As You Wish - The Problem of The Princess Bride

"As you wish" was all he ever said to her. That day, she was amazed to discover that when he was saying "As you wish", what he meant was, "I love you." And even more amazing was the day she realized she truly loved him back.

It's a touching moment. It's the set up to a "kissing book." It's filled with lingering glances, eyes "like the sea after a storm" and hair dancing in the wind. It's also a lie.

"As you wish" translating to "I love you" is a beautiful sentiment. Why would we want our lover to seek anything but our own happiness? If our lover seeks our happiness and we seek theirs, all bases are covered. We have happiness ensured.

That, and who doesn't love to be told that things will be "as you wish"? Try as we might to be otherwise, we're all a little egotistical, a little proud. We like that others should serve us, we like that our will should be the determining factor.

But for our will to be the determining factor is not love. If I willed something that was bad for myself, your condoning of my will would not be love. Love does not permit the person's wishes, but what is best for the person. This doctrine necessitates the advent of tough love, that all too painful treatment that goes against a person's wishes but is what the other perceives to be truly best for them.

Tough love keeps a person from killing themselves when it's what they want. Tough love reprimands a person for doing something damaging to their body or soul. Tough love is not "as you wish," but is "as God wishes."

This is exactly what can be seen in the Garden of Gesthemane, on the night Jesus is arrested. With the foreknowledge due the Son of God, Jesus knows that his death is coming, and not in a pleasant manner. In Luke 22:42, Jesus prays that the cup, the cup that holds his death, will be taken from him. "Yet," he adds, "not my will, but thine be done." This is true love. True love bows to true goodness, and that is God.

In loving people, we cannot want what they wish. This will lead to a subjective standard of goodness, a goodness that changes with each person we try to love. While it is true that different people feel the reception of love in different ways, there must be an objective standard in order for identification to be possible at all. God is this root of objective goodness, a goodness outside of the earth and its influences that cannot be tainted, changed, or worn out.

So the next time you want to say "I love you," don't say "As you wish."

Say "As God wishes."

Forest Magic

 Oh for a thousand breaths of forest air. To sit on a log and wave my feet at the leaves. Dead or alive, they still dance. Oh to live a hundred lives, a thousand years, until eternity and I grow sick of one another. The sunlight speckles the soil, fighting the shadows but never so well as to cease to be special. Scurrying squirrels refuse to pick sides, yet chatter with chipmunks about the benefits and strategies of each.


Magical morning passes to acquiescent afternoon, who allows effervescent evening. But midnight, midnight is mournful. When the earth has fled and the fairies and sprites have reminded me of their existence, then will I breathe deeply. When the trees shake their tired limbs and our foreign world is coated in paint of a different hue. But I don't join my friends when they snag their snouts in the stars to sing, for I know that white globe to be where the earth has gone, and I don't want it back.


I will walk with a silent tread that only the flowers with their tilting ears can hear and forget how to breathe.

Incepted to Discontent

Inception. It's a crazy movie that leaves you guessing at the end... is Cobb in a dream or not? Is that spinning top about to tip, or not? It provides a good night of action, drama, confusion for the brain, and maybe a couple minutes (or hours!) of conversation after the credits roll. But when it comes down to it, inception is just an idea. Or is it?

Our culture has been clever, very clever. Some may say too clever. I would like to suggest that the culture has found a way to perform inception upon us, and while we are awake no less.

Now before you think I've totally lost it, please give me a chance to defend myself. Cobb himself, in the movie, claims that the most resilient parasite is an idea, and thus this is what the culture has sought to shape. Tell me that music, movies, books, TV, even the commercials themselves, do not do this, and I will call you a liar. Music champions everything from love to sexual triumph, from wealth of possessions to pride in oneself, and on down the list. High schoolers in movies are portrayed by flawless twenty year olds, and a failure to have flat abs is the cardinal sin. A party with pumping music and the requisite alcohol is necessarily a good time, and it is a proven fact that whiter teeth make anyone of the opposite gender flock to your door.

We are told what looks good, smells good, tastes good, sounds good, and feels good. All five senses are accounted for, as well as your consequent morality. If partying feels good, it must be right. Gratification of the self becomes the chief virtue, the less delayed the better (because, of course, if you are delaying, you are wasting time that could be spent shoveling money in to the companies).

Then comes the creation of a vicious cycle. We are both the consumers and producers of culture. As we are told what to desire, we desire said object. Our increased demand perpetuates the existence of said object and others of its kind, though each modification is acclaimed better and more satisfying. However, for all the culture seems to promise us flawless skin, thirty pounds off of our current weight, and a life that will never make us cease smiling, we have not found satisfaction. We have not found the end of the race, for then we would lose the need to chase these temporal remedies.

The culture offers not satisfaction but dissatisfaction, for it is only the dissatisfied person that feels the need for a product. Contentedness brooks no need. Rather than offer us hope, ads point out that we have none and then offer a quick, 100% guaranteed solution that will have us panting before them.

The culture has performed inception upon us, but I suggest that we starve the beast. Let us not buy in to the images that fail to satisfy, that project lies to our consciousness. Let us be critical consumers, ones that recognize the falsity behind the billboard models and swimsuit ads. We may throw off the inception of culture's ideas, not by disclaiming their method, but, ultimately, by claiming contentedness.

How are we to do this though? I suggest that we claim contentedness, not by finding it, but by having it given to us. It is given by none other than Jesus Christ the son of the living God.

Everything on earth is vanity. What wisdom, virtue, or riches will not pass? Build a legacy, and even that will fade and twist with memory and time. The righteous and the unrighteous die; the wise and the fool perish. Death comes to all. Make a change in the world and the next generation undoes your work, or someone else inherits that for which you toiled. Where is the fairness on this earth, where is equality? Nowhere but death.

Contentedness cannot be found on this earth. Mere resignation is the best that can be achieved. However, contentedness can be found in something eternal, something untarished and good. Only if contentedness is rooted in something that does not change can it be called true satisfaction; otherwise it is a mere mountain peak between the rolling hills of dissatisfaction.

Just

At about 1:05pm, I started expecting murder.

Perhaps I ought to explain myself a bit. One typically doesn't say such things, and when they do, they are usually suspected as the perpetrators of said expected murder. Never is it possible that they could be simply hoping for a little excitement... as long as that excitement, happening to someone else of course, provided ample respite from the humdrum routine of daily life. Who invented routines anyway?

But I'm getting off track again. Let me premise the state of my mind: I had been reading murder mysteries all day. Sometimes the pages dripped with blood and other times they lay limp from seemingly harmless causes. Smelling them proved to be no help, as much as I stuck my nose in among the dry leaves, and only my fingerprints covered their seams.

Yet one of the books, Destination Unknown by Agatha Christie, had no murder. To be fair, it had its share of natural accidents and faked deaths, threats and secrets, but no murder. I found myself tense the entire book, only to let out a somewhat shaky breath at the end, both relieved and insulted that I had had no need to harbor worry.

It's odd, if you think about it. I had been expecting murder. You could argue I even wanted it, an accusation I would stoutly deny. Of course, you could take the other line of approach, saying, "It's just a book, just fiction. Who cares?" Indeed, who does? Does the presence of others' care validate or necessitate your own? But to avoid that tangential, though interesting, rabbit trail, I'd like to maintain that fiction imitates life. Fiction is about life, whether in the form of humans or forms otherwise anthropomorphized. It concerns struggles, victories, and defeats, all the normal ingredients of life. Your battle might be conquering that ever-encroaching migraine while juggling your ever-lengthening to-do list, but I say that you are fighting off our time's serpentine beasts as surely as had you been clad in armour and wielding a sword. I won't say anything of your skill or success just yet. The bridge between real life and literary life merits a longer consideration to be sure, but I hope you will take my word, for the moment, that in some way our expectations for fiction, though aggrandized, mimic our expectations for real life. 

So what does my deadly fascination reveal? And let me tell you, I want the answer as much as you. Maybe more.....

I think it shows how we, as a society, as people, as whatever you like, think. We deem the grand as deserving of our attention, whether it's grandly wonderful or grandly morbid. Think about it. If you got up, went to work, came home, and in short had all the components of an average day and none of the extraordinary ones, what do you reply when someone texts you to find out what's up? "Not much," you say. "Just work." Just.

But why "just"? Without the just days, we would never get to the amazing days. Without the ordinary, we would never have the extraordinary. How often do you read a book or watch a show where the character goes about his just day? He or she wakes up, yawns, and pours a bowl of cereal. Or, if you like, grabs a coffee thermos and runs out the door. Works, types at his or her keyboard, checks emails, maybe responds. Feels important, feels shunned, feels overused, feels worthy, feels loved, etc. Then he or she goes home, goes to bed, and gets ready to do it all again. Just like you.

You don't read books like that. There aren't many, except perhaps some more modern pieces pointing out the extreme lack of such pieces. No, the hero is introduced to his quest and goes to complete it. Sure, there may be waiting phases, but if they lasted as long as ours typically last, we'd put the book down, switch off the TV, and get on with it.

Now, I'm not bashing the heroic days. Or the downer days. They are interesting. They are, pardon me the cliche, the stuff stories are made of. But I'd like to put in a word for the little guy, the forgotten day, the in between day. The waiting day. The just day. He's the bridge to your adventure or sorrow, the slope stuck leading to or from the valley or mountain peak.

But it's not just the inevitable necessity of the just days that I'd like to celebrate. You see, it's all about how you act on your just days. If your a class-A act on your just days, there's a better chance that you'll remain so during your highs and lows. If, on the other hand, you're simply a cad all around, well, your situation isn't going to change that much. Your just days are your most usual time, and, as such, they comprise most of the time given to shaping your character. A couple good highs or really tragic lows aren't going to alter what you've already etched into your skin. They might paint you a different color for a while, but all paint chips.

In the end, gilding is a cover for what's just underneath.

A (Poetic) Reflection on Relativism

To be a Liar and Christian in America
One must only pretend that it's right
Everything is misunderstanding
Truth cannot have a bitter bite

Reinterpret the lines with the times, the place, and me
As ocean molds, bowing, to the sand
The past has been wrong before - I was born this way -
A solid heat will melt this land

Control and power dance as twin dragons stealing fire
A deadly dance threatening each turn
Presence implies purpose, and purpose approval
Let's sit back to watch the world burn

Why can't you let me be as I was made to appear?
We're not so different, you and me
You want truth and I want lies, but it's all just talk,
Freedom of speech, equality

To be a Liar and Christian in America
Take the Bible's word as you take mine
Trade your pen for a pencil and make sure it's fast
As we erase that thin fine line.

Vigilante or Villain?

In the Batman movies, clearly Batman is portrayed as a hero. Though sometimes he seems to make the wrong choices, usually as the result of pressures to present a reasonable facade through his life Bruce Wayne as well as to maintain the balance between his egos, he in general is held up as the salvation of Gotham. I would like to discuss whether or not Bruce Wayne as Batman made the proper choice in becoming a vigilante patrol for the crime-ridden streets of Gotham.

Now the advent of Batman was demanded by the corruption coursing through Gotham. Both the police quarters and the government had their share of people in the pay of the drug lords, and then some. As such, the law no longer functioned as an objective standard against which everyone stood for judgment. It had become a subjective standard against which only those without connections or money stood for judgment, while those with such benefits went scot-free. Since the system was failing, the introduction of the Batman sought to amend those failings. Batman was to enforce the law as an objective standard, because whereas the drug lords could bribe the judges, witnesses, and etc, they could not bribe Batman. From him, they would receive their payment of justice.

In this way, it is true that Batman is the idea he seeks to become. An idea cannot be killed, just as justice cannot be destroyed, only momentarily thwarted. Thus, Batman patches up the holes in the corrupt justice system of Gotham.

However, the problem arises in that Batman is not merely an idea. As he says, "An idea can be anyone." The important point that I want to focus on here is the stress that the embodiment of an idea must be someone. True, that it can be anyone, but nor can it be no one. As a result, the idea of justice, or the patch of the idea of justice, that Batman is also feels the weigh of a real person. A vigilante must necessarily be a person.

As such, I would like to argue that a vigilante cannot help become a villain at some point, if they continue down the same path without tapering or stopping. A vigilante takes justice into their own hands, whether partially or wholly. By so doing, they threaten to remove justice from its objective standard and subjectify it through their own conceptions of justice. By preserving some part of justice, they may only preserve that which they conceive to be justice, an idea which may or may not hold true to the objective standard.

The more they continue to do so, the more they may realize that justice relies on their actions rather than vice versa. The potential then arises for a vigilante to see any of their actions as the actions of justice, thus making the idea bow to their treatment. Instead of judging their actions based on ideals of justice, their actions have become the ideals of justice, regardless of what they are. This then carries the potential for justification, a state that will let the vigilante excuse any of their actions as the necessary call of justice. Thus it seems that the vigilante could descend on a path quite opposite the cries of justice but yet justify themselves and their actions based on the ideal, as they have made it defined by themselves.

There is no assurance that Batman, the previous defender of true justice, would not become its greatest antagonist. An objective standard in the hands of one person can be no better than a subjective standard, a standard subject to the flux of human emotion and thought. 

Thus, while Gotham can praise Batman as its hero who maintained justice's objective standard in a time of crime and corruption, it can likewise praise Batman for hanging up the cape.