Whisper

I've noticed that often that whenever my friends make racial references, they lower their voices, sometimes to a whisper.

I think it's hilarious.

Today I woke up in Eric Woo's bed. How weird. Don't tell him. He went down to SoCal for a weekend. Then I went to lunch, for which I rarely if ever wake up in time.

They had waffles.

Then I took a 10 minute nap waiting for my father to pick me up and take me home. Of course, I was so tired that I stayed asleep in the car. In fact, I slept happily for so long that the next person to use the car didn't bother to wake me up. So, I found myself in the parking lot of Jack in the Box while my brother dashed in for a burrito from La Victoria's.

At this point, I would like to note something interesting. I told my brother that I didn't want a burrito because I was tired. In essence, I chose sleep over food, while most people choose food over sleep. I passed up a chance for La Vic's to sleep for 10 more minutes. How ridiculous.

Not only that, but my lame-ass brother asked me to drive so he could munch on his burrito. So I made him give me a massive bite.

I love burritos.

Church

I really enjoy days like today. (Skip down for the summary of this post, so you don't have to read all of it, haha.)

Even though I woke up later than I should have (~2PM), I was able to tackle my studying (somewhat) and eat healthily (not really).

For my only meal of the day I had 2 Tiger Burgers (with cheese), 2 orders of onion rings (xxxtra grease) and an order of chicken tenders flanked by 3 cases of BBQ sauce. For a good 20 minutes, I thought I was going to die from eating too much. Then I got over it because eating too much is the absolute worst thing about which to bitch and moan. African kids starving and stuff.

But I think the most clarifying part of my day was going to church. Now, I rarely leave church with any sense of epiphanical (yes, it's a fake word) understanding. At best, I walk out of my pew and depart God's not-so-humble house with a sense of satisfaction, but this time was different somehow.

The priest, who I generally dislike, said a few things that rang a bit more powerfully than I expected. In between waking up Kim, I listened.

Fear of God, of disappointing God, will save you from hell. Avoiding sin, living a devout, moral and faithful life will definitely keep you out of the fiery pits, but any such life lived out of fear is incomplete, lacking full sincerity in our pursuit of true happiness. To feel remorse, or guilty, as Catholics so often do, is to be incomplete. Full contrition requires more than just guilt, more than faith, more than morality.

Morals and faith will keep you out of hell, but it will not necessarily thrust you beyond the gates of heaven. Jesus said that the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind; to love your neighbor as yourself. Like Descartes's infamously misquoted "I think; I am," this commandment is not separated in two parts.

It is often interpreted as loving God and then loving your neighbor. However, in truth, Jesus is saying that loving God fully is the same thing as loving your neighbor, and vice versa. If you love others wholeheartedly, then it means that you love God. Thus, it is not the fear of sin that saves, but rather, the love you have for humanity, and as a part of that, God. Only with love can the doors of heaven be opened to you.

God doesn't need your love. He isn't some egotistical yet emotionally insecure boyfriend who needs attention. Jesus tells us to love not for God's sake. We need to love for our own sakes. We need to love because in doing so, we make ourselves whole. We are one with each other and ourselves. Such wholeness, such perfection, IS heaven.

And if you don't believe in a "God" whom you can love, nor a "heaven" to which you can go after death, I tell you now: I agree. "Heaven" isn't a place to which we journey, nor is "God" a person to whom your love should be directed. Jesus himself said that the Kingdom of Heaven is on Earth, within you. It is a state of being when all is in perfection. Thus do we find God. Not a person, but a state of being.

Jesus didn't die thinking, "I'm going to save humanity because they're all sinners." Jesus died to show that he loved humanity as he loved himself, to show that it may even take death to love, but once dead, that love permeates and reverberates within himself and should be matched within all humanity. Yes, Jesus saved us, because he showed us that complete love is the only salvation.

So get rid of your conventional views of God and Jesus. We are all inherently equal in holiness because we are all born with the ability to love. The only thing that determines our salvation and our experience of heaven is our ability to continue that love. It's not about being moral, or about believing in "God." These things are human goals and only fulfill part of our spiritual entirety. They only get you out of hell, meaning the most you can be is content. Full happiness, or heaven, comes from selfless love.


Then, after church, I studied at the library, where I enjoyed storytime with Joe Park. Needless to say, not enough studying was done. That's why I'm up now, with Josh Espejo drooling on my pillow.

<3 genetics.






Summary:
God doesn't need our love. WE need our love. Faith and morals keep us from hell, but don't put us in heaven. Love puts us in heaven. God isn't a person, and Jesus isn't someone we worship. God is a state of being, and Jesus is the guy who gets it right. He isn't the Almighty in terms of universal power. He is the Almighty in terms of endless love. We don't worship Him. We just wanna be like him. We are saved not from our lack of sin, but from our ability to love wholeheartedly.

I sound like a douche, but I'm freakin' right about this. I know it.

So I continued my streak of late-night antics last night/this morning. Instead of playing endless hours of Word Challenge, I played endless hours of mafia. Not only that, but I treated this year's freshmen with a dose of snaps and Robin's 9 card game.

Robin's game is really good, actually. It had me for a while, but the second he did it yesterday, I figured it out. It was made much more enjoyable when the freshmen could NOT figure ANYTHING out. Especially snaps. Ohhhh man, were they stubborn.

We played mafia until a quarter before 6AM. You'd think that it would be time for me to sleep, right?

Well, yeah. Right. I went back to my room and headed straight to bed. However, upon laying in my bed, I realized something was amiss: I had no fu----' sheets. My laundry was still down in the basement.

Needless to say, I was too lazy to get it. So I went down, dried the load with my bedsheets and left the rest of my clothes in the dryer.

Then I rested my poor, heavy soul.

And woke up at 6:30PM today.

If it weren't for my two upcoming tests, this would have been one of the best weekends ever.

Instead, this has become one of those weekends that I ask myself many weeks later: What the fuck was I thinking?

A Weekend's Rest

Yesterday, Saturday, I told my parents I studied a significant amount.

In fact, I only studied a maximum of 30mins, effectively. Not only that, I studied material that was not going to be on my upcoming test.

But I did get to hang out with Nicole and Tiffanie.

I don't know which part of my weekend was more depressing: My brother getting his license to drive, which is ironically synonymous with his license to kill, or the fact that before I spent a wonderful hour at Romeo's house, I stopped by a high school party.

In both cases, I realized how strange it felt to be in my second year removed from high school. The party was a post-homecoming party for Milpitas High School children, and featured a strobe-light (or stroboscopic lamp, see def. 2a), a day care room, and too many college students.

Needless to say, I was more than happy to leave the strange setting, where I once would have thrived (probably not, actually. I still would have stood there awkwardly in high school as I did last night.) I felt like a creeper, standing there with my creeper buddy, Nicole, watching high school kids danced. Hell, I creeped myself out to the point where I turned over to Nicole and said, "We gotta leave. This party has too many creepy guys staring at the kids dancing. I'm getting too comfortable with similar company."

Then it was karaoke. By karaoke, I mean Tiffanie and Romeo singing while a group of azn thugz 4 lyfe played Tien Len. And yes, I include myself in that category.

But probably the most disturbingly hilarious part of my weekend was learning that my brother had recently been given permission from the government to drive around, granted his passengers are over a certain age and carry a license as well. He is of course not legally to drive anyone younger than 25 with or without a license.

Knowing this, he drove legally to a birthday bash alone, only to drive 4-5 of his cronies home illegally. He just wanted to be nice, which is something I would have done.

We're rebel with causes.

Eye Arr knee!

What I have is not insomnia.

What I have is much simpler, and probably much more indicative of my personality than a chronic disorder would say about me.

I don't sleep at night because my habits are, quite frankly, erratic. I sometimes sleep during the day, thus screwing myself come bedtime. I pull the occasional all-nighter because of my procrastinating nature, and my inability to establish a healthy lifestyle has more than once put me at odds with others around me.

But I couldn't sleep, and I was told that if you lay in bed for more than 15 minutes without meeting the sandman then you are wasting your time. The advice given me was to get up and do something for a bit and then proceed to search for death's cousin anew. So, here I am blogging about my sad inabilty to find rest.

I hate sleeping. I don't hate it in the sense that it is not enjoyable, but rather, I hate the fact that our bodies need rest. If I were constantly awake, not needing rest, my life would be much more focused, and my habits would be healthier. It's like money. If money didn't corrupt, people wouldn't hate it. The problem with money is that people need it, and when there is a need for something, it usually becomes the root of some evil.

Sleep is the root of my evil. Today, I was talking to my Genetics lab TA and research leader, Raquie, and found that I was not the only insane person around. I was finishing up a drug assay today when I heard her characteristic laugh. It's kind of a fake-sounding laugh, but at the same time a genuinely jolly one. Regardless, I hear her distinct laughter and head into the main part of the lab (I was in the hood room). Surprisingly, she was holding a Red Bull energy drank.

Now, Red Bull, as most of you are well aware, is a drank for energy. Raquie was holding the Sugar-free kind, which is okay, except it was in the 16 fl. oz. variety. This was intriguing to me in particular because I had always thought Raquie as a hard working leader, and to a very significant extent, she is. I kinda look up to her, since she is my research leader, even though she's like five-foot-nothing.

Anyways, we get to talking about her most recent all-nighter (last night), and she was explaining to another member of the research team about how she pulls all-nighters, then gets really tired the next day. So how does she compensate for her tiredness?

Yep, she pulls another all nighter.

This got me thinking. But not for too long because I was hungry and had to get some lunch with Ronak.

Lunch was as uneventful as always, with the typical chicken pesto pasta with garlic and some sushi on the side. Actually, excitingly enough, today's pasta was rather plain and lacking flavor. I was seriously about to complain about the state of Pacific's food, with a piece of sushi filling my mouth, when President DeRosa walked into the dining hall, dressed as formally as any president of a school should.

I kind of looked at him and, unintentionally, we made eye contact. I cannot state how awkward it is when you're walking or standing somewhere with someone walking pass, and you make eye contact but do not greet them. Sometimes it's because you don't know them, and sometimes it's because you've met them but do not know them well enough to greet them. Or sometimes you do greet them even though you don't usually greet them, therefore setting up for countless more awkward moments when you see them and don't greet them or do greet them or make eye contact or don't make eye contact.

It's awkward.

But anyways, president DeRosa and I (pun unintended) make eye contact. Being the big man on campus, and undoubtedly wanting to hold up the veneer of a nice, down-to-earth guy in front of his posse, he came over to me and patted me on the back. Naturally, with sushi in my mouth, I wouldn't have been able to respond, so it befell on Ronak to respond for me.

"How's the pasta?" he asked, patting me on the shoulders as he walked by.

"It's good," replied Ronak.

And that was that.

Except Ronak didn't have pasta on his plate. He had a burrito.

I can only imagine DeRosa's reaction to the Indian boy eating a burrito commenting/lying about the quality of the pasta when the question wasn't even directed at him.

I almost spit out my sushi laughing.