A lot of people have told me to not fear death as it is inevitable, but come on now. It's frickin' scary regardless.
Haha, as for the whole religion thing, I'll go into a random rant that maybe very few of you will relate to (although... it IS Orbital after all). Just read it and you'll see where I'm going with this and how it all relates.
I have no idea why I have been thinking about this recently, but if you gave a gay person a choice... if they could somehow choose their sexual orientation, I assume that most would choose to be straight seeing how there would be a lot less hassles. Parents wouldn't be disappointed, you don't have to go through the horrible awkwardness of the closet, you wouldn't have to deal with certain douchebags or situations, and the list of reasons would go on and on.
However, lately I have been thinking about what if I could choose and did choose to be straight. Quite frankly, I think I may have been much different from who I am today. Here is the reasoning behind this. As a gay teen in a Catholic high school, I dealt with a few situations that put simply, were not so fun. Plus, I spent the majority of my time on NSider opposed to actually hanging out with my real friends (the Orbital Wiki is bringing back some horrible, horrible memories). Anyways, due to these two things going against me, I was a horribly awkward kid who really had very poor social skills. Well, to be fair, I wasn't that one kid everyone avoided or thought was weird. People simply didn't know who I was. I likely used NSider as an escape from my issues at the time.
Anywho, had I been straight during all of this, some situations that happened to me simply wouldn't have happened. I wont go into too much details, but rumours started and I didn't exactly deny them. It would have saved me a whole lot of trouble essentially, if I was straight.
But here's the thing. Had I not dealt with that sort of bullshit, I probably would haven't grown as much and would be further behind developmentally than I am to this day. There would be a chance that I would still continue to have my Internet and video game addiction simply because there would be no situations to snap me out of the habit. No situations that would force me to get my shit together. Hell, I went from having essentially no life and having over 40,000 posts on a video game forum to 10 posts max a week here and actually going out and doing things.
Additionally, had I chose to be straight, I probably would be very religious. The main thing that turned me against Christianity was the attitude towards gays from particular teachers or during my volunteer experience. Other than that, there was at one point where I was fairly religious despite never going to Church. If I was straight, who knows, I probably would have bought into all of that. And if that happened, I probably wouldn't have lasted as long on here. I doubt I'd be the preachy type or anything, but perhaps there would be some things I'd have less in common with everyone.
Now here's the deal. I am afraid of death. If I was straight, I'd likely buy into this whole religion thing, and at least have some comfort in believing that I am going to heaven or entering some sort of afterlife. And after all, I think that is one of the ways religion can suck people in. It almost feeds off people's fears of the unknown and what may happen after death. It gives you an almost false comfort in that everything is going to be okay. I believe in God. I'm going to heaven. Great. Nothing to worry about.
However, due to a number of bad experiences, and the fact that I really can't change that I am gay... Makes me think along the lines of how much bullshit religion can be. And that alone is one of the reasons why I'm glad how everything is turning out so far. Yeah, I'm gay, but maybe it's for the best that this is the way it's going to be. And now if anyone asks me if I had a choice and could pick my sexual orientation knowing what I know now, I'd probably pick being gay.
Sure, I guess this is all speculation. Who knows what would be different if you could change different aspects of yourself or do things differently. However, I think that sometimes things happen a particular way almost for a reason. Or at the very least, different situations come up so you can learn from them.
The only problem now is that whole death thing. What happens? How is it going to go down? Will I be caught up too much in routine for me to truly enjoy life? Perhaps that last question is more scary than death itself.
I guess some of you will be asking why I even posted this. I don't even know why. I blame sleep deprivation.
