Craigslist Forums

I went on a craigslist forum today because I was bored, and I found this thread:

goodbye Jane and Happy Birhday < jesssj4 > 09/03 00:13:55

Today is my 24th Birthday. its like whole world including my family forgot about me. oh yes I forgot I don't have family, or boyfriend I'm realy-realy preety but every1 try just fuck me and no relationtip,or just friend,house-money, pet, I don't have reason to live anymore. Just wanted to say goodbye to anyone who read this. leave some words in honor of Jane to alsal38@yahoo.com
thank you!!!

And some responses:

to much life left to live < faithgone > 09/03 05:38:42

I am watching my beautifull wife die a little more every day. she has no choice but you do.life will get better for you just give it a few days life is to precious and short. you must respect yourself before oters will you deserve better give life a try

i'd love to have a relationship with u < hufflepuffrules > 09/03 14:35:47

if you are as pretty as you say. Besides I like chics who are a bit suicidal, it shows they are real and not spoiled biatches

My boy did that at 24. Everyday I see < mindless6182 > 09/04 08:50:07

another beautiful wondrous thing that makes me smile inside even if only for a minute. Stuff that he's not seeing now. Or maybe he's looking at even cooler things. I have no clue. But you do what you gotta do.

I actually went on the Paris craigslist to practice French in some forums, but I guess, just another interesting activity to do!

There's also this member:

handle:	rainbowmom
email:	anon-rainbowmom@craigslist.org
since:	10 Jun 2009 (819 days)
note:	Mission to try and help other grieving parents learn to cope with the loss of a child as I am right now.

So interesting...

Mother Teresa

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat...Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own...I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. 

It is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action.
Mother Teresa

Joan Halifax: The True Meaning of Compassion

Great ideas: Compassion means (1) the ability to look clearly into the nature of suffering, (2) which activates the mordal cortex to aspire to transform suffering, and (3) to not be attached to the outcome, for being attached to the outcome distorts your ability to be present.

The Mirror

This story is a bit old, and probably retold quite often. However, it's something I've been thinking about alot lately, and I don't mind repeating myself out of appreciation; it's a classic!

Author Robert Fulghum tells this story of one of his professors, a wise man whose name was Alexander Papaderos:
At the last session on the last morning of a two-week seminar on Greek culture, Dr. Papaderos turned and made the ritual gesture: "Are there any questions?"
Quiet quilted the room. These two weeks had generated enough questions for a lifetime, but for now, there was only silence.
"No questions?" Papaderos swept the room with his eyes.
So, I asked.
"Dr. Papaderos, what is the meaning of life?"
The usual laughter followed, and people stirred to go.
Papaderos held up his hand and stilled the room and looked at me for a long time, asking with his eyes if I was serious and seeing from my eyes that I was. "I will answer your question."
Taking his wallet out of his hip pocket, he fished into a leather billfold and brought out a very small round mirror, about the size of a quarter.
And what he said went something like this:
"When I was a small child, during the war, we were very poor and we lived in a remote village. One day, on the road, I found the broken pieces of a mirror. A German motorcycle had been wrecked in that place.
"I tried to find all the pieces and put them together, but it was not possible, so I kept only the largest piece. This one. And by scratching it on a stone, I made it round. I began to play with it as a toy and became fascinated by the fact that I could reflect light into dark places where the sun would never shine--in deep holes and crevices and dark closets. It became a game for me to get light into the most inaccessible places I could find.
"I kept the little mirror, and as I went about my growing up, I would take it out in idle moments and continue the challenge of the game. As I became a man, I grew to understand that this was not just a child's game but a metaphor for what I might do with my life. I came to understand that I am not the light or the source of light. But light--truth, understanding, knowledge--is there, and it will only shine in many dark places if I reflect it.
"I am a fragment of a mirror whose whole design and shape I do not know. Nevertheless, with what I have I can reflect light into the dark places of this world--into the black places in the hearts of men--and change some things in some people. Perhaps others may see and do likewise. This is what I am about. This is the meaning of life."
And then he took his small mirror and, holding it carefully, caught the bright rays of daylight streaming through the window and reflected them onto my face and onto my hands folded on the desk.

To a Common Prostitute

BE composed—be at ease with me—I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature,

Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to
rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you.

My girl I appoint with you an appointment, and I charge you that you
make preparation to be worthy to meet me,
And I charge you that you be patient and perfect till I come.

Till then I salute you with a significant look that you do not forget me.

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

You Felons on Trial in Courts

YOU felons on trial in courts,
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins chain’d and
handcuff’d with iron,
Who am I too that I am not on trial or in prison?
Me ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my ankles with iron?
You prostitutes flaunting over the trottoirs or obscene in your rooms, Who am I that I should call you more obscene than myself?
O culpable! I acknowledge—I expose!
(O admirers, praise not me—compliment not me—you make me wince, I see what you do not—I know what you do not.)
Inside these breast-bones I lie smutch’d and choked,
Beneath this face that appears so impassive hell’s tides continually run,
Lusts and wickedness are acceptable to me,
I walk with delinquents with passionate love,
I feel I am of them—I belong to those convicts and prostitutes myself,
And henceforth I will not deny them—for how can I deny myself?

-Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here."

from Richard Dawkins' Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1st ed Mariner Books, 2000). Submitted by Anad: "It describes the improbable odds of our existence, and frames our ordinariness as remarkable. With Dawkins' kind of thinking, I can't see anyone ever disregarding other's lives' of suffering and tribulations when those lives themselves are miracles."

Thanks so much for submitting!