Midnight meditations.

I live as if my life is my kingdom. I can have all that I want, but I am responsible for attaining all of it. I am the god of my constituent elements, my experiences (those within my control), but their function--virtue, character, happiness, friendliness, assertiveness--(which I need also because I have an interest in having friends through hard times, and we're all always in hard times), validates a sort of thinking that an ideal within a kind kingdom, a place where the ruler, which must be benevolent, must be most holy--for lack of a secular word--and is worthy of being the aim that we at least try to resemble. Boethius understood our god in his Consolation, but he didn't tell us to walk towards it. For he forgot we were walking side by side, heading upwards (divinely). We must learn to walk towards ourselves.

I also understand this may seem like simply like the justified and elaborated view of a child. For children care for themselves, but for the worst of themselves. They decide what they think they want, therefore the sweets and late night television are obviously not for the best. For what is truly in our best interest is not up to us but up to interest itself. For I can name all I want to name, calling fancy cars my "goal" and yet finding empty happiness upon attaining it (although I concede that material incentives can propel most towards a responsible and hardworking mentality). Interest exists as it's own defined truth, this is to say truth and morality are not relative, not creatable, not opinionated, but discoverable, and most of all, free. Your best interest is in living your best life. Your best life, therefore, is defined by the metrics of your greatest interest. So what is in your greatest interest?

Well, there are things in your control and things out of your control. Things out of your control you can forget about, for pursuing them leads to nothing but disappointment followed by frustration, followed by doubt, followed by resentment, anger, despondency, and nihilism. You will not solve the gun debate. You will not end climate change. You will not tackle the immense problems that are not immediately fixable by you. You can write a letter to your senator, which I encourage. Protest in the streets for all I care, although I find it a waste in most scenarios (you don't think senators know who they betray?). If you want to solve these issues, take it upon yourself to become a specialist in climate change, educate yourself in law, make sure you know what you speak of, or you will be no more effective than a monkey banging a flat tire with a wrench.

The world is always a flat tire on a car full of people who just want to move. Unless you're changing the tire yourself or educating yourself on how to do so, your marches are (in most cases) only convincing everyone else that you don't know what you're doing. For why else wouldn't you be doing something else? What if the monkey was a mechanic?

Another reason for easy copouts and shortcuts to virtue is in that it's a way to avoiding the things in your control--and that's exactly what matters. Now we get to what we actually can set straight. I ask, what is your life? You say, it is a dream, it is to travel the world, it is to walk the aisle, and so I ask, are you to do that every day? What about your sleep schedule? You sleep and wake every single day. You can fix that immediately if you tried. How about the food you eat? (Hopefully you eat every day). You can make sure you eat good foods mostly, and spoil yourself every now and then (living is for the dying, enjoy). You interact with people every day, including yourself. Why not make sure you do so pleasantly and virtuously? You sit and stand every day, why not correct your posture?

It is easy to fix your eyes on the world. The world is dying, as are we, but so long as we don't pay attention to ourselves, we don't see how we die. For eating, sleeping, interacting with others, even our posture, impact us every waking moment of our lives. Focus on yourself. This is your best interest.

And above all do not forget your duty to, please, love yourself.

It is proper, then, to realize what an aim towards the best of interests looks like. For you are not a stagnant, still being. You live linearly and need direction. Therefore one must resolve an aim and adopt it, to hold throughout life in the name of direction and security.

I posit, then, that you are to strive to be your aim. For you are not alone in how you interact with yourself. Are you living and will you live solely now? What about now? Or Now? Now? Now? No? Or is it that everything you do is for some future, which will become some present after we've wagged our tongues? Are we not living for some warmer sun? For some new summer? For some greener grass? For some brighter day with more money, with a family, with friends--which you deserve if you work for it! You are amidst a life of yourselves, and to take every single one into account is to account for the totality of the aim, but it is not the aim itself--that is goodness and love in accord with wisdom and virtue.

If this is your aim, then treat yourself like you do deserve such things and goodness and love, because you know it's the life you want for yourself and those around you. And again, you are responsible for all of it. Where you fail, you must stay together, for upward direction exists and you can try again--that is the divinity in an aim. And if our time abruptly comes we'll know it will not have been of our fault if inappropriate, for living virtuously is to aim to live a long life (in most cases--you can give your life to save someone's in a virtuous fashion). For we have discovered and embodied sacrifice, we live for time, and require a long age.

How else are we to value what is not yet ours, if we don't act in the interest of retaining resources with which to attain things we value? Through this we must forgo impulsive pleasures.

It is now appropriate to discuss the aim itself.

One must remember the beginning of John's Gospel (I will say again that I am a Daoist, not a Christian. I really should write something on Daoism these days.)

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God."

You are your aim. You are your God. Strive to rule your kingdom, even when you fail. Remember, "sin" translates as "missing one's mark," so do not give up. Sin is forgivable, as you can try again always. Sin all you need, but strive to genuinely hit your mark.

"Word" also translates as logos, the root word of both logic and dialogue. The Christians are attempting to show that God, in whose image we are created, is wisdom itself, with itself as a concept and within itself as incarnate. With this (I think most clearly embodied as your conscience) you can have a dialogue, within which your own logos is revealed. You are with your word, and if you act it, you can be your word.

Jesus's "Beatitudes" in the Gospel of Matthew reveal not just ways to live virtuously, but ways to be "like God." (Some scholars say Jesus, but splitting hairs is not necessary). Strive to use wisdom to guide yourself through life, and you will be wisdom itself. You will be "with" wisdom, and you will "be" wisdom (for when your eyes beg the question you will recognize wisdom is within you).

Cool! Rationally mediated morality. This is God. For rationality is perfect. Yet, we are not god. For we are irrational and have desires that interfere with our highest interests and simultaneously stem from our hand. For Satan is housed within our kin, and amidst our palm. Within our vein, within our heart. Sin is the temptation to eat the fruit, and do likewise as others--not snakes--tell us to. So to miss our mark is to fall into temptation, for virtue, again, is nothing if it is not earned.

The battle is eternal, but at least we have a battle to contend with, so I say, fight my darlings, and fight your best life till your blood and tears hit the ground and you remain standing as the God of your life. There is no excuse to believe there is no meaning in life. Not only do you suffer fundamentally, but how you handle that creates a dual meaning that everyone lives and experiences. For the aim mustn't be dropped, and you must be the highest good you value.

Be atop the pyramid, use your eye to identify what shouldn't go unnoticed. Be with the eye for it is your aim, and be the eye for you can achieve your goal. So we must, therefore, envision ourselves as aiming to be Gods, if it is our highest good that directs our life. For once we achieve being with our aim, we will be our aim. Yet we know we will not (why else would original sin exist?), but we must not drop the aim. Recall Shakespeare, "things won are done, joys soul is in the doing," or Dostoevsky, "happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of happiness." Do not give up. The destination is death, the journey is life--and life is a battle, a game, an episode, a playground to at least try.

Remember that you are made "in the image" of God because you are directing yourself constantly to something you deem worthy of taking action towards through a process of value distinctions. Why choose homework over video games? Why stay faithful as opposed to temptation? Why do anything as opposed to anything else? You can make these value distinctions because you have an internal intimation to distinguish the value in paths of action! Why else don't you stand still and die? Direct yourself towards the finest path!

But perhaps we should clarify why we want to be the aim we strive towards--and the reason is also so easily answered by our microbiology, in that we need an aim in order to feel positive emotion. Actually, it is better stated that positive emotion is a side-effect of making progress towards an aim. We get our positive emotion from the systems that tell us we're close to our goal. First of all, this means we need an aim! For we also get happiness from the left brain, which tells us where we are and stores what we know--so here dwells our articulated goal. However, we also get positive emotion from our hypothalamus, which is linked to exploration and adventure! This is where we experience positive emotion!

So I say! Live your life like a raging episode of dramatic nobility! Lift virtue to heights untethered, stand higher than all before. And yearn to stand tall forever. Never give yourself to the darkness! Venture into it and strive to pronounce life's name as you come out! Learn until you can't--because you won't! Live until you die! Love your virtue, that which you must earn--that which comes by being earned solely, as one buys their way into their kingdom of heaven with the soul beyond their body. But this heaven is in your name, as in this life, you are alone. From mother to mother.

But this is why the arrogant people who espouse to be like Jesus--like Jesus--at least do some good but most often do some bad, they get people to act. You can act for good, and you can act in the name of evil. Either way, something is being aimed at, and most of the time, we think we're aiming for good.

For we'd like to tell others we want a benevolent leader, and strive to live with such qualities in their eyes, which we should genuinely do because it coincides our best interest, and theirs by submission to the same truth as beings of the same consciousness. This ruler loves by compassion but manages to do so by loving themselves to the highest point, whereby they carry love to be not kept to themselves out of necessity to experience it, but delivered out of necessity to have others experience what is theirs, to be delivery of it, itself.

Be love, aim for love. Love what is virtuous, and you will see yourself to it. Love what is good, and you will be good. Love what is lovely, and the world will still be a terrible pit of suffering setbacks and failures, but at least love will exist, in you. Lie and the road will only stretch in confusion. However, remember Matthew 7:7, "knock and the door shall be open, ask and you shall receive." Wisdom does not serve an ideological purpose, it only serves wisdom. Knock, ask--however first you must accept truth for what it is.

Love for the sake of yourself, as your most fundamental fear has a single antidote that mirrors its depth, and that is to love yourself truly, without lie. Give yourself what you love, act in your best interest though it is a struggle to find and act upon it. Love what is right, love your aim, and love this, as it is god, but as this is you, you are your god, which in turn is what we must believe ourselves to be worthy of being if we are to aim toward truth. You must be your own ruler. You must be your own God. For God also kills his people and sends a flood, humans give up on themselves and fold their cards. Love is not easy, and it is not prideful. But it does not die. Function as god, and deliver love. Want for yourself what you want to witness yourself give away.

Be God. Be love. Love yourself, and love love. Love is what is merciful. Yet love also wants to see the world thrive, thus love loves justice. Love mercy and justice, and give them to the world. Most of all, love the life that allows you to live. Before that, love time. For without time