THIS SECTION EXPLAINS THE LIFE I'VE LIVED AND EXPLAINS IN MY BEST LANGUAGE HOW ROSE HAS AFFECTED MY LIFE AND HOW IT HAS CHANGED MY VIEWS OF THE WORLD. I'D LIKE TO MAKE A FEW THINGS CLEAR FIRST BEFORE I BEGIN:

1. My beliefs are not a religion. I am not trying to recruit or preach my beliefs. The power of music and the power of words are to be found inside your own soul and inside your own heart. And one day, when your lost, you will find a song that means a lot to you. A song that makes you emotional, makes you cry, one that you listen to while depressed. I may have taken this to the extreme, you may take it as far as you can.
2. My soul purpose for sharing my thoughts and my beliefs are for the common interest of the people and to show how music and words can change the life of a person. They're not just chords, and they're not just words. When put together and understood by me, I have reached the enlightenment I need to keep living.
3. Although names are not given, references are put to people in my life. My family, my friends, my deep crush, have all been pointed out. I have no intention to point to them specifically, they are just part of the story. I do not want to harm the innocent, so no information other than their title of "ex-best friend" or "girl" are given.
4. My beliefs do not neccessarily reflect the beliefs of the band A Perfect Circle nor the beliefs of its members (namely Billy Howerdel and Maynard James Keenan for writing the lyrics). They are my own personal beliefs which have been found through personal experience.

OK, ENOUGH WITH THE DISCLAIMER B.S., THIS IS VERY LONG BUT I'D MUCH APPRECIATE IT IF YOU HAVE THE TIME TO READ IT ALL... HERE'S WHAT I HAVE TO SAY:

     My whole life I've never felt as if someone has found the true me. No one has found the real Jon Ross, the real man behind the smiling happy-looking mask. This kept me discouraged, and it all stemmed from my birth.
     After being born two months premature, I find myself today still facing the problems of my weak underdeveloped muscles due to my early forthcoming. This was the source of many of my problems to come. My fear, my shyness, and my loneliness started in my younger years when sports was all that mattered. I never knew why I had been so hated by many, and so unknown to most. I never knew why I was always the invisible one, the one who seems to be something else than I really am. And I never was able to appreciate it until my enlightenment. Still not having many friends as of today, I found myself getting backstabbed by many former friends, which has caused deep pain for me throughout my life. In addition, with the lack of love in my life, I have come to conclusions before my enlightenment that my life is worth nothing. This is how I began to feel in late February of 2001. Many of my friends ditched me for my ex-best friend. He backstabbed me a while back for non-understandable reasons. I will not state those reasons that I have found out. That started a depression that became intensely deep and almost cost myself my life.
     Becoming in and out of depression as my lonely days went along, I felt as if my friends were fading away. So, I did all that I could to keep them with me, and I interfered way too much with the problem, and got over paranoid that my friends would ditch me forever. With this paranoia came annoyance, as many of my friends put it. I was more obnoxious and over-cautious that I would lose them all to my ex-best friend. This made matters much worse. Being called immature and annoying, I was left alone for quite some time. During this depression, I decided to talk to a girl. A girl that I didn't know quite well, but I wanted to get to know better. I was also, in a way, desparate for help. As I began talking to her about my extreme sadness and my pain, I saw that she had sympathy for me. Not the bad kind of sympathy, but the good kind. The kind that reassures yourself that someone is there. This made me much happier at the time. But as time went on, days that I wasn't so depressed, I would talk to her and she would not seem to care. Of course, I could be wrong, but this paranoia that I've been putting too much on her by coming to her, or that she only wanted to talk to me when she was scared of what I may do, left me in the deepest depression of all. I felt as if I was worthless from this. After talking to her during my depression, I felt as if she was the closest thing to being able to find the real me. I truely believed that when she finally found me after talking to me for quite some time, she would be my perfect match. This is coming at a time when I've never gone out with anyone in my whole life (I still haven't) and I felt as if no one could ever love me or find me. After "sitting alone waiting for your response, knowing that your so close, yet so far away" (a line in my poem, "So Close, Yet So Far Away") I felt so worthless. Like I was just another meaningless person to this girl. She is a very nice person and she didn't intend to hurt me, but she did hurt me more than anyone else has ever hurt me in my entire life. Coming to this realization that I am transparent, that anyone can just walk right through me and stomp on my heart, it took me into the deepest depression of my entire life.
     At about this time, I began listening to Rose by A Perfect Circle during my depression. Originally listening to such depressing songs as Hurt by Nine Inch Nails or Adam's Song by Blink 182, Rose had some different lyrics that I didn't directly understand. Although I did not know the words, the musical composition of the song is very easy to listen to while being depressed, and especially with the end of the song's incredible violins, it seemed to joust out tears from my eyes every time it came, and I didn't even know why. It was as if fate was showing me a sign of how I should be, or what I should do. In extremely depressed days, which signified almost all of Late April and Early May, I'd crawl into bed, listen to Rose for hours, cry myself to sleep, and try to comprehend the lyrics, while trying to comprehend my life. After some extreme things happened such as a trip I took with that girl to Cleveland with my acting group, and while we visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a day, I almost committed suicide from my depression because I felt unheard of and alone. Ever since that day, I fell asleep crying, dying with every tear that left my body, while listening to Rose. It was only about three to four weeks from then when I finally figured out the true meaning to Rose. It came to me with a girl. A girl I could not see nor touch, that made me realize that I could be found. And as I finally understood Rose's incredible lyrics, I felt as if every time I listened to the song and every time those beautiful violins came on at the end of the song, a piece of me was healed, and a piece of my life was found. I was finding out who I truely was as well, and what I comprehended is quite facinating.
     I've comprehended from the song, basically, one large truth: Bad things happen, friendships turn ugly, and love is lost and never found. But you cannot let these things get you down. You cannot "lay down, play dead, play this kneel down, gunshy martyr, pitiful" as I have for the past three months. One must rise above all of these horrifying things, and know that if you are strong and if you let life flow, in time, and in a very short time all will come back. One cannot over interfere and become paranoid as I have with my friends. Take the first line of Rose, for example. The line is a complete metaphor for my findings: "Don't disturb the beast, the tempermental goat, the snail, while he's feeding on the rose, stay frozen, compromise what I will, I am". To me, in this stanza, the beast, the tempermental goat, and the snail represent things that make your life miserable and make you sad. And the Rose are things that make you happy and thing that are beautiful. The beast at many points in your life may feed on the rose, take away what's happy and bring pain. But the beast gets full quickly. The rose will grow back in time if you let nature spin its own course. But, if you interfere with the beast, if you go ahead and try to attack it, the beast will overcome you. In my example with love, if I let these times when I'd wait for her response not get to me, if I just realized that she has more important things to do, and I shouldn't be letting this stuff get me down, I wouldn't have been suicidal. I realized with this, that life is more than being a gunshy, martyr, pitiful. I have to rise above these things that kill me inside, and keep myself living. I'm sure this doesn't sound to you like something so amazing that it would change my life, but to a young man that has wanted to die for the past three months has realized that his life is worth something much more than lying down and playing all of these people's doe. When Maynard cries "so no longer, will i lay down, play dead, play your doe" this means that he will no longer die because of all of these things. He will no longer take his life for granted, and he will no longer be a slave to all of these things. After realizing this, I made a quick recovery from my depression and I haven't been depressed since. Because any time that I've felt that something bad has happened, I listen to Rose and I realize that life will turn around, that it will flow back to the way it should be in time, and the worst thing I could do is die over it. I'm not saying that you shouldn't stand up for yourself, but worrying about it too much and becoming paranoid over it, causes more pain and suffering than ever before.
     As you listen to Rose, and how Maynard and Billy put everything, it does seem like a realization. "I am, I will, so no longer, will I lay down, play dead, play this kneel down, gunshy, martyr, pitiful. I Rose, I roared, I will, I am"... This sounds like he's explaining his finding, as I have found just a month ago. And I've never been more satisfied with myself. I find it silly to want to kill yourself, but I still help out others in depression because I know this horrible agonizing pain, of not knowing your own true self.

I BELIEVE THAT ANYONE CAN REACH TRUE ENLIGHTENMENT IF THEY LOOK WITHIN THEMSELVES AND FIND WHAT THEY TRUELY ARE. I'VE REACHED IT THROUGH THE POWER OF ROSE AND ITS WAY INTO MY LIFE. YOU CAN FIND IT ANY WAY YOU WANT. MY BELIEFS ARE JUST AS SIMPLE AS THAT, AND YOU CAN BE HAPPY AND WITHOUT DEPRESSION FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING ABOUT MY LIFE NOW, AND EVERYTHING ABOUT THE WORLD AROUND ME. BUT IT'S MY OWN BELIEFS, AND THEY ONLY NEED TO BE TRUE TO ME.

If you have any comments or questions on this piece or my beliefs, any at ALL, I'd be glad to answer it. Please e-mail me at Jondude11@aol.com or leave a post at the Message Board. I'd love to hear your thoughts and your feelings.