Before anything else, there is something I’d like to get out of my chest.
Actually I already tweeted it in the first parts of my day today. I said, ‘Hurt people hurt people.’ – sure, something I’ve written time and time again… but I followed this up with something new:
‘Hurt people hurt people, and you take pain when you deal it’.
In my 30-plus years of existence, I’ve hurt a lot of people, I’m sure of it. But here’s the thing – and this comes out as good news and bad news – you really do take pain when you deal it. In other words, hurt people hurt people and hurt. Or something like that. And that’s the bad news. The good news is actually just good news for me – the fact that I feel this pain reminds me that I am still freaking human and not as desensitized as I would probably have some offended parties think.
Yep, still human. Still have a heart. Step right up and let the sideshow begin. Guaranteed to make you cry.
Hah. Sunday afternoon Stylistics, right?
Anyway. I thought about it a little more, and I realized, the ways I see I inflict pain, and the ways I see it hurts me as much, are the ways pain was inflicted on me in the past. In other words, instead of me ending any sort of cycle of torture, I end up keeping the ball rolling…
And much as I would like to do damage control, or just to end the pain with me, the only thing I really could do at this point is to pray… and boy, am I praying. Praying for my own healing. Praying for the people I hurt. Praying for the people who hurt me. Praying for the people who hurt the people who hurt me.
The cycle of pain, it seems, can only be confronted with sure impact, if faced with a cycle of prayer… Whether it be pre-emptive (praying before it hurts) or reactive (praying when you remember), to raise these complicated issues to a wise God is really the best and only choice that we have. I mean, if this pain doesn’t bring you to God, then how would you deal with all this?
If I hurt you, I’m sorry. If it’s of any consolation, it hurts me too.
If you hurt me, I forgive you, and every time the memories come back to hurt me, I choose to forgive you still. I’ve learned enough of this world to know that I have no control over anything, which allows me to just give it all up to the One who does know, whom I know loves me.
Either way, I pray.
Something tells me I probably shouldn’t have shared it but that was all more for me than for anyone else. Besides I owe some sort of explanation of where I was coming from with all the mental sewage I dumped yesterday. Apparently I just needed rest and time to process it, sterilize it, and share it appropriately.
I guess I’m doing better today. I got stuff done. Processed stuff for the car, got stuff I need to do some fixing around the house, and shot stuff – the sunset, that is. That makes this, what, 3 straight days of shooting the sunset? Or was that 2 days? Either way, it was beautiful out there, despite calls from my mind saying I’ve been shooting the same damn sun from the same damn spots – who cares, it’s different every damn time.
Half an hour ago I shared on Instagram; but these weren’t your usual landscape pictures – in fact, they weren’t even photographs. I shared stuff I generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence, crafted and featured on a site named WOMBO Dream. As I mentioned in my post, you enter prompts or key words, you select an art style (sketch types, japanese themed, steampunk style), and the site (algorithm?) does the rest.
Considering I just discovered this after shooting the sunrise a couple days ago, I entered in keywords like ‘mountain, mist, sunrise, Baguio’… and I was blown away by the ‘paintings’ that were generated, for sure!
Speaking of ‘discovered’ I must state that I stumbled upon WOMBO Dream by way of a Facebook group of Dune enthusiasts, who used the same site to create Arrakis-type landscapes. So when I tried throwing in those keywords, I was just as impressed.
So it’s the same damn site… but again, who cares, the AI guarantees it’s different every damn time.
Now that I think of it the AI stands for Artificial Insanity just as much as it is dubbed Artificial Intelligence… because you’re expecting different outcomes after doing the same thing again and again. Einstein comes to mind.
See, that’s another thing. I could use ‘Einstein’ as a prompt just to see how the AI interprets it by way of art. Believe me, I tried Jesus Christ, my own name, Satoshi Nakamoto, even some random important people in my life, and the results amazed me… No, I’m not being paid for this.
Going back to the sunset shoot a couple hours ago, I set Spotify to play the Babylon Bee interview with Elon Musk, and I was properly entertained (and educated!) while I drove from one spot to another to shoot.
Some takeaways:
(On Elon Musk and the news that he was thinking of creating a Candy Company) If you want to do something ask other people about it. Ask for other people’s perspectives. Consult experienced subject matter experts.
(On how Elon is perceived as close to the likes of Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark) Batman shouldn’t be called Batman. Bats fly. The Batman we see in comics is closer to Squirrel Man. Iron Man may be cool, but Irony man is more realistic. Kill enemies with irony. ‘Oh, the irony! It kills me!’
(On the Metaverse) No compelling reason for web3 or the metaverse. Like a huge escape from reality. (Christ is the escape to reality)
(On why he created Tesla and SpaceX) Isn’t the reason for life to solve problems? I wanted to make electric cars, not so much for their environmental value, but really to reduce our dependency on oil and gas. I wanted explore possibilities.
(On the possibility of the End being the Heat Death of the Universe) Something that I wrote about more than a decade ago. Elon shares, if that’s our end, then it’s really all about the journey.
(On accepting Jesus Christ as Savior) While I don’t necessarily agree with the wordings the folks at the Bee used, I was pretty excited by Elon’s response. He started off with the usual being agreeable with a lot of what Jesus was teaching, but what got to me was when he said ‘If Jesus is doing any saving, I’m not going to get in His way.’; Excited to see how God continues to work in his life.
Spotify auto-played to the Bee’s ‘Weekly Report’, which was sort of their Weekend Show which happened to be after the interview. First off, I found these folks VERY entertaining, laughing even at their corny jokes… and their admitting that Elon was speaking from such a high-level and they were just enjoying the whole conversating with him, even if it meant keeping up with the ideas he had, and blatantly bringing it down to their level when they thought it necessary. I think I will be listening to more of them, after listening to Joe Rogan talk to Peter McCullogh.
So there you go, a little roundup of what’s been going on today. I hope to continue to share, I hope to continue to work out, I hope to get myself just that much richer with every day…
The road to a Billion continues.
JB's Personal Brain Defragmenter 
Leave a Reply