Cheating your violence ((girl blog NO BOYS ALLOWED!!!))

This week at school, we discussed cheating and violence. It reminded me of a very important lesson — don’t cheat your violence.

We all know that we must not cheat on things. Don’t cheat on your exams, don’t cheat on your boyfriend, don’t cheat on your dentist appointments by wearing dentures because they will find out, etc. Yet not many are familiar with “don’t cheat your violence.”

Violence is scary. It is so scary that at times it can capture us, especially extremely violent violence which may even include death. The narrator in the “Videotape” by DeLillo loves the violent violence very much, likely more than he loves his wife Janice. Yet despite cheating on his wife with violence, he is not cheating his violence. He is respecting violence and its capabilities and power. He is trembling in fear to the god of mortality. He is scared of his own being being a being of nothing, of being finite in an infinite world. He lives knowing that his destiny is the throw of a dart to a dartboard, and that a perfect hit to the center will be a bullet straight through his head. He is suffering because his own life is pain, because the violence is intertwined within life itself.

Many people try to cheat violence by believing in an after life. These same people hold funerals, build hospitals, and memorialize. Are they respecting their life or their violence?

Other people cheat violence in other ways. They try to take advantage of violence by creating weapons. As people who coexist violence may learn how to fight, people who don’t learn how to kill. Do these people respect human life or violence?

Some people choose to spend their time by sitting around and smiling with each other. They laugh in the face of violence. Are they being respectful of life or violence?

I am not a cheater. I would rather live my life fair and square. I would rather live my life crying myself to sleep. I would rather not make friends. I would rather not supplement life.

    — autobiography of Alexopolis Ancient Greek philosopher