Okay - so now that Oprah's off the air, I'll blog.

I don't really know how to start this or what to write as my first profound blog entry. I guess just write what's on my mind? Well...

For starters, I'm thinking that I'm a little nervous about the one-man audience I may have here as he is an incredibly articulate and eloquent writer (by love and profession). Plus, I heard he once beat up this blind writer student of his because he kept typing a comma on his writing assignments where he should've typed a period. So that's definitely on my mind right now...

Um...I watched a young girl today, maybe 8 or 9, pouring soda into a baby bottle for her infant brother. Mom watched - actually requested that her daughter do so. Two things - one: Why are you having your daughter do anything even remotely parental for your infant? - and two: Are you serious? Soda?

I guess watching that poor little infant, maybe a year old if I'm being generous, having to drink that sugar and caffeine-polluted bottle coupled with a documentary that I just recently watched about the children of an FLDS compound made me stop to think a little deeper about the world in which I'm living - maybe made me a bit more empathetic and less assuming that people just know better. How can the children growing up in these environments know that what they're being fed, metaphorically and literally, is wrong? You don't know what you don't know. That soda-drinking infant will likely never be removed from the home he knows and may very well grow up repeating the same sound nutritional advice he's learning from his sister...who learned it from her mom. And how someone can distort a truth so significantly, and then use deceit and manipulation to make people believe in something so strongly as was done on the FLDS compound in the documentary I watched is beyond imaginable to me - or maybe it isn't.

In a world of more followers than leaders, few break from the 'rules' learned in the formidable years - whether it be regarding religion, love, politics, or what to put in a baby's bottle. Are we not all 'brainwashed' to believe one thing or another? There has to be a commonality that ties us all - even to those to whom we may not want to be tied.

I grew up believing in God. I was taught that finding love and creating a family was my purpose while here in this life. I learned right from wrong, black from white, good from bad. All of which was taught by my two loving parents and those around whom I was surrounded. They taught what they knew, but how did they know right from wrong, black from white, good from bad? From their parents? And them from theirs? And so on? Sounds like a big, and potentially dangerous, game of telephone to me.

I don't like knowing that I believe things to be a certain way because I was told it was so. I have had so few experiences in life to validate 'truth' in comparison to how much I've been told is 'truth'. Are we so desperate to know 'something' that we'll accept just 'anything'? It just doesn't seem that I should have grown up one religion, for example, because that was the religion my parents chose for themselves - or the religion their parents chose for them. I could never get unbiased information.

Or marriage - I'm suppose to be married and faithful, but what happens when I don't want to be married but I can't leave the situation I'm in? If the relationship's devastatingly unhealthy, am I given a get out of jail free card if I am unfaithful? Maybe I'll salvage a few friends if they find out I was severely abused before I found some deserved attention elsewhere? I shouldn't feel guilty about being attracted to a seemingly brighter alternative. But the guilt lingers - because it's suppose to - because I've been told that I'm bad if it doesn't.

Maybe all that I've learned was just one big brainwash. Maybe that's how it's suppose to be - we learn everything in our first few years of life and spend the rest of our time here unlearning it all.