step, and I’m not sure what the steps after that are. I’ll figure that out when I get there. But I’m sure I’ll want something, and if at first I don’t succeed, then I better try, try again. There may be reasons it may not work, but I’ll have to ignore them. If it’s what I want, then I’m going to make it happen. It is literally that simple.

That's Fine, I Don't Care.

I am a lazy person. I am rarely interested by anything. I tend to not care about anything, and I prefer to not do anything. It’s not uncommon to not know what to do with one’s own life. But it is rather destructive in its effects: People feel insignificant, meaningless, bored, and unproductive. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I never had an answer to that question. Or, rather, I might have had an answer for a week or two, and then changed my mind.

I expect that the root of my laziness comes from a lack of ambition, directly from not knowing what I want to do with my life or having any direction. If I have nowhere to go, why should I make any effort to get there? Because I don’t want to be here, that’s why. I don’t want to sit around forever in this meaningless, lazy depression. Although I know I don’t want to be here, that realization is not enough to get me anywhere. I want to be happy in my life; I want to have a purpose in my life. These are the extent of my life goals: Happiness and purpose. But you need purpose for happiness, and it needs to be the right purpose.

CTF

I created this a long time ago, and it can be found in other locations. But I decided to put it here because videos always seem to draw people better than words. Note that the pre-loader still says Sheepie26, because that's where it was originally posted, and that my screen name used to be Sheepie. And a final note, I don't mean to sound like I'm making excuses, but if something looks weird (e.g. the line across the middle during credits), it's because of resizing issues.

Something Quoteable.

A modest man will never speak of the size of his penis, and you will never know how big it is. A boastful man will always speak of the size of his penis, and you will still never know how big it is.