Tumblr In 2067

tumblr in 2067

Beauty. I can create some. It hurts - but hell. I need to find some meaning in life. Not like those who enjoy living, who just live and maybe even fear death. If living feels good, you need no reason for it. But if it does not - well, then we need to create beauty.

disco elysium grabbing me by the shoulders: "listen, everything is going to end and it's inevitable so do something beautiful while you still have the time. look at the men playing petanque in the bomb crater, look at the guy composing poetry as he imagines being with his wife and kids. there's a woman making dice in the chimney of an old commercial area. those kids are making music inside of a church. paint a wall, sing karaoke, play board games. everything is going to end but in the meantime something beautiful is going to happen. and maybe even the giant bug is real in the end."

in recognition of World Down Syndrome Day on March 21

Sometimes Ireally need to remember this. That my life is worthwhile. Especially when people from my LARP-community are insulted or just sad I choosed to not go on their game. Or when I stay home instead of literature-event that actually seems nice and I want those people to come to my own book presentation. When I feel I forgotten and out of loop. But hey. I'm doing my own best and I cannot do any more. I am what I am and if I feel better home, shit, I have every reason to stay there and rest. Every. Reason.

your time is worthwhile if your disability means you have to rest most of the time. if you can only do a few events a month, or a year, that's alright. if you need to sleep a lot, lie down a lot, that time isn't wasted. it doesn't make your experiences any less meaningful. feeling like you're missing out on different activities doesn't make the ones you do any less worthwhile. being disabled and restricted in activities doesn't make you boring or diminish your worth. there's no threshold for things you have to do to "really experience life" - you experience it by being alive. and every disabled life is a life that's worthwhile

Story time:

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

So whenever I see crap like Elizabeth Holmes’s blood test scam or pharmaceutical trials which are unable to be replicated or industry-funded research that reaches wildly unscientific conclusions, I just remember those fucking sweet potatoes. I remember that curiosity dies when people are just trying to give their superiors the “right” answers, so they can get the grade, get the job, get the paycheck. It’s not about truth when it’s about paying rent. There’s no scientific integrity if you can’t control for human desperation.