Consistency

There's something innately wonderful about a dream. It contains at the same time your deepest wants and needs, along with none of the effort necessary to accomplish them. During your dream, you can be in your heaven without paying an entrance fee.

When I was growing up, I wanted to be something special. Not special, rather, colossal. I still want this, although I now recognize that it takes much more than dreaming to achieve what you want. I remember thinking of ways that I could pave a new path. I was an athlete, civil rights had been taken, and so had women's (plus I wasn't a woman), so what was left?

The only group still struggling in athletic fields seemed to be Gays. I didn't know if I was gay, but this idea of paving a path, and helping people was something that appealed to my soul as something worthy to do with my life. Getting to professional athletics seemed a daunting task, considering I quit my best sport(football) after freshman year to indulge in the numbness of drugs. I picked basketball back up, but was undersized.(I'm working on switching positions right now) So despite my best efforts at completely destroying my athletic ability, I am now a professional basketball player. Part 1 of the dream fulfilled.

The gay part came much more suddenly and in dramatic fashion when I announced to a crowd that I was gay. To me, this was the completion of my calling, what I was meant to do.(pave the path for gay athletes) I can't explain to you how many days of my life I had committed to dreaming about this outcome-just know that it had become an obsession. However, there was only one problem, I'm wasn't gay. I've contemplated faking it just so I could still help others, but reconciled that I would never be able to live a lie like that, so now I am in a unique position.

I'm playing professional sports, and have a title attached to me(that I asked for) that is not accurate. The problem isn't so much a personal one, as I believe that a person can be whomever and whatever they want to be, and they can change that on a daily basis if they so choose. However, this sort of lifestyle makes relationships extremely difficult to maintain, chiefly because consistency is a trait that creates warmth and understanding, and without it, roles in relationships are hard to find. I've never been a fan of roles, yet I aim to be more consistent and realistic for myself, so that I can work towards my grandiose goals rather than imagining that they will simply come to life as I did before.

Day by day as they say.

Much love,
ZMP

Cancer Free

Recently a baby girl was born in London who carried the title of being "cancer-free". http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/09/uk.cancerfree.baby/index.html This child, in her embryonic form, was screened for the disease, making sure that the gene connected with certain forms of cancer(ovarian and breast) was non existent in her code. This raises a number of issues.

On the bright side, this could be the first step in securing our health for future generations. If we are able to isolate malicious genes, and eliminate the chance of having them before we're born, humans are putting themselves at a "natural" advantage in reproductive cycles. This could be a truly wonderful thing. Imagine if everyone were screened for the risk of cancer, Alzheimers, and other harmful diseases-we could systematically eradicate hundreds of thousands of early deaths-thanks to science.

However, from an evolutionary standpoint, there is a problem here. Darwin's natural selection theory has given us a method to describe how we have "effectively mutated" over the millenia. The strong survive, and the weak die, and thus, strong healthy genes are carried on, and the others are not. If we were to screen those weak genes, and allow everyone to have these strong reproductive genes, we would in a sense be fastforwarding through countless generations of genes that would have had to battle to survive. What if we miss an important adaptation along the way, that could only have been developed through true natural selection?

It makes me feel as though humans have caught up with God, and now we are beginning to create by ourselves. I have to ask, is it a good thing if we allow everyone to be healthy? The obvious answer is yes, but what about the world population? If disease weren't a natural control on our numbers, what would we do? If everyone is screened to be healthy, then we'd have to implement a control on how many children were allowed to be born. The world is over-populated as is...

Side note: If we can siffen out cancer, how long until we are able to choose what our babies look like, how smart they are, etc...Will two stupid people with a lot of money be able to genetically alter their child into a superhuman?

Scientists claim that the procedure is too expensive now for regular people to do it, but who knows what could happen in the future? Also, they say that in order for a couple to have this screening, the fertilization of the egg must occur in a lab.

Real sex vs. superhuman child, you decide.

Much love,
ZMP

Oranges

2 days ago I went to do Yoga with a good friend of mine in Raanana. The sun was shining bright, I hadn't slept for two days, and Yoga was just what the doctor ordered. If you've ever not slept for 48+ hours, you know the mindset that I was in. Everything had a surreal glow to it, and all normal events seemed to carry with them a genuine significance of things much greater.

We had our usual conversation, consisting of relationships, meaning, being new to Israel, pursuits of the mind, inspiration and so on. I felt great, and was itching to get home and into my bed. As I drove her home, she asked if I liked oranges, and of course I said yeah. She claimed there was a place where you could get free oranges. I couldn't fathom how this could be a realistic option.

She navigated the car nearly 5 minutes through some dirt roads off of the main street, and suddenly the car was surrounded by a countryside of oranges. I pulled off into one of the rows of trees, and felt transformed back into a child at Disneyland, as though every single orange was there strictly for my picking.

She went one way, I the other, each searching for our perfect orange. She returned within a minute, orange freshly peeled, and watched me continue to search for mine. She told me how to choose a good one.(Since these were the large kind, there was a special tactic.) "You want a nice orange color, squeezable to the touch, and when you smell it, the more "orangie" the better." Easy enough.

For 1o minutes I searched, squeezing, smelling, climbing, ripping, tasting, but I could not find my orange. So, I grabbed the nearest orange, peeled it halfway , ate what I could through the opening in the skin, and then through it away.

My friend looked at me and said, "You know, that orange is a metaphor for your life." Interested, I asked her to elaborate, to which she replied, "You know exactly what you want from life, just as you know exactly what kind of orange you want. You search and search for it, not realizing that in your pursuit you are actually gaining the knowledge to find what it is you came for, and then when you are close, you give up and settle for something much less than you deserve."

Shocked would be one way to say it. Stunned perhaps more accurate. She was right. Now, I had seen the orange field mainly as a metaphor for my personal relationships, but I think it could be applied to many other parts of my life as well. The point was that I was settling for less than I deserved, mainly due to my lack of patience. (and consciousness as well)

Hope you all find your oranges...

Much love,
ZMP

Young Adulthood

18-25. The college years. The years when a person usually turns independent and learns the harsh realities of the "real world". Not for me. The last 7+ years of my life have been a fairytale. Unfortunately not the kind that ends when a prince meets the love of his life and we live happily ever after, no, my fairytale was more like Alice in Wonderland. Before college, things were easy, school, friends, sports, and it looked to get even better in going to Harvard.

Shit turned south as soon as I forgot what had gotten me to where I was, which was hard work, focus, and staying positive. When I quit football after my freshman year, I thought it was cool, and bragged to my friends how I had told off the coach when I quit. Since I wasn't playing sports, my focus shifted to destructive things that sent my life in a down-swirl. That is, until I transferred to MN. I may have gotten my athletic psyche back, but I got caught up in the whole atmosphere of being a college athlete, which seriously distracted me from the great goal of "finding yourself" which is supposed to take place during college. I gave into the primitive game of "Who's the alpha male?" and was actually pretty damn good at it. Just didn't give me that inner peace that I longed for.

Struggles after struggles, I could go on for ages about how "in my head" I was, and how normal social interactions and conversation were a burden, but I'd rather fast forward to now.

18-25 is in my past. It no longer exists anywhere except in my mind. I turn 26 in less than two weeks. Crazy how time flies, the last 7 were a blink of the eye.

I think I'd like to return to my own way of living, and find people who think like I do. This might take some serious change.

Much love,
ZMP