The corrupt, the purity, and the way we are

Can a man who promised himself to work for the people end up corrupt? I have been thinking about this problem for several days now. I came to the conclusion that there is not a sudden change of heart but a shift that occurs by taking small steps, baby steps.

In ancient Greece, men constantly wondered about the purpose of life. Many believed that life's 'Logos' (purpose) was to please oneself incessantly. However, with each new episode of pleasure, the climax diminished in comparison with the first time, so they started exploring more devious ways to satiate their increasingly dangerous and pernicious hunger.

They knew a taste, a touch of the forbidden, could make you fall into a whirlwind of desire. Later, that satiated impulse sowed the seed of corruption in their hearts. -Why not? I am not the first; I won't be the last.- Suddenly, being one more in a crowd is no longer a depressing thought.

A single rewarded evil act can drill deep into anyone's marrow, whether be a teacher, politician, warrior, intellectual, or philosopher. Pride will do the rest. In time, the acts multiply, and the instant rewards continue, turning the purest souls into the darkest vessels of greed. 

In time, a person's soul is altered, atrophied, and defaced. Still, society will be the biggest victim. What is worse, the corruption of those known as the purest and most beautiful will turn into the kind of denigration that sickens society's future and its collective mind.

After witnessing case after case, you wonder, are purity and the desire to be pure wrong? Why do people nowadays see it as a stupid dream? Why do we ask ourselves so little regarding honesty and purity?

I don't want to belong to a society that drills into the minds of young people ideas of moral and ethical imperfection as the natural state of men's minds because, by default, humans are always looking for more, whatever they choose to go for: good, bad, or lame. If a man decides to turn evil, eventually, this will grow, and it will have one of two outcomes:

1) A corrupt individual who lives in anxiety, constantly avoiding being caught, and, for that reason, stops for a while only to return greedier later.

Or 

2) The corrupt dies.

Make no mistake, the corrupt will make his case to justify his deeds. At this moment, you know he has normalized his behavior because evil has taken away his senses: his eyes, ears, and tongue. He is no longer sharing our view of the world. The corrupted person is completely transformed, cannot change, and cannot be trusted again.

Sadly, I keep seeing this pattern happening to more people incessantly, year after year, which is taking a toll on me.

Falling or Failling?

People believe the enchantment is unconscious, No. It's conscious; it gets you through your five senses, being aware or unaware of it. You can feel something beginning to burn inside.

I ask myself, is this what I want? Maybe it is. Part of me wants this to happen. It reminds me of this book called: 'This unbearable lightness of being,' from Milan Kundera.

The book expresses, briefly speaking, you only have one life. And you sometimes fall into doing things you don't want to do but that you are called to do from deep inside of you at the same time. This doubt is inherited by every human being. (Christianity has a better and easier way to describe this. It calls it: 'Temptation').

There is fear, anxiety, small pinches of panic. That fire is burning, but burning what? Something must be ignited to be burn. I know, maybe dreams, expectations, ideas, hope.

I was thinking about how to describe my feelings now. It gets clearer with time. I am saying this is getting clearer. The message is that I must make decisions. I cannot keep running out of them. I have to close some paths to open others.

So, I need to hurt others to keep my sanity? I need to be honest; if that means to hurt, then it must be like that. There is no motive to keep evading the truth. Freedom is unavoidable. It is called being honest. I must speak with the truth.

This also means I will have to pay the price. I can't deny this either.

Another stone in my way

These past days have been hard to come up with. I have felt the stress before, but this time there are complex considerations in play. Living far from home carries a feeling of displacement. This comes to me from time to time.

I am not weak, but doubts assault my mind every day. Still, nothing clarifies my sight there is only a foggy road ahead. Sometimes, I discover myself numb, in automatic mode, performing daily tasks I already lost any interest in doing.

Regardless of that, there is light at the end of a tunnel. There is hope, I can find my way in the middle of so much confusion. I need to take radical desitions now. Be braver. There is so much to do, so little time, so little energy left.

The conclusion is simple. If you want something you have to fight for it. I mean, literarily fight for it. There must be a hidden meaning into all of this. Maybe here lies a mistery, a divine purpose disguised as mundane perspective. The only thing clear is that you must go foward. There is no other way, you must go further.

Humans are dangerous creatures, there are never satisfied.

Searching for answers

I recently watched, again, the movie Minority Report. This brought to light many surprises, already happening, by the way, related to high technology like drones or mini-bots, 3D keyboards and screens, eye identification in retail stores (together with all the marketing this means), new drugs and of course the so-called old human fears.

When I was a kid I wondered if the people from the past (around 2, 000 years ago), had the same fears and feelings than us, the modern or postmodern society, whatever you want to call it. I thought that maybe those feelings were more simple, like flat noncomplex ideas or dreams. But as time passed and I learned more about human history I realized humans are exactly the same complex and anxious organism since the beginning.

Many things might change with time: technology, clothes, entertainment; but in the end, human nature remains the same. So, I have this hypothesis, or maybe it's already a thesis? Humans are not here to technologically evolve (considering 'technology' as the 'de facto' method to ease our curiosity and anxiety for the unknown), but for growing spiritually. Now, this might sound 'New Age', but examine this: we keep searching for answers to old questions, transcendent questions.

I have this feeling that in 2,000 or 5,000 years from now, our species might be settling down around the universe but it will keep asking for the same questions, meditating about this subject. Maybe, a child from a distant and lonely planet, like in the book 'The Petit Prince', by Antoine Saint-Exupery, might find the answer. Something like: 'Here is (the) my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye".  And suddenly, all humanity realized they were looking in the wrong place.

Hard thing to do, or not?

Recently, I received some new tasks from, let's call her K, and K told me incredibly fast and with a high tone of voice, she needed it quickly. So at the end, and this is important, she mentioned: "And for that I will pay you", but this last phrase was launch with a lower tone, like: "I will pay you but to a lower price per hour because we know each other from a long time (you know what we are talking about)".

So, I said to myself: This must stop. I must see her as a real client and not as a long time not seen relative. I say this because I was raised close to many women and I have this high respect for them...but at the same time I know there might be many people who will take advantage of you just because you have shown kindness in the past. So, I must be firm and not be afraid to say: "Wait a minute, I am not going to do that, not under those terms".

Anyway, the thing is that I finally managed to do it today, and her reaction was kind of unpredictable for me. She said in a normal voice tone: Ok, fine. Let's do it your way.

I must confess that I was amazed by that response because I was expecting something like: "Ed, please I ran out of funds..." which it would be a total lie in her case. But no, it was easier than I thought. This lead me to improve my skills when talking to people about business, especially when I fell some tenderness towards them. It's always better to speak with the truth to your partners, only under those terms you can achieve a great deal for both parts, besides being a character-building activity.

Check yourself

When I arrived at the doctor's office, last Friday, and saw him for the first time his looks surprised me. He was a black very tall man with a white afro, small faced,  short neck and long legs and arms which gave him the appearance of a friendly mantis. He was wearing black thick glasses and had a passive but at the same time wise gaze.

At that time I was a little nervous about his questions. I really wanted to find a proper and effective answer to my backache after months without finding a solution and I didn't want to waste any more time in medical examinations.

Fortunately, after checking my file and radiographies the doctor seems to have a response to my suffering. -"You are too fat," he told me. -"You need to lose weight ASAP" eight kilos (17,6 lb.). That was it. It seems you have an elastic body and bodies with that characteristic always suffer when overweight. So he ordered me 10 chiropractic sessions besides swimming and of course a strict diet.

Now I know I have to eat healthy, breath deeply and practice swimming sports in order to relieve this annoying pain. So, I started today with a small vegan pizza and orange juice for lunch, while at night I bought a couple of water bottles. Unfortunately, my girlfriend came by and make me, literally, made me buy a chicken sandwich and a pack of cookies making this new resolution harder than I thought.

No more water for you

Two days ago was the fifth day we had no water (this happened by surprise).  I remembered that day was very hot. The temperature (feeling sensation) was about 35 degrees Celsius (95 F), in Lima 31 degrees is unbearable because the weather usually has an average of 90% humidity. 

I went out from home in my bicycle around 12:00 to breath some less rarefied air. I ride through the narrow and old looking streets of Barranco and suddenly, from time to time, I saw lines and lines of people with colorful buckets waiting to receive some water from reservoirs (located at parks), firemen trucks and cisterns. Children were playing in these lines, some of them using skateboards that later were used to ease the movement of the picturesque buckets. Some policemen were trying to organize the people who were in line but after four days without water, many were quickly losing their patience fearing the water wouldn't be enough to fill all the containers. 

It was something far away from routine, rarely seen where I live. Exciting but also dramatic. I realize how easily our way of life can be altered, how thin our moral and citizenship is broken when a crisis hits us, and how nobody is under control of anything, not even oneself.