preventing neural necrosis: 02/08/2025

today was more of the same. i tried my best to study, amped up on too much caffeine. i keep forgetting that it isn't a replacement for my vyvanse. made dinner (xiaolongbao and jiaozi), had ice cream, tried my best to stay off my phone. someday soon i will finally ditch my phone addiction.

i was thinking of topics i could talk about today. i've been drawing blanks for a while, but i think i figured it out. there is a little pope francis memorial card that my great aunt has put up (yes, i am currently living with her) near the front door. he's been watching me since his death was announced. so today, i think i will discuss religion. regardless of how controversial (not in the problematic, cancel culture kind of way, but in the polarizing, hard to discuss without anger from either end kind of way) it is. 

growing up, i wasn't raised in a church-going family. my parents had experienced enough of organized religion in their lives to know that they didn't want to shove it into their children's lives. my dad hung up the crucifix necklace he had worn around his neck for years after learning about residential schools. my mom had distanced (the word i want to use is éloigner, but i realise my bilingualism is failing me) herself far earlier than he had. yet religion still found me. in the children's bible that was in my home. in the constant question of my baptism and first communion--neither of which had happened, but were asked of me at almost every family reunion. in the fear of God. how had something that was never introduced to me so woven into my being? regardless, i eventually came to my own conclusions about it. 

 i do not think that organized religion is the way to go about things. i do not think that allowing anyone a position of power over others is a good thing, nor do i think that a religion requires one to have that sort of power. what i mean by this is that i think everyone needs a community and their own form of worship. that's what most organized religions are. a feeling of belonging in a large group of people, a sense of morality, and worship. but i don't think that going to a church or devoting yourself to one God, regardless of which one it is, is necessary. 

from what i've seen in my 19 or so years on this planet, most organized religions follow the same outline; respect for every being on earth, respect for oneself, respect for the environment, communal meetings, peace, love, and morality. most of these things are subjective, but for the sake of not making a brick house of text instead of just the usual brick wall, i will say that most of them are, generally, the same. and yet, everyone is constantly fighting each other over whos method of veneration and righteousness is correct. or even worse, going against their own moral (and religious) code to spread unnecessary hatred. 

religion is perfectly fine by me, even i follow my own version of worship. i don't pray for a specific God, but i do find Them in the way the sun shines through trees, in the way i can hear the bugs sing from the leaves, in the way i am typing these words with tomato-scented hands--caused by the fruit i had grown and harvested on my own. it's in the way my lungs fill and my heart pumps. i truly don't understand why everyone is at arms about correctness and rigidity, when life is the thing we all share, the thing we're all searching for the meaning of. does it matter if i don't pray to God directly when i still bask in Their creations? my thankfulness comes in the form of my enjoyment and celebration of the gift that i have been given, not in my attendance to a single building, my attention to lectures, or my dissecting of an ancient text. i already do that when attending school, to learn more about life and to search for my own meaning behind it. 

it wasn't even until ~2000BCE that monotheistic religions were born. even then, polytheistic methods of faith were still around. a strong example is the roman republic (before it became the roman empire). each person worshipped their own deities and the job you had, your social status, all these various factors determined what or who you would pray to. you didn't even have to believe in it, so long as you participated in community events. because religion at this time wasn't about lifelong dedication or worship. it was about community and a symbiotic relationship to greater beings. something that we have seemed to have lost.

i will still attend mass if my extended family requires it and i will still visit churches and temples and other religious buildings when i travel, but i don't think i will align myself with a specific group or following, at least for a while. i would feel like i'm deserting the worship of life in favour of the worship of a being that is not concrete in the way that the sun moves across the sky or in the way that the waves crawl up to the shore. it wouldn't be consistent in the way i hold a loved one's hand and can feel their heart beating through their palm and it wouldn't be as steady as the blue in the sky. 

once it becomes more common for people to have a say in the way they choose to live their own lives, without needing to hear about how one following is better than the other for reason xyz, it will become a lot easier to avoid harrassement and prejudice formed on a religious basis. even if that day is far away, we can hope that it will change. 

xoxo dee