Tears Of My Dreams

A journal that I turn to when I can't keep it all in anymore, when I have to find a way to let things out. Because we all do need that kind of outlet, and sometimes there's no where else to turn to but the written word in an empty space. But it does help.

It does.

it's been a good semester thus far. my best i think. don't feel like i'm dying for any module (yet), been quite consistent in most of them, having fun in all of them, and basically loving the semester. school is my life and it's been coolness all round. meet interesting people from overseas, really bonded further with my close friends already, and enjoyed the fuck out of a timetable and module selection i picked entirely on my own without any preallocation of modules by the school. So it's all good. Mesa happy.

ANDANDAND. Hongkong in December and Tokyo in January!!!!!! So looking forward to that and having fun basically. It's gonna be such a blast!

Wait for me HK and TOKYO!

Part 2: Ethics and Morality of an Atheist

I'm tired. And sick of it. They always say the nonreligious are heretics, and are sinful, immoral people. That since we don't believe in a God, we are condemned to hell. That God hates us.

But have you truly asked an atheist, what do you believe in? Because as human beings, all of us believe in something, even us atheists. As a religious person, you believe in your God/deities. Agnostics believe you can't prove there is a God, neither can you prove there isn't a God. And atheists don't believe in the existence of any higher being.

But belief is more than just whether there is a superior being out there who created us, and watches over us. I am an atheist. And this is what I believe in.

1) Altruism. I believe that for society to survive as a whole, altruism is a necessity. I believe in helping your fellow man, because you want to help him. No one should be denied the right to be helped, even criminals have a right to be helped, a right to be represented. Because no one in society is perfect. And when we all help each other, we drive society towards a brighter future. Simple as that. It's something I believe in from the core of my heart, and I do it every day. It's not patronization, but something I truly believe in.

2) Life. It's beautiful. The conditions for life are so specific. A single mistake can ruin it forever. And yet, we exist. The world around us exists. Life is precious. Therefore everyone has the right to their own lives. And every life should be cherished.

3) Science. It is truly awe inspiring, how everything fits together in science, and how it can explain the world around me, and enable me to envision things in different ways. And the true basics of science boils down to very simple concepts.

4) Conscience and personal choice. Everyone has the right to make their own choices in accordance to their own conscience. As long as they are educated as to the consequences of their choice, they have a right to make. their. own. fucking. choice. It's something I probably feel a little extremist about, but it's a concept that I believe should be more prevalent in society, and just isn't adhered to enough. A woman can decide if she wants to get married or not. A woman can decide whether she wants to have kids or not. And a woman can bloody decide if she wants to abort a child or carry it to term and care for it. Screw it, you're not the one living through 9 months of pregnancy, you're not the one who's gonna raise the child through thick and thin, you're not the one who's gonna live with the knowledge they've aborted their own child. If she can live with it, I don't really see what it's got to do with YOU. Everyone decides what they want to do with their own lives, not YOU. The law should only interfere with harm to others. And if you're telling me that being aborted before you're a viable fetus in order to save your mother the pain of raising you when she is unable to care for you, and has to watch you suffer through the rest of her life, is wrong. Or when you're a daily reminder of her rape. To save your mother the pain of watching you die. It's your choice. But it shouldn't be a choice you force upon anyone else.

(and anyway, life starts as a cell (after all, we have bacteria cells. they're life too). if you wanna put it that way, all our cells are living things that should not be killed, and everytime you kill a cell, you're a murderer.everytime you eat a plant, you're a murderer. everytime you pull out a strand of your own hair, you're a murderer [hair root cells]. when a person goes through chemotherapy in order to kill cancer cells, they're murderers. how's that for extreme pro-life?)

5) Critical thinking. Despite all other evidence, I really don't have an issue with creationists. I don't particularly mind if a friend of mine chooses to believe in a higher being. My best friend believes in a higher being. And I love her to pieces. Awesome woman who's always there for me, and has a beautiful personality and heart. And the reason why I don't have an issue with her beliefs is because she doesn't force them upon me. She doesn't demand that I believe in her God. And as far as I can tell, her life doesn't revolve around that higher being. Life goes on. She doesn't depend upon the instructions of a book written thousands of years ago in order to decide what to do. She doesn't depend on what a religious leader says. She makes her own decisions. Thinks through everything on her own. Questions things that people tell her, thinks it through properly, sees the pros and cons about it, THEN makes a personal decision that she believes in a higher being.

Questioning. In a logical way. I do the same thing. I question things. I wonder why. I doubt Science itself sometimes. I think things through. I even agree with people who don't think the same way I do sometimes. To refer to an earlier example, my heart breaks everytime I think about abortion. Killing an unborn child makes my stomach churn.Whatever it is, there is a life. I just decide that I can live with my decision better (again, back to conscience). And I don't begrudge them making their own decisions and living with their own consciences as long as they don't infringe on my rights to my own. As long as they've shown me they've thought through everything instead of "the Bible/Koran/Buddhist scriptures etc says this" or "Father/Pastor/The ____ said etcetcetc", I am glad for them. One thing to know about most atheists, is that we didn't have someone tell us, you have to be an atheist, we have this book that says this this this this this. No one explicitly told me that God doesn't exist. No one explicitly told me the arguments against the existence of a God. It is merely something I wondered about while reading fictional books about fantasy worlds with their own religions. And believe me, they can portray it in such pretty ways. And then I started questioning it. Evidence? Proof? Logic? And lastly, why do people believe in something created so many years ago, with contradicting instructions, some of which are clearly not viable in our modern age? Why cling on so tightly to something like that?

Ultimately, your morals come from your own conscience. You don't need anyone else to tell you " You better watch out, you better not cry, you better be good I'm telling you why." Because I believe in the innate goodness of people.

Warning for language:

erm. I need to rant. (little reasons for being atheist that don't require too much scientific knowledge) Excuse me:

Why. Why. Why. Why. Why must we believe there is something who created us. That big brother is watching over us. And a scary as shit big brother at that. I present to you:

God is all knowing and all powerful; he created us, the world, the universe around us, and the evidence to trick us into not believing he existed.

So if we continue to believe the above, we also must believe:

He also created plagues, wars, famine, and Satan.
He also created pain, suffering etc.(basically everything bad about the world we live in)

ergo, we were created for his own amusement. Who the hell would be happy to create living beings and watch them burn, fight, kill each other. Unless he were a sadist who enjoys inflicting pain of others, watching them struggle to find peace and joy, and give them that slim ray of hope. It's like dangling a piece of meat in front of a starving kitten, and telling the kitten to go through dozens and dozens of tests, continuously telling the kitten, just believe in me, i'll eventually give you the meat at the end.

Another thing to think about, why did God create us with free will? It seems our free will is the reason we have sinned, and it's the reason we suffer. (Eve eating the apple when the snake told her to) So why? And, if your answer is that free will is something that God values above all, why would he demand that we MUST believe in him, have so many conditions that circumvent any form of free will we have? There are only two logical answers to this: either God's just having a laugh at us, or God isn't all powerful and perfect, and makes mistakes just like any other human being.

Seeing things this way, there's just no fucking way I can ever believe in a creator. No matter that yes, Science can't explain everything as of yet, and there're flaws in Science. But it's a system that can accept that it makes mistakes, and can be corrected. (no, we don't reject creationist arguments for no reason, we reject them because they don't fucking make any sense and stink of fallacious arguments)And it sure as hell gives me more hope than believing in some know all be all God above. If you want comfort, trust me, God ain't the way to go about finding it.

Sitting in class being bored. It's the first lecture of what I hoped to be an exciting set of lectures; after all, I love Philosophy.

Boy am I getting a rude awakening - with so many people targetting this module as a GEM or UE, he's going through the beginning really slowly.... stuff I've covered in secondary school. Even picked up a cup of hot vanilla in order to stay awake.

BORED.


BOREDBOREDBORED.

Maybe I need to get a gun and shoot a smiling face on the wall #bbcsherlock

Sometimes I wonder whether I did the right thing walking into my line of study.

I love Biology. I really do. I love Genetics, I love learning about the wonders of the mechanisms in our cells, and how everything works out just fine to help complex organisms survive and continue to reproduce and proliferate on this Earth. It's a beautiful kind of magic that makes sense, and believe me, as someone who grew up with no faith and no religion, Science (NOT SCIENTOLOGY) comes pretty close to being my religion. Well, faith in logic anyway.

But it really scares and hurts me sometimes. I wonder whether I'm the only one in the family that's so freaked out by it. Because I'm the one who studies what is going on in my Mom's body right now. I'm the one who has memorize and understand how her cells went terribly wrong, made a wrong choice, and started a never ending cycle that will eventually kill her very painfully. I'm the one who studies the reaction pathways that led to this occuring in her body, and studies the possible ways she can be helped with it via those pathways, only to hear from the doctor that it doesn't work on her form of cancer. I'm the one TERRIFIED because I know exactly how helpless we are in the face of the enemy within her body, because I have to study it.

But then, during the good parts of my days, I remember that I walked into this because of this fear. I decided to stick with this because I wanted to conquer my fear, and play a part in helping others conquer this fear, and find ways and means to combat the microbial enemies of our world. Because I believe in genetic therapy, and protein therapy in order to combat this. I need to conquer my fear, and face this enemy head on, and understand it before I can fight it. I can't let my fear paralyze me, not when it's even more important for me to be able to control it and fight back harder.

Let this be my motivation to go on. Let this be my strength in focusing in my studies and my future choice of career. Let this be a terrible, yet powerful lesson that will spur me on to greater heights. Then will she not be suffering in vain. Then will I be able to say: I was afraid. But I stood up, and rose above myself to fight the odds, and to fight even harder for my own life.

I realize I turn to livejournal at points in my life where I feel change. A change in what has been going on in my life, a change in the way I choose to view life.

Just recently, I had one of the biggest scares of my life when my mom showed me a picture of her recent trip to the mammogram and ultrasound centre for breast cancer. It was because she found a lump in the side of her chest. It was around the area of her lymph nodes, and it freaked me so bad coz I just had an aunt who passed away because of cancer last year. Thankfully, it wasn't a tumor. But I think it kinda changed my viewpoint on life in a huge way. It makes me wanna cherish what I have so much more. And take opportunities and not let them go the way I've been doing for the past few years. It's important to treasure what you have. Because you might not always have it with you.

Have I been a little too relaxed in life? Yeah, I think so. It's gonna take me lots of guts and willpower to make it through this, and to make myself work for what I want the way I really need. But, I'd like to think I believe in myself. And that I'll make myself do it. Promise. For real.

I've lost friends this year because of misunderstandings, and because I've decided to be alot more selective of my friends once again. I didn't really want to, but sometimes I gotta face reality. That people have been out to hurt me, and I have been hurt. Just gotta be strong, and make things work.

After all, my motto in life has and always will be to make myself happy, because no one else in the world has that power.

Things Terry does to destress before her exams (it's the start of reading week and I already feel overwhelmed, dammit):
1) Paint her nails, all pretty and pink with white tips to mimic a french manicure. It's a temporary job before I do a proper manicure before the Dinner and Dance organized by my Faculty after exams
2) Watch Elizabeth I. And do a massive Wiki-linking click-click-click on the characters in the show, and their real stories. The show was evil to Lord Robert Dudley. ): Cate Blanchett did kick ass though. Totally sold on her Queen Elizabeth.
3) Backtrack and catch up on kirkspock community. (God I hope I linked that right) I've been waiting ages for Keira Marcos to update, but she hasn't, so I decided to hell with it all, and just catch before the backlog becomes too much for me to handle LOL
4) Redownload the Celtic music I lost when my external harddrive AND my old laptop crashed on me last year, or was it the year before? Sometime ago anyway. Celtic Dream, Lord of the Dance, Cry of the Celts, Windancer, Nocturne, and more.
5) Watch a few awesome dance acts on YT. Dance always makes me feel happy
6) Reread more fic.

With this, hopefully I'm armed to get cracking on mugging from tomorrow onwards. LSM1103, LSM1104, GE2220, JS1101E, and EL1101E, you'd best be ready for me!

Quote of the day from reading fanfiction after submitting my essay on IVLE: Without the word, there could not be a concept. Without the concept, there was no corresponding emotion.

Credit to All of My Maps Have Been Overthrown by pepperlandgirl4 

I suppose I am fascinated by this due to the fact that I am currently taking the equivalent of Linguistics 101 in university, and somehow, it gives me the urge to embark on a project based around this quote. Someone, I always thought that the emotion is what gives rise to the concept. How else would we come up with the concept? It really makes you wonder how our intelligence developed, and how language developed with that intelligence to come up with abstract concepts and ideas. Language is key to our intelligence, after all, but the words can only be discovered if something is observed, or can be experimented on to come up with a new result.

Shall remind myself to look further into this. (:

I loooooooooooove this song. And I've been listening to it on repeat for the past few days. So I just really needed to share it. In the middle of LSM1101 Lecture. While he's going through cancer. And when there is a test later at 1800. BAH.

いつか生まれる前からきっと
変わらないモノ差がしつず続けては
見つけて失って時に
人のキズつけた夜も会った

もしもたったひとつだけ願いが叶うなら
もしもたったひとつだけ願いが叶うなら
君は何を祈る
この空に君は何を祈る

強く欲しがる気持ちのそばで
どこか諦め覚え始めては
見つけて手放して時に
自分おキズつけた夜も会った

もしも君に差出せるモノがあるとすれば
もしも君に差出せるモノがあるとすれば
変わらぬ確かな思い

ほんの少しでも笑ってくれるなら
まだココに生きる意味もあるよね
ほんの少しでも求めてくれるなら
まだココに生きる事許すれるかな

もしもたってひとつだけ願いが叶うなら
もしもたったひとつだけ願いが叶うなら
君は何を祈る

ねえ　もしも君に差出せるモノがあるとすれば
もしも君に差出せるモノがあるとすれば
変わらぬ確かな思い
そう　変わらぬ確かな思い
ねえ　ここに

NEVER　EVER 浜崎あゆみ