A dream deffered

Why do dreams fail? Or better why do dreams not fail? A dream is simply a desire that a person has had for a long period of time, and wants dearly. It is no different than any other wish or desire, except that it's a bit stronger than most and the person has had it a bit longer. Also in most cases when something is referred to as a dream, it is highly unlikely to ever happen. The person who has the dream has most likely accepted that it will probably never happen, but it would be nice if it would. Let's take for example Lennie and George's dream of having a farm. Sure they knew where there was land but until they met Candy there was no hope for it financially. George realized that it was a dream and would almost definitely never happen. A dream is something you want but put little or no effort into accomplishing becuase its so unlikely. When you actually try to accomplish something, it becomes a goal. The moment something is labeled as a dream, it is doomed to not being fullfilled.

Belonging

We all belong somewhere. We might simply not be there or not see it. The strident atheist might be happier in the ranks of the church. The hate filled conservative pundit might be better off helping the poor and protesting against damage to environment with a progressive organization. Where you live might be the wrong place for you, and maybe a change is necessary. We all need one place where we fit in, and are accepted. But there is no single place in which you belong. You might be perfectly fine where you are, there is no defining sense of belonging. There are simply place and people who when you are there or with them, your happy. If your happy where your or you hang out with, good for you, if not change. It's up to you, if it doesn't work, its good to have something to fall back on, so don't burn any bridges.

Friendship

What does friendship truly mean? The word is tossed around a lot but there does not seem to be any precise definition for it. Yet we all have people that we consider friends. So while it seems that everyone views it somewhat differently and may not be able to explain the way the view it, we each have a definition for it whether we can express it or not. For the novel, of Mice and Men, at least from what I have read, it has a pretty clear definition. A friend is someone who cares for you and cares about you, such as Lennie to George and vice versa. A friendship is not necessarily an equal trade off, but as long there as there is an underlying caring for each other, it works. We friends because we need someone to care for us and to care for someone. This is a pretty nice definition and I do think that this is one way to define friendship. For me though friendship is just when you enjoy being that person. Naturally we really dont like other people. We view them as competition, not as friends. We don't neccesarily hate but we definetely dont like them. So friendship is when we manage to overlook the fact that the other person is competition to us and just accept them because we like them. We enjoying being with them so we do. We have friends because without human contanct we would go insane, and we are social animals, so we might as well enjoy being with whomever we have contact with.

The greatest crime

Murder is a unique crime. While things like rape and torture are equal if not worse, they affect you in your life. Murder is the ending of life. Victims of rape and torture are still alive, they can be helped. Murder takes on a whole different dimension, after it is committed nothing can be done. Rightly so it is considered one of the worst crimes possible. Then why is that we use it as a punishment? How can we justify destroying another human being? This sets a case of do as I say not as I do. If that the government says that some murder is justified, well whats to stop some crazed vigilante into taking the law into his own hands? To them the murder is justified. What makes them any different than the government? What American's don't realize is that in the vast majority of the civilized world, the death penalty is illegal, and murder of any kind is considered a crime. The death penalty is wrong, it does not discourage violent crimes and may even encourage them. There is no way to justify it's, wrong, does not save money as some of its advocates argue and in the case of Troy Davis, can results in innocent men being put on death row.