First of all I am. My existence alone makes my life good. No matter what happens I am a conscious being that can control my actions. On my inner arm I have a tattoo that reads “I Am” to remind me that life and self-consciousness is the greatest gift that we have ever received, and it should be used to its full potential.

My parents gave me this gift of life and for that I owe them everything. I am lucky in the fact that my parents support me monetarily, because I believe that anything they give me is extra after giving me life. All of their actions, including their fears, have been out of love.

Recently, I have been questioned my upbringing and have discovered the sources for a lot of my implicit beliefs. At about age ten I was hit with a mild depression. Fear drove my parents to take me to a psychologist because we have a heavy family history of bipolar disorder and suicide. During my sophomore year of high school I was enrolled in therapeutic boarding school. This is where I think most of my implicit beliefs were driven home. I’m not saying that I didn’t have problems to talk about. We all have problems, but because of my environment my implicit belief at the time was that I was mentally screwed up. I defined myself as depressed. That was my problem. I presently know that I am not depressed. I just get depressed sometimes.

The power of knowing something is incredible. If you truly believe that something is true, it’s true. I know that people are basically good. People do things that I might define as bad but everyone has their reason. How can I claim to know better then them? I have just as much bias based on my life experience as they do.
The fact of the matter is we are all gods in our own worlds. Our entire life is our brain’s heavily edited interpretation of five senses. We choose how to create our reality based on the various experiences and opinions we have formed over the course of our lives. Even according our most current form of science, quantum physics, we know that by observing something we change its physical properties.

Realizing how much of my reality I personally create has led me down a spiritual path. If I create reality based on my biases what information do I filter out? Recently I have paid a lot more attention to energies that people, animals, and environments send out. I think that all people feel this energy and choose to ignore it because they don’t understand. I think that this energy is the collective unconscious. It is my version of God.

I have realized that the meaning of life is to live. Because of free will we have the power to do whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want to do it. There is no limit to the possibilities that are in front of us so we might as well experience as much as we can with our amazing gift of life and self-consciousness. I don’t know if there is an afterlife and frankly, I don’t care. I am going to do and experience as much as I possibly can with my time in this world, and if life continues after death that would be a really awesome bonus.

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