Asthenia

The word asthenia is a word that describes a loss of strength or will. It's also a Blink-182 song. And probably my favorite lyrically. I was listening to the song and thinking about it. Putting myself in the situation. Wondering what I would do.

Basically, the song is about a man up in space, in a vessel the size of a car. Everything is peaceful. No problems. No war. No drama. Just a man by himself, with the brilliance of space to look at. The conflict arises when the man contemplates returning to earth, which is such a negative place compared to the solitude and serenity of space.

I thought about how I would feel if I were in that situation. I'm here on earth now, amidst all these problems. War, starvation, slavery, reality tv shows, disease, poverty, and drama that was supposed to end in high school. Not that there aren't wonderful things about the world I live in. Most of the time, I'm content with where I am and where my life is going. But not a day goes by that I can ignore what's going on around me. As much as I try to stay away, it catches up to me. Every once in a while, I find myself in a state of infidelity, where I lose all faith. There are too many negatives to find anything positive sometimes.

What if there was an escape? What if I was that guy in space? Would I come back? Tom wrote, "This room is bored of rehearsal, I'm sick of the boundaries, I miss you so much." Briefly stated, it would be really boring. I would miss a lot of people. No matter how beautiful the universe was, would it be enough to hold me over until I die? I would be completely free of all of the burdens this world casts on me. I could wake up every day and not have to worry about anything. Anything. The economy is bad. I don't care. I'm in space. Actually, I wouldn't even know the economy was bad. I would be ignorant to everything happening. Oh, Jan and Dean are in a fight because he looked at her weird? Yea...I'm in space. My concern is focused on other things. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon wrote, "For in much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow." If you don't know about something, you can't grieve. I would be at peace from everything.

The greater question that I asked myself went a little bit like this. "Hey Matt...do the very few times in your life in which you are happy outweigh all of the misfortunes?" I answered myself with, "Yes. Yes they do." I will elaborate on this even more with my soon to be posted entry about the book of Ecclesiastes. But I think my main problem is that the bad outweighs the good because I let it. Sure, there might be more of the bad. There might not be much good at times. But it's all relative. It's all what you make of it. You could end every single night in sadness because of something that you couldn't let go. This one thing that just ruined your day. But what does that accomplish? What does grieving over something irrelevant give back to you? Not much. Maybe a feeling of contentment. But not happiness. On the other hand, what does grabbing on to that one good thing accomplish? That will give you happiness. You can use that as hope, and use that to get you through the negative. The human mind is a powerful thing. Use it to your advantage, or be taken over.

Who knew I would get deep with Blink-182 lyrics?