If one were to sit quietly, listen closely, and pay attention to what one sees, they may be surprised. Just by sitting on my couch, I can hear the banjo in “Friend of the Devil”, the white noise of my Xbox 360 and laptop; the 360 being more of a loud fan, the laptop? A muted whisper. By seeing, I can view the light from the TV throwing multicolored shadows on the wall and the way the AC vent blows the curtains around. There is a single sandy paw-print on the black carpet. While one can observe many things, are they considered aware? Typically, the answer is no. Many people exert all of their mental energy on the task or tasks at hand. They’re paying attention to what they’re doing, with not much else besides. That can be wonderful at times, and a dire negative at others. Paying too much attention can lead to paranoia and fear, while wandering through life with ones head in the clouds can have disastrous and entirely preventable consequences.
Alone in the woods on a dark night, perhaps sitting on ones back porch. A person hears crickets and the rustle of animals. Another noise is heard; a splintering crash, a pained animal wail. The logical and probable conclusion is that a tree has fallen on a mommy bunny and bashed her skull in, and her now-orphaned baby bunny is wailing out its tortured, agonized lament. However, a person who is too aware, paranoid, and scared would probably think differently. That person would probably assume that Bigfoot has just caught their scent and is racing through the forest towards them, ripping trees from the ground and stomping small creatures. They know that Bigfoot is rampaging towards them intent on raping and murdering their families, before crudely dismembering them and sucking the marrow from their bones. It’s all a matter of awareness. If a person sits outside and listens to closely, they may hear things. It’s up to the human mind to interpret such information and draw a probable and proper conclusion.
However, being consistently unaware can have results just as calamitous as being overly alert. Consider this: someone (We’ll call her Samantha) walking down the street one morning after a night of getting black out drunk and having meth-sex in a dive-bar bathroom; she’s contemplating whether or not she should go to the clinic. “I wonder if I could have chlamydia.” Walking along, observing the world above her and thinking about last night’s events and paying not nearly enough attention to the world beneath her feet, Samantha falls into an open manhole. The filthy, stagnant liquid Samantha is now swimming in is filled with garbage, dead rats, and human feces. Gasping and flailing as she slipped below the surface of the fetid liquid and drowned, her final thought was “Chlamydia is the least of my worries now. Had I been more aware, perhaps I would not have fallen into this open manhole.”
Had Samantha been listening to her own advice, perhaps she would still be alive today instead of a bloated, floating corpse lapping the edges of a metal sewage drain pipe; a pipe that drains into a lake near a Kansas elementary school. Children play here, and they will find the body. Their teacher will be aware of the need to educated his students about methamphetamines and how they can destroy a young life.
Imagination is another important part of the human mind. Imagination can take a person anywhere he wishes to go. Day to day life can be mundane, lacking in stimulation and boring, while imagination can spice it up. A perfect example of imagination? Jared. A fat man sitting at his computer, unkempt neck-beard, underwear with a crusty white stain, dirty t-shirt with orange streaks of Cheeto dust streaked across it. His face? An expressionless mask, void of all thought; the only glimmer in his eye is from the computer monitor a few inches away. To most, Jared is someone of no consequence or worth noticing. However, in his imagination, Jared is not a man at all, but a vicious warrior of the Glantel Tribe. Instead of his mother’s basement in New Jersey, he is in the fantastic realm of the Earldom of the Mammoths. This is a nation whose finest warriors ride into battle on gargantuan mammoth steeds with fur like steel wool and tusks like razor blades. In this world, the world of imagination, Jared is at his happiest. He is Dudil Chantwhisperer here, and he is a rising hero intent on causing and then winning a bloody civil war sealing his position as the usurper to the bloody throne as Lord of the Mammoths and ruler of the Earldom.
Jared is happy in this world. He is powerful and respected. Some might say that it is healthier for him and his state of mind to have such a good imagination. Instead of leaving the confines of his dwelling and facing the cruel world beyond (which no doubt views him as a fat loser with no good looks, friends, goals or quantifiable talent to speak of) Jared prefers to remain firmly seated in his rolling chair, firmly in the seat of his steed, battling evil dwarven forces and raping beautiful elven women as they slumber in their beds. A far happier and carnally more pleasing existence brought to you by the power and wonder of Imagination.
While awareness and imagination are both important, they are nothing without education. Education is all of the knowledge one gains and learns and is taught. Education is anything learned, be it the Pythagorean Theorem or medical knowledge gained while working night shifts in a Soviet free healthcare clinic. A healthcare clinic where the dead bodies were dismembered most gruesomely and then packaged in giant zip-locking bags, shipped on dry ice to a factory. Once at the factory, these human cadavers are emulsified into a mash of bloody limbs and organs, and then strained through a sieve to remove all traces of bone splinters and tendons, creating a paste of human flesh. Spices are then added and the slurry is injected into casings and sold as a cauterized and low-cost meat alternative to the families of the now edible deceased. Surely this is education and knowledge of several things- anatomy, how to make sausages and the ever valuable knowledge of a profitable business model.
Human consciousness is a wonderful thing. It grants so many things to such a fickle species. Curiosity is both a gift and a death sentence. It is the driving force behind discovery and learning. However, humans and their curiosity can be a self-destructive, multi-faceted phenomenon. Curiosity leads people to do dangerous things in the pursuit of new information, solved problems, and answers to unanswered questions. Consider the story of Curious Conway. Conway was a young boy, perhaps nine. He was a boy scout and quite excited to go on his first troop camping trip. Curious Conway was, as the name would suggest, an inquisitive sort of boy. His mother recalls him reading books at his local library and the way his peals of laughter ran gout as his young brain filled with new information.
Of course, that was before the accident. On that fateful camping trip, Conway’s curiosity got the better of him. Straying from the group, Conway goes off to pick berries and father nuts, intending to impress his scoutmaster and fellow Cub-scouts with a feast harvested from the bounty of the forest. During his gathering, Conway stumbles upon a mysterious mushroom. Referring to the Field Guide to Fungi (a staple for all scouts) Conway learns that the mushroom will not poison him. He places it in his mouth and continues his harvest of fresh, bright raspberries. Soon, Conway’s vision becomes distorted and his perception skewed. Everything takes on a quality resembling a beloved childhood animated bear and his tiger and piglet friends. As he ambles through the woods, Conway stumbles upon a beehive. His visions have made him suddenly ravenous for honey. Ascending the tree, Conway attempts to gouge the nest from the limb upon which it rests. In his intoxicated and hallucinogenic state, Conway has forgotten the first rule of scouts- always help your country. Instead of helping the economy of his financially hard shipped country by purchasing domestically produced organic honey budlets, Conway tried to pry the beehive open. As the bees swarmed out in an angry and predatory shapeless black mass, Conway let out a pained scream. These were hornets. They don’t make honey. Conway had just enough time to be disappointed in himself before the hornets began their stinging onslaught. Soon, Conway was completely engulfed in bees, stinging him at every available portion of skin until his limbs became swollen and engorged to the point of becoming useless. Forced to lie still by the paralyzing pain, Conway endured the mortal agony of hornets boring their way under his skin. With a final gasp, Conway cried for his scout master to help him. Luckily, his cries were not in vain. When the rest of the troop found Conway’s limb and bloody body, the troop performed rudimentary first aid (what a learning experience!) and carried him to the nearest town on a sledge.
Conway’s mother rushed to the hospital only to find her son riddled through like swiss cheese and in a coma. But still, he was alive. Her only console was the fact that dear young Conway felt no pain as whole hornets were cut from his skin with a scalpel. After two weeks in a comatose state, Conway is nor permanently retarded and missing several limbs. As his mother changes his filth diapers, she remembers his curiosity with fondness: her brave, inquisitive boy. Curiosity was the death of Conway’s short lived healthy life. Had he not eaten that mushroom, perhaps his mother wouldn’t be drinking herself to an early grave. Echoing the words of Conway’s father as he abandoned his wife and persistently vegetative son in pursuit of earthly sin, “This is all your fault, Conway.”
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