Posts tagged with "change"

Amplitude

Sometimes it feels as if I’ve changed in an infi­nite num­ber of direc­tions. Every change comes as a result of some unsat­is­fac­to­ry char­ac­ter­is­tic of my for­mer self. The result, hope­ful­ly a series of what I con­sid­er improve­ments, becomes the oppo­site of traits I once pos­sessed.

Confidence is an exam­ple. It’s only now, after more than eight years of con­scious work, that I’ve gained some form of con­fi­dence, of self-respect. And I appre­ci­ate it now, not only in myself but in oth­er peo­ple as well. It was my own dif­fi­dence that drove me to become an assertive per­son. This isn’t to say that it’s some­thing I’ve stopped work­ing on. I’m not quite sat­is­fied yet, because I’m still learn­ing to pre­vent over­con­fi­dence, but oth­er than that I think I’ve come quite far.

The same goes for quite a few oth­er things. Having no friends has made me a bet­ter one. Being alone has made me a patient lover. Being shy has made me more out­go­ing. Having gone through emo­tion­al ups and downs has made me more sta­ble.

Being weak has made me stronger.

Quartz

When peo­ple ask me what my favourite nov­el is, I tell them, “A Hero of Our Time”, and that’s been true for more than eight years now. It’s a prime exam­ple of Russian Romantic Literature, and I can appre­ci­ate that. It’s bril­liant, not only in it’s lyri­cal style but also for the com­plex­i­ty of the mind­set cap­tured by the pro­tag­o­nist, which makes it such a plea­sure to read through. It’s intel­li­gent, it’s inter­est­ing, it’s cre­ative, yet none of these things make it my favourite. It’s not even the book I’ve enjoyed read­ing the most.

It’s sim­ply been the most influ­en­tial.

Lermontov’s nov­el once offered me guid­ance (albeit blind­ly) when I need­ed it the most. His words have shaped me more than any­thing else I can think of, even though I’ve cast off most of my for­mer self relat­ed to this. I still see his work as being an inte­gral part of my devel­op­ment, in mak­ing me who I am at every chang­ing moment, and that is why I hold so much impor­tance in it.

All of it was a mat­ter of tim­ing. Otherwise, I’d prob­a­bly think that it was just anoth­er bor­ing book I was forced to read in grade 10 English.

The same goes with my rela­tion­ships, some­thing I would nev­er have thought was relat­ed to tim­ing. It’s fun­ny to think that my most sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ship was also my short­est by far, with a per­son who is most like­ly to think noth­ing of it at all. And every­thing that made it impor­tant to me was a com­bi­na­tion of a very spe­cif­ic mind­set I had at the time and the fact that this per­son was such a change from my pre­vi­ous girl­friend.

The same goes with my favourite movie and my favourite band. I’ve become a per­son who holds more sig­nif­i­cance in the things that change me than the things that please me.

And change is a prod­uct of time.

I Mentally Outgrow My Clothes

Found a great stark red dress shirt at Banana Republic yes­ter­day that I want­ed to pur­chase right then and there, but unfor­tu­nate­ly I don’t have any mon­ey any­more. I’m flat out broke, going into debt for the first time in my life, unless I decide to take up a tem­po­rary job in January instead of going back to school. The first thing I’m going to buy when I get a job is new clothes. Running across that shirt gave me a great idea though; I’m going to try intro­duc­ing more reds into my wardrobe. I cur­rent­ly only have a maroon golf shirt, and most of my clothes don’t seem to match my cur­rent moods/outlook. The pre­vi­ous year has been very neu­tral kha­ki and navy blue, while the year before that was most­ly blacks and greys.

The only real down­side to con­stant men­tal change is that it seems like I’m out­grow­ing my wardrobe every year.

The NEMLC

When I went home for Christmas three years ago, I was a very con­fused per­son. I had no idea what I was look­ing for, what I was doing. When I came back, I felt as if I had gone through some sort of mid-life cri­sis. I still did­n’t know what I want­ed, but for some rea­son I was­n’t con­fused any­more. Did I end up resolv­ing any­thing? To this day I don’t know.

What I do know, how­ev­er, is that I haven’t stopped chang­ing. Even if I did come to some con­clu­sion back then, it would have no rel­e­vance today. So many things are chang­ing, not the world around me, but me myself.

I see this as a good thing. It lets me know that I’m still learn­ing, that I’m still liv­ing to the high­est degree. I have dif­fi­cul­ty “defin­ing” myself, dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing my own (long term) actions some­times. As I’ve known since high school, it usu­al­ly takes me at least half a year to under­stand the choic­es I make.

Sometimes it feels like a con­stant mid-life cri­sis when I keep ques­tion­ing the deci­sions I make and the rela­tion­ships I have with oth­ers. I ques­tion things not with doubt, but with curios­i­ty.

And this has filled my life with uncer­tain­ty.

Mind Muffler

It always inter­ests me to learn how some peo­ple are changed so sud­den­ly in their lives. An inci­dent, whether it’s retire­ment, grad­u­a­tion, death, or any­thing of such a mag­ni­tude, cause some to have new rev­e­la­tions or epipha­nies. The fact that it takes some­thing as dras­tic as these sit­u­a­tions to affect some peo­ple seems seems a lit­tle odd to me.

Do these peo­ple not think at all in their dai­ly lives? Do they go through one day to the next with­out look­ing at the big pic­ture, with­out see­ing some sort of per­spec­tive?

I think I’m gen­er­al­ly unaf­fect­ed by such extreme events because of the fact that I try to find mean­ing in almost every­thing I expe­ri­ence (risk­ing pre­ten­sion). It ends up being that some­thing like the loss of a favorite shirt can affect me as much as fail­ing an entire uni­ver­si­ty course. I feel as if I learn enough about myself from both events. As a result of this, I some­times change on a day to day basis, although it’s gen­er­al­ly on a minis­cule lev­el and takes a while before it all builds up into any­thing notice­able.

Of course, this also means that very lit­tle ends up sur­pris­ing me. I’m rarely shocked by any­thing, and often feel like my emo­tions have been lev­eled off, per­haps numb or sim­ply accus­tomed to change. I don’t get dras­ti­cal­ly affect­ed any­more, and in turn, can think and act clear­ly accord­ing to my set of log­ic. The only thing that ends up over­com­ing my cere­bral­i­ty is hate.

And love.