Dead Bird by the Window was originally published as From the Mouths of Birds, but I never liked that title. It was a 1999 Chiaroscuro short story contest winner, with the kernel of the story stemming from the idea that we all have the power to create our own reality. We might even be doing it all the time and not even know it. What reality have you created?

In 1942, my Grandfather and two of his friends went to an Army recruiting station to sign up. The three of them were all members of a local pilot's club; having a private pilot's license in those days was pretty rare.

His two friends ended up in the Army Air Corp (the precursor to today's Air Force), but during the physical, my Grandfather was determined to be underweight for being a pilot and ended up in the regular Army, driving a tank in North Africa. His two friends got shot down over Europe and were both killed. My Grandfather survived. He married my grandmother and sired my uncle and mother, who at age 24 gave birth to me.

So it's easy to see that my existence stems from a series of random and chance events, one in particular: my Grandfather was denied being a pilot in WWII.

We are given no choice in our creation. There's no evidence that any deliberate factor or factors were involved. This implies that there's no ultimate and intrinsic purpose to life. Religion attempts to counter this by proposing a god or gods that imbue life with meaning. Others propose that we must give meaning to our life. Self-interest drives us to strive for happiness through the elimination of pain, both physical and emotional.

How much does biology drive behavior? All humans act in their own self-interest, which can be summed up as a desire to avoid pain and enhance pleasure. This is not to imply that we always do what is best. The human proclivity for self-destructive behavior is evident, where pursuit of pleasure overcomes the survival instinct.

Is there some higher influence on cosmic events that gives our life purpose or meaning? And even if there is, if this influence isn't not perceptible, can we even say it exists? Was there a meaning and purpose to my life before I came into existence? Where will my meaning go after my death?

Rather than search for externally imposed meaning to our existence, we must create that meaning ourselves by taking responsibility for the way we see the world. We can view it as wonderful or awful. The decision is up to you.

I'm interested in fulfillment, methods we can use to find or create meaning in our lives, beyond that which is granted us by those forces which bend us to their will. I often stumble upon the writings and opinions of like-minded people. One such is P.S. Pirro. My paraphrased except is below and pretty much sums up my opinion of our school system, and the system of work-til-you die labor the permeates our society. You can read the full article here.

We are indoctrinated from school age to devote our time, our freedoms, and our attention to the will of the state, so that we're prepared and trained for a work world of wage slavery and obedience to authority. In the factory environment of our modern schools, where teachers are confronted by ever increasing class sizes, a Lord of the Flies political system establishes itself, were the bullies and their violence, both physical and emotional, rule the social hierarchy. School is prison.

Children who excel at school often find themselves lost in the real world. This sense of displacement and confusion is the result of schooling that succeeds in its most basic goal: to keep you dependent, timid, worried, nervous, compliant, and afraid. To keep you manageable, helpless and small.

It's not up to teachers or school administrators to figure out what you should be or do. It's not up to the State, it's not up to your guidance counselors. It's not up to your parents. What you do with your life ought to be up to you. What you learn ought to be up to you. How you navigate the world and create your place in it ought to be your decision. Your life belongs to you. School does its best to disabuse you of this notion.

If every child were given the chance to explore and discover and learn in the real world what they love to do, what they're uniquely good at doing, and what the world needs that they care about -- then we would have a world of self-confident, creative, informed, empowered, networked entrepreneurs doing work that needs to be done, successfully. We would have armies of people collaborating to solve the problems and crises facing our world, instead of going home exhausted at the end of the day seeking escape, feeling helpless to do anything that is meaningful.

We would have a world of producers instead of consumers, a world of abundance instead of scarcity, a world of diversity instead of what Terry Glavin calls "a dark and gathering sameness". We would have a world of people choosing their lives instead of taking what they can get, what they can afford, what is offered to them. We would have a world of people who are nobody-but-themselves, and who know who they are, and how to live and make a living for themselves.