Looking at the cruel reality of a single life for the first time, it strikes me as alittle horifying how insignificant it seems. No matter the acomplishments, there is something greater, likely on a scale unimaginable. I think of all the time I spent on martial arts in highschool and college, and realize how useless it was. Somewhere there are people who have a greater aptitude for streangth, skill, speed and dexterity, and they didn't have to work at it. Some of them did work at it, and became greater still. In countries that take martial arts more seriously then america, thier skills are on a scale unimaginable compared to mine, and no amount of refinement will bring me to thier level. I play the piano, but there are those that have natural ability. mere children that play better then me, no matter the years I spent practicing. Life seems unfair in it's ability to make everyone seem meaningless. there are lives much more meaningless then mine, much shorter, much more pointless. It drives people to think there's something else to balance it. some of them think there is redemtion outside life, after it perhaps. Or that they get another chance at life, because it wouldn't be fair to get only one chance. Some who are not so spiritual believe there are concepts thier lives are a part of. they draw lines on things, make up arbitrary rules, and comfort themselves with them. What all of it comes down to is that people can't deal with how unfair it is. if we really only get one life, and our ideas are really all just nonsense, if there is no redemption in the end, there is just an end. Even those of us that accept that try to fill thier lives with pleasure, so it wouldn't have been wasted. No one can just live. The weight of life is too much, too unfulfilling too powerful without something to push back with. I myself believe the energy of my life that requires the deaths of others is what makes it meaningful, and that my death will give life back. It's a small and insignificant thing to comfort myself with, but it seems no one can live without a story to enact. We need stories to give it all value, otherwise we feel like we're just floating out there alone, while all the greatness of the world passes by, and everything keeps spinning, while we're buried by the weight of reality, and we know somehow, no matter how we strive, that it will have all been for nothing, so we look to the sky, and think maybe its out there, it'll be redeemed in the end, we can't admit our foolishness, we can only pretend.