[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]A[color=#99AA99] moth is drawn to flame.
It's not magic that draws it nearer and nearer, close enough to burn its own wings, it's just a mere coincidence, or maybe even an evolutionary defect. To this day no one can even tell as for why it is that those little insects are drawn to flames, to light in the night, so much that that they will even fly headfirst into their own undoing just to get closer, much closer to a source of light. Be it fire, be it artificial light of any kind, or the constant blue shine of your typical moth-trap.
Multiple theories exist on the subject. Some suggest that the moth perceives the infra-red spectrum of say, the above-mentioned moth-trap, but instead of registering and processing the information as a human being would, simply said instead of thinking "It's a trap!", the moth, not knowing that it is one, mistakes the infra-red emissions from the light-source as something else, like vibrational frequencies of a female moth's pheromones on the infra-red spectrum.
Another theory suggests that moths, being nocturnal insects by nature, use the source of light as a benchmark for navigation and that it is an evolutionary defect of sorts. At day, a moth has to hide. The camouflage patterns on a moth's wings are there to protect it from predators during the day, when the moth hides. When a night ends and the sun on whichever planet you happen to live on rises, the moth rises too. It makes a beeline for the sunlight, gaining height at first to find itself a hiding spot from above so it can stay safe and out of sight during the day. So when a moth is near a source of light, it will make a beeline for that source, even if it is our moth-trap or a dancing flame. The defect in itself isn't that however, as that is just akin to the moth heading towards the sun. The moth just sees the light, but it can't differentiate between what kind of light it is. And given that a moth which will fly into a moth-trap or have its wings soared by flames will die, the moth hasn't even got the experience necessary in order to stay away from the hot light sources at least. Be it a candle or whatever you prefer, the moth would had to survive the contact with the flames in order to have an experience based on which it could learn - if it even can learn that much, but that is another question.
However most of us don't bother to question the reason for the moth's behavior.
Simply put, for us a moth is drawn to flame.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]W[color=#99AA99]e question.
As human beings with a conscience, beings who learn through experience and the raw influx of information we acquire through all of our five senses, it is in our given nature to question. It is our nature to ask for the "Why?", for the motivations behind actions, reactions, inactions.
We can assume that the moths from earlier don't question the "kind" of light-source which, for a fair amount of them, leads to their demise. I know that if I were a moth I would question. "Is that the sun?", "Is that light luring me into a trap?", "Is this light going to lead me to safety?", - or based on the other theory - "Is that another moth?" But that's also assuming I would have the thinking capability and knowledge I currently possess. Then again if I didn't, I probably wouldn't question and just head for the light and end up with my wings burned and torn apart by a dancing flame.
Anyway, I'm not a moth, nor are you, and it's in our nature to question possibly everything. Emphasis on "possibly", as there's a great deal of things we, as a whole species, don't question in general. For example why moths are drawn to flame. Sure, some of us question and want to know the "Why?" behind that, and even though as a whole species we do question a lot, you do have to bear in mind that humanity as we know it is comprised of countless individuals, each of whom only question what they can question.
I'm not saying that not everyone can't question the behavior of moths, but you and I only tend to question what we can perceive with our five senses and deem interesting to us and worthy of questioning in the depths of our cerebral cortices. You could question the behavior of moths just as the countless Entomologists did, for example. You could spend years upon years with research about moths, again and again.
But you don't, and I don't either. It's not in our interest. We don't deem it worthy of the time, the effort, we just plain aren't interested in the behavior of moths.
We don't question a moth's behavior.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]W[color=#99AA99]e react to our surroundings.
Like I mentioned before, we are human beings with a consciousness who, simply put, learn. We learn through teachings and through experience, using our ability of free thinking to our advantage by drawing our own individual conclusions from the things we perceive with our five senses.
From infancy to old age, we learn. It is a never-ending process, until the day we die. Throughout life we learn many a thing and slowly develop the ability to react to everyone and everything that surrounds us, and even our own bodies' physical needs, so we can continue to exist. As an infant we might not possess the same capability of thought and the formed thought processes with all their defined terms racing through our heads as we do when we grow older, but we do react to things. As an infant, I had my needs. I needed to nurture my fragile little body with my mother's milk. I lacked the ability of understanding why, the ability to even question, but - even if not consciously - I knew that I needed it. If my physical needs weren't satisfied I reacted to that condition. By crying.
I don't remember it myself, in fact, I remember as good as nothing from the time I was so little, new to the world and new to everything around me. I'm sure it's similar with you. But once I had grown up, my mother had told me about how I was back then.
By now I have grown way out of the times of infancy and childhood, I've grown to be an adult, a human being with the aforementioned ability to question, coupled with the ability to learn and many others. So have you.
And we all react to our surroundings based on our teachings and experiences. When I was younger, my mother would tell me not to touch the kettle on the stove, because it was hot. I once touched it anyway and I burned my hand something fierce, winced and cried in pain. When I see a hot kettle on a stove now, I know better than to touch it. I avoid touching it. I react to it by consciously not interacting with it, that is my choice.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]J[color=#99AA99]ust as I, we all choose.
Be it consciously or subconsciously, willingly or impartially, even against our will, we choose. When you wake up and get ready to head to work, you may choose how to dress, which path to take that will get you to your workplace, you may choose to have a cup of coffee and French toast, or maybe tea and sausage, and eggs, and bacon. Typical conscious choices going according to your own will.
When you or I cross a road and suddenly hear a car approaching quickly from the side, we either run further forward to cross the road, or we step back and let it pass before we attempt to cross the road again. We don't really think about it, it's a more subconscious and instinctive choice tied together with our survival instinct, and it is not against our own will, as much as we might be upset about a jerk not slowing down for us and riding shotgun as we try to cross said road.
Now let's look at a different situation. Imagine we are soldiers on a battlefield and we are forced to choose between charging a heavily-defended enemy position or trying to slip past it in order to reach our objective. We would rather not have said enemy position be there in the first place, wouldn't we, so we could continue to our objective. But it's there. We can choose between trying to assault it and trying to slip past it. But in truth we don't want to have to face that particular problem at all, yet its existence forces us into a position, mentally, at which the road splits, figuratively speaking, and we have to choose. We ultimately choose one or the other, but we'd rather we hadn't had to in the first place. We do it consciously, but against our will.
No matter where we go, we are faced with the task of making decisions as we continue our life-long journey through the universe.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]W[color=#99AA99]e choose to follow rules.
Whether they are written down in a book going by the title of "Laws of Whatever" or whether they only exist deep in the back of our heads as unwritten and unspoken thoughts, we choose to follow rules. It doesn't matter what rules they are, like say the Laws of the Republic of Liberty, or whether they are just the moral guidelines you live by, they are rules you choose to follow all the same. You choose to follow some of them consciously and some subconsciously without ever really noticing.
When I was a young child with a working memory, what little knowledge I had acquired in the few years of my life and the most basic abilities to question and to reason, I once got really angry at a friend of mine. He was my neighbor and we had been building sandcastles and playing together as we grew up - our parents all got along well together. Then one day he took my favorite toy, a little doll I had been given my grandmother on my fourth birthday, and he accidentally let it fall into the wet sand on a rainy day.
Instead of crying, which as I much later found out my parents would've expected to happen, I got angry and I hit him on the shoulder, because it was my favorite toy and he had carelessly let it fall and get dirty. I remember that I must've hit him pretty hard, because he fell over backwards into the sandbox and started crying.
Next moment my parents and his parents rushed over to us - they had been watching us play while talking about things which I didn't understand and don't even remember - and then his parents helped him up and my parents scolded me.
They told me that you didn't hit others, you didn't hurt others.
I remember asking "Why?", but the only answer I got was "Because it's bad and you just don't!" - I later said something along the lines of "But he dropped my doll!" and got a slap on my behind from my mother. I too remember that I spent the next hour crying. It would only be several years later that I would remember those events and actually ask the question "Why?" again, but that time I would ask myself.
Nowadays when I look back at that day and ask myself the question the answer comes easy. Because it's stupid. It's stupid to hit someone out of impulse, and it's unreasonable to it because he dropped a little doll into wet sand and it got dirty, a doll that a day later would be clean and pristine again because it would've had been put into the washing machine. It's a reaction not matching the proportions of the action that caused it.
As a child I didn't know better of course. All I knew was what my mother had told me. It was bad and I just didn't do it. Today it's different. And it's like a little rule in my head already, subconscious but it's there. I won't hit someone because they drop something that belongs to me, even if it gets dirty, and even if it breaks. If it were something important and broke, I might get angry, but I wouldn't react to it with physical violence like I did that day.
It's just one of the rules I choose to follow, and would I not have invested thought into it, would it not have been such a significant event of my childhood, I probably would be following it willingly without even consciously knowing that I did. Of course it goes without mention that it all was a learning experience even back when I was a kid. Don't hit others, don't hurt others. It's bad and you will get slapped on your behind if you do.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]N[color=#99AA99]eedless to say that regardless of what our choices, thoughts, reasons and motivations are, we exist.
While "life" itself is a term which is hard to define, the definitions of it colorfully varying for every single individual in this universe, we can assume that we, as per our lain-out terms and as per our understanding of the universe, truly exist.
This might sound self-explanatory in itself, but when you take into account all the things I have outlined before, it means aplenty.
It means that we can be perceived by other individuals with the same five senses we have. Vision - the sense of seeing, Audition - the sense of hearing, Gustation - the sense of taste, Olfaction - the sense of smell, and Tactition - the sense of touch. Once we are perceived by others, we will be perceived while acting, reacting, or in the middle of inaction.
Regardless of which of the three it is, whoever perceives us might do so as if we were a moth, not wasting more of a thought on us than the one would on a moth, saying "This person is there and exists." - and that's all. But if whoever perceives us chooses to pay more attention to us, for whichever reasons, it means our actions, reactions and our inaction can be questioned, the questioning of our doing or undoing being a direct reaction to it, just as dismissing us as just another existing person is a reaction to our very existence once we are perceived.
What we do or not do can be questioned by others, sometimes just in their own heads, sometimes we ourselves can be questioned because of what we did or didn't do. For example, why are you listening to me? - Of course, you could answer that question but I can draw the conclusion that in one way or the other you are showing interest in me, be it in my being itself or just in my words, or maybe even both.
Long story short is that by existing and being perceived we are open to others' reactions, others questioning what we do or not do, others judging if what we do or not do is according to their own individual rules and the like. Just as they are part of our surroundings, we are part of theirs, and we all choose whether to question or not to question, whether to react or not to react, even though choosing in this case is in itself a reaction to our existence. We choose whether we interact with one another or not, and we also choose how. We choose when.
You could say that we do because we exist, and we exist because we do. But that would be me digressing into a more philosophical area of conversation.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]S[color=#99AA99]o now that we've established the basics of our interaction and come to the conclusion that we "are" here, I guess I can tell you more about where I come from and what my reasons, my motivations are.
I am the child of the union of a young lady from Rheinland and a Kusarian who once met one another on that watery world going by the name of Honshu, in the solar system of the same name. My mother once visited the planet in her younger years, long ago, as just another tourist, eager to discover a new culture, a new world, full of the adventurous spirit that would later rub off on me. It was on Honshu where she bumped into the man who would later become my father, both enjoying their vacation at the time while being quartered in the same holiday resort on the little island of Itoigawa, covered largely by a city of the same name.
My father, back then a young, respected and comely Chūsa of the Kusari Naval Forces, liked to spend his holidays on the calm and largely sea-covered surface of Honshu because of the peacefulness and the aforementioned vast seas, reminding him of the infinity of the universe's reaches and how they mingled together with the little things we as humanity had established, in comparison to the vast universe that is. He liked to think that Honshu was somewhat of a mirror image of the Sirius sector. The seas mirroring the empty reaches of space, and the islands scattered across the planet's surface being a reflection of the colonies humanity had established all over Sirius. But all only the size of a planet, which while just an tiny little part of Sirius in itself, much like you might think the moth of earlier a tiny part of an ecosystem, still was just that - a part. A part that small in a sense was yet so large for a human being, with much to learn about and many reaches to explore, enough for a long life.
My mother on the other hand was different. Of course, she was a born Rheinlander, but that wasn't the important part. She was far less laid-back and full of energy, eager to explore, eager to see as many variations of culture, of space, of life as possible in her own - as she would think insignificantly short - lifetime. They bumped into one another while fishing.
For my father I mean that literally. He was an avid fisherman, which was just another reason as for why he spent his time on Honshu. Fishing in a sense had always been a part of Kusari culture, and a large part of the Kusari food industry of course. My father loved and loves it, and on that fateful day he was calmly enjoying his time when my mother, fishing herself but in another way, bumped into him.
She had always been a very friendly and open-minded person, those characteristics going hand in hand with the rest of her personality, and as eager as she was to learn more about the Kusari culture, she didn't hesitate when she stumbled across my father-to-be and started to pester him with questions - she wasn't afraid of or hesitant to approach strangers either, I might add. Fishing for knowledge while my father was fishing for fish they got into a conversation which would progressively reveal vast differences between both and their interests, and yet tiny but nonetheless important similarities and things they had in common. You could say that the chemistry between the two was just perfect from day one, like in all those cheap holo-novels you can pick up at the newsstands you'll find in all the little spaceports scattered across Liberty.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]O[color=#99AA99]f course love doesn't always conquer all as easily as those words are spoken, but I can safely say today that everything worked out well for my parents.
A whole three months passed and the prolonged vacation of my father ended with him requesting - and being granted - an honorable discharge from the Naval Forces, and when time came for my mother to head back to Rheinland both ventured there hand in hand, without question nor a second of hesitation on my father's end.
Infected by her own adventurous spirit he was also eager to discover her world, the place she called home, which to his surprise was not much unlike Honshu itself. That little and just as watery world in the Frankfurt system going by the name of Holstein was where my dear mother resided, in peacetime at least - but I'll get to that later.
Fascinated by the similarities between his and her world my father turned into a mirror image of my mother as they were there, and my mother into a mirror image of his as he was back on Honshu, the roles seemingly reversed. If there had ever been a better display of two people forming a perfect match, they and I have not heard of it, and even if we did, we wouldn't believe it.
Everything was so great for them, each day wonderful from start to finish, and the first happy week together on Holstein culminated during a quiet Spring evening when they both once more ended up fishing.
My mother, creative and devious as she was and remembering every single second from the time they first met, took the initiative that day, true to her spirit. She had cast the fishing rod and when a really mighty Rosefish took the bait she let my father pull it out of the sea.
As he took it off the hook he couldn't help but start laughing, remembering in an instant the first time they had encountered one another on Itoigawa's shores as his gaze met its reflection on the sparkling surface of the golden ring she had used as bait.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]I[color=#99AA99] can safely say that I am the result of what happened afterwards.
For me myself it means a lot to be a child of blooming love, something so pure and unquestionable even in this universe, and it meant a lot to my parents that I, as their child, would be raised with all the love they could give, being theirs and theirs alone, the very proof that love did indeed conquer all.
And conquer all it did. Despite the hardships they had to endure, despite all the looks of contempt being cast their way, the bureaucrats, the Military who would not grant my mother - she was a Leutnant of the Rheinland Military's reserve at the time - her discharge from the forces, my parents managed to deal with everything.
In a freezing-cold December night I was born, in the only hospital you would find in the little city called Rendsburg, my mother's own place of birth. From that point onward, all the troubles my parents had ever had faded, becoming meaningless as I saw the light of day. From that day, no one stood in their way, no one dared to question, to doubt, to disapprove their union.
And I became the very center of their own universe.
[font=Palatino Linotype][color=#999999]L[color=#99AA99]ike I said way earlier however, I don't remember that much of my really early childhood.
I know from my parents that I was the cause of much worry in my early days, having been a sickly and fragile child. Many a night they would spend watching over me, one of them napping and the other wide awake when I caught a cold, Mumps or Measles. That all changed as I started to grow a little more however and it wasn't long until we moved. My parents were living off their military pensions, and while those were more than enough to keep our little family sustained, well...
As the saying from ancient Earth goes: "You can expel nature with a pitchfork, yet she will return through another window." Even though I was the center of the universe for my parents, the focal point of their lives, they both thirsted for work, for things to do, for things to explore. A way to be more than just the parents of my own self.
The destination they would choose was the Stuttgart system, more precisely the - again - watery world known as Baden-Baden. Investing their savings into buying what would become my home for the better portion of my early life, into my very early twenties, they afterwards set out to make themselves useful.
An opportunity came as Orbital Spa and Cruise's presence slowly rose on that glorified holiday resort of a planet along with the local - who would have thought - fishing industry. In the end it wasn't the extensive knowledge my parents had acquired as members of two different house militaries which paved the way for their and my own future, but more or less their combined knowledge of Kusarian and Rheinlander practices in the fishing industry - with my father originating out of a long bloodline of traditional Kusari fishermen who had risen up the corporate ladder steadily, and my mother having extensively studied both the practices and customs of Kusari and Rheinland corporate culture, they quickly found employment in a small private company which would over the years, thanks to them, rise to become one of the more dominant companies on the Rheinland fish market. Of course, their military knowledge pertaining to the whole leadership-thing - they had afterall both served as command officers in their respective militaries - came in very handy as they climbed up the ladder themselves and began managing increasingly larger assets of the company, developing new business strategies and the like on the way.
And all that while they lovingly took care of me over the years as I grew to be quite the bothersome teenager.