It's raining
two birds in my window
looking for heat
reasoning my query
Am I warm? Am I here?
Feels like over there
like I'm still where
it's always raining
But I know I'm not,
feels like I am
and the two birds
tell me "you're here"
She's here, feels it,
but it's raining,
and she says the same
One bird stays,
the message is clear:
I'm here,
but I'm almost there...
I've found a very interesting topic to talk about, but I saw myself hesitant in writing it. However, as you may have figured, I never ran away from a writing idea. I'm very impressed in how much sense of humor does the human being is capable of possessing, as well as how little.
There's this little village in Japan called Shingo, formerly known as Herai, which claims that in its burial ground there lies the grave of Jesus. The town's legend even goes as far as saying that Jesus didn't really die in the cross and resurrected later on, but that his little brother Jsus Chri took his place; Jesus escaped to Japan (where he studied theology for 12 years, apparently, prior to him going back to Judea and being arrested), formed a family with his wife Miyu and died at some age greater than 100. The town has actually made the whole issue as a way of tourist attraction with a museum, dancing spectacles, etc.
The truth of the matter is that, well, this is really just a tourist attraction: the town had financial problems and the town prefecture came up with this idea to bring in extra money, and it has payed off. They even have the Garden of Eden somewhere! The story is very well made up, with bogus documents to supposedly back it up, there's also a lot of "unknowness" to the whole thing (nobody knew where this buried person came from, there is a song that is sung at every festival that nobody knows what it means, etc.), and there's a lot of technicalities added in to increase the level of apparent veracity (Jesus signed a document as "Christmas God" at one point). It is really quite amusing and, from the looks of it, the town people actually see it as a type of dÅjinshi (a sort of fan fiction) of the Christian story. Besides, tourists that go there to see the tomb are welcomed with other forms of entertainment and sight-seeing that make the trip worthwhile even if they don't buy into the whole thing. I'm actually now interested to go there and have a laugh myself.
I won't bore you with the views of the persons that see this as an abomination, but will, however, state that I think it's a good opportunity for them to laugh at themselves. It is very interesting how the Christian religion is perceived by the Japanese, and the fact that they accept it so openly is very inspiring. In any case: it's a joke, yes, about a very prominent figure, yes, but it is not harming anybody; quite the contrary, it is helping out a whole village in need, an idea which I think Jesus would've liked. I'm quite amazed at the degree of humor these people have, and humbly take my hat off to the amount of time they've maintained it: more than half a century.
I wonder if they would have done the same with the story of Muhammad...
It's official: I have sold my soul to CONACYT and I couldn't be happier. I'm still not sure what have they actually agreed to pay: I asked for the complementary part of my second year and the third one, plus living stipends for both years. Some colleagues mentioned that if CONACYT helps out, it will try to help out with everything since the point that you're accepted, but I doubt it: part of the application also asked for a date in which to start helping. It's ok, though. My first year is covered (thanks Mom and Dad).
Interestingly, this scholarship was not absolutely necessary, but it will help out enormously. I had a talk with my mom last Thursday, and we came to the conclusion that whatever happened had to happen: a path lies in front of me, that I'm building, but sometimes, just sometimes, the path needs to take certain turns. These are hints, really, of where you need to be.
No, I don't believe in destiny, because we were created with free will, and, thus, nothing can decide our mortal future other than us. However, outside that realm, inside the limitations that we are living in, free will is a fabricated thing, but it is aligned with a greater thought: there is purpose for each and one of us. Like when coding a computer program: the realm (the computer) is limited to do certain actions, and there are lines of code that we, the programmers, want the computer to do and, frankly, without caring how it carries them out. Yet, between the lines of code, between commands, the computer program is actually going through a whole array of random successions, specifically because very unpredictable electromagnetic fields required in the baseline of the computer make up the whole base of operation for the computer program. We act very similarly as those computer programs, and you can consider as the programmer whatever you want to consider divine (God, Nature, etc.). We are capable of doing whatever we want inside this bubble that we are living in (called Universe), but there are certain things, subtle things, that I feel are hints of what we are suppose to do here (our lines of code). We aren't aware of these lines of code because they're either too far away or too incomprehensible, the same way a computer program is not aware of its own purpose. This is also coupled with the idea that there are things that we are not able to control: like the decision of a group of judges of who to give a scholarship. This, however, reveals an interesting concept, as all the judges have their own purpose, and their own free will, so the overall purpose of the group of programs (us) is greatly influenced by the interlocking individual purposes of each one. It is rare that the programmer has to actually get in and shift the Universe gears (by means of weather or meteorological effects), and even then it can be argued that all of the things around us which we don't have control over have also a purpose (maybe a simpler or more complex one than ours) which interlocks with the global purpose of the Universe. This makes all of this quite a complex but beautiful structure: I have an overwhelming respect to the author of this code, it is elegant and goes about very efficiently.
Thank you Programmer, for the opportunity. I'll keep on doing what I feel that I do best... I can't wait to see what happens.
