May 3, 2010

Famous Blue Raincoat (ukulele cover)

10

Almost three months ago, I walked into a music store and bought a ukulele. I didn’t even know the frets on the ukulele (or gui­tar, for that mat­ter) were raised; I thought they were just lines painted on the neck used as guide­lines for fin­ger posi­tions. Ever since, it’s filled a void in me. A void I didn’t even know existed until I found myself feel­ing empty when I didn’t get a chance to play.

Famous Blue Raincoat is one of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs. I wish I could write let­ters like this.

I haven’t quite fig­ured out what kind of style or genre I want to apply to the ukulele, but I think my singing abil­ity (or lack thereof) will limit me to the soft Sam Beam folk sound unless I started tak­ing singing lessons. Borrowed in my inter­pre­ta­tion is a vari­a­tion of the pick­ing pat­tern Cohen uses in a lot of his ear­lier songs, such as Hey That’s No Way To Say Goodbye, adapted for the soprano ukulele.

While my brain picks out the mis­takes and details I need to work on when I see myself play, I try to keep in mind the words of my Tai Chi teacher, “We’re never as bad as we fear nor as good as we would like”. I don’t think I’ll ever be sat­is­fied with my musi­cal abil­ity unless I could com­mit a lot more time to it. Unfortunately, that would mean less time for another hobby, so I have to accept that this will prob­a­bly be close to the limit of my abil­ity. Hopefully, I’ll be able to clean things up in another few years. Patience will come from learn­ing to be sat­is­fied from the act of play­ing itself, and not the mas­tery of it. For now, this’ll serve as record of my progress.

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April 21, 2010

Protected: The self coming true

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March 7, 2010

Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by

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While I’ve always been very appre­cia­tive of what we did have, some­times I won­der about what we never had the chance to do.

Sure, I bared my soul. I sur­ren­dered. I gave her the songs I don’t share with just any­one. I told her how pro­foundly impor­tant, won­der­ful, and remark­able she was to me. I let her in like no one else before.

But there were parts of myself I never gave up.

It wasn’t because we hadn’t reached that level of trust. It was a way for me to pro­tect myself. To feel as though she didn’t have all of me, so I wouldn’t be left as open and vul­ner­a­ble when the end finally came.

I regret it now. Not because I think it would have changed any­thing1, but because I won­der what it would have been like for some­one to know me com­pletely. To feel vul­ner­a­ble and safe, all at once. Even know­ing I’d be heart­bro­ken even­tu­ally, it would have been worth it to share what I’ve always saved.

I’ve been keep­ing all my girl­friends at arms length to pro­tect myself. I can’t go through life hold­ing things back any­more, con­stantly wor­ried someone’s going to hurt me. That’s always a risk, no mat­ter how sta­ble a rela­tion­ship is.

I have to put myself out there. I have to make the first step, even if it means feel­ing uncom­fort­able, because the more you share, the more com­fort­able you become, the more you share, and so on.

I can only go for­ward now, as a wiser per­son, a stronger soul, a bet­ter lover.

I sup­pose I’m feel­ing nos­tal­gic, or miss­ing her, as is my wont when the sea­sons change.

  1. Cause it wouldn’t have. [↑]
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February 21, 2010

My Therapist is a Rockstar

2

As I was writ­ing notes for ther­apy tomor­row1, I was doing some research on life­traps and came across a short para­graph that cleared up every­thing for me to the point where I didn’t feel like I needed to keep my appoint­ment. It was the answer I didn’t even know I was look­ing for.

Now the feel­ing of empti­ness that’s fol­lowed me for so long is gone, and every­thing makes sense. I feel sta­ble again, though there’s still a hint of doubt because I’ve been here before but it’s never been any­thing permanent.

I’m still going tomor­row so I can solid­ify my new-found under­stand­ing. I don’t think it’s going to be a reg­u­lar thing again, I just need the bit of guid­ance he gives me that lets me fix myself. I can’t explain how good it felt to make the appoint­ment, know­ing I had some­one with a pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tion and years of expe­ri­ence in this to give me an objec­tive view. My friends are always there to sup­port me, but they don’t make sense of the world for me the way my ther­a­pist does.

  1. This is the first time I’ll be bring­ing notes, only because I’m try­ing to cover such a com­plex topic that I want to be sure I’m not miss­ing any­thing. [↑]
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June 9, 2009

Surrounding Myself With Great People

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It’s hard for me to hang out with peo­ple with same bad habits as I have (or have had).

Habits like:

  • over­re­act­ing
  • wor­ry­ing
  • ana­lyz­ing or think­ing too much
  • being judg­men­tal
  • get­ting emo­tion­ally involved in arguments/discussions
  • putting value in mate­r­ial things
  • being impa­tient
  • get­ting too competitive

I always try to improve and refuse to accept these things in myself, so it’s hard for me to accept them in oth­ers. I’m also afraid that spend­ing too much time with them would make me com­pla­cent, as I’d start to believe that these things are accept­able because other peo­ple are okay with it.

That’s why I sur­round myself with peo­ple who are bet­ter than me.

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May 25, 2008

Psychoanalytic Reflections 05

5

Sometimes I come out of a ses­sion feel­ing great. Sometimes I come out feel­ing like a mon­ster, like some hor­ri­ble, fucked-up person.

During my first ses­sion, my ther­a­pist noted that this was a mutual process. It wasn’t as if he was going to sur­gi­cally remove an issue with me, it would take the both of us work­ing together, with a pro­gres­sive effort from me.

That’s what I’m doing now. I’m deter­mined to fix myself.

Dependence

  • I have a gen­eral feel­ing of incom­pe­tence, which leads to a lack of trust in my own judg­ments. As a result, I have a very dif­fi­cult time mak­ing deci­sions because I’m par­a­lyzed by the fact that I may make the wrong one.

    • I can trace this back from my child­hood to my early twen­ties when my par­ents were over­bear­ing and would never let me make any of my own deci­sions. In fact, they would make most of my deci­sions for me, includ­ing sig­nif­i­cant ones, like my pro­gram of study in university.
  • The result is that I tend to ask peo­ple for advice on every­thing, although I’m depen­dent on Pat the most. This is because Pat is so smart and expe­ri­enced, and has never, ever let me down. What I’ve come to real­ize, how­ever, is that Pat is so smart because he’s already made his mistakes.
  • This was linked to my anx­i­ety, where I felt like I couldn’t han­dle any­thing on my own.
  • I’ve been try­ing to fix this is to keep in mind that it’s not the end of the world if I make a mis­take, and that some­times, mak­ing mis­takes is the only way to learn.

Unrelenting Standards revisited

  • I real­ized that I tend to have unre­lent­ing stan­dards when it comes to life in gen­eral, but espe­cially in my writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, or art because I feel like this is the only way I will ever dis­tin­guish myself and be worth some­thing. I feel like if I’m not the best, then I’m worth­less. As a result, it’s dif­fi­cult for me to enjoy my life, even some­thing as sim­ple as sit­ting down and watch­ing a movie.
    • The roots of this are more dif­fi­cult to trace than I ini­tially thought. While my par­ents were a tremen­dous influ­ence in terms of mak­ing me feel like their love was con­di­tional, I believe a large part of this life­trap has to do with me mak­ing up for my emo­tional depri­va­tion by fill­ing my deeper empti­ness with success.
  • Even when I do some­thing that I know I should be proud of and sat­is­fied, I feel like there’s always another thing to do, another level to reach. While this fuels my self-improvement and has got­ten me to where I am now, I’ve come to real­ize that there’s an imbal­ance between the effort and the pay­off. I work too hard for too lit­tle enjoyment.
  • I may real­ize this, but it’s a hard habit to break. I have a feel­ing that I’ll need to fix my emo­tional depri­va­tion at the same time to do so.
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April 3, 2008

Tai Chi Progress

4

My under­stand­ing of Tai Chi seems to come in the form of a sine wave: the more I learn, the more I real­ize I don’t know, and as I adjust for more and more details, other details get lost.

For the last few months, I felt like I was get­ting nowhere. The con­cepts made sense in my brain, but not in my body. My teacher has said that Tai Chi is already too intel­lec­tu­al­ized, and as a per­son who’s never been very phys­i­cally co-ordinated and tries to com­pen­sate in SHEER MENTAL POWA!, this holds true espe­cially for me. Until I’ve mas­tered telekine­sis, how­ever, I’ll be reliant on more tra­di­tional means of movement.

In the last cou­ple weeks I feel like I’ve reached another level of under­stand­ing, as rudi­men­tary as it may be.

One thing that helped a lot is when a senior stu­dent showed me what ward-off (peng) felt like. As he stood with struc­ture in his body, I tried to push him1, but ended up push­ing myself off him and falling over. In order to move him, I was forced to use the proper tech­nique (since he’s con­sid­er­ably big­ger than me), and expand with my entire body — legs, waist, arms, chest, lungs — instead of sim­ply try­ing to move through him.

Then we reversed roles and he pushed me until I could chan­nel his energy through my feet. It was the first time I ever felt grounded, instead of sim­ply under­stand­ing the idea. I still don’t really under­stand it, inso­faras I couldn’t explain it to some­one else.

Adapting this all to the form is some­thing else. I try to focus on one thing at time2 but it falls apart in other places. At this point, I’m just try­ing to get all the gross mechan­ics to be nat­ural with­out hav­ing to think about it, hop­ing that I’ll even­tu­ally be able to fine tune every­thing else.

  1. It reminded me of the feel­ing of squeez­ing a rub­ber stop­per, some­thing with give but not much, that becomes expo­nen­tially dif­fi­cult to com­press. [↑]
  2. Such as stay­ing at one level with­out being rigid (con­sid­ered “breath­ing”), relax­ing my lower back, think­ing of my body being anchored through my legs, and keep­ing struc­ture and intent in my palms. [↑]
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December 18, 2007

Defining Myself Through Others

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I’ve come to real­ize that as much as I’ve grown and gained, I still seek approval from oth­ers, albeit to a much smaller extent than before. This approval is how I define my self worth.

It’s an old, bad habit.

I can trace this habit back to my par­ents. I would always do things to try to win their approval, only to be met with a com­ment about not being good enough, or unsup­port­ive silence. Their con­stant crit­i­cism led to low self-esteem and feel­ings of inad­e­quacy. Yet another exam­ple of how they mind­fucked me.

At this point, it’s just a knee-jerk reac­tion. Remnants of my old, inse­cure self creep­ing up. I know that one day, I’ll be able to break the habit completely.

Until then, I have to remind myself that it doesn’t mat­ter what any­one thinks of you.

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November 25, 2007

Becoming Pat

5

At the core of our beings, Pat and I are the same person.

What sep­a­rates us is our emo­tion, or lack thereof. Pat’s the log­i­cal one, I’m the emo­tional one. I’ve always looked up to him — his strength, his morals, his per­son­al­ity — with­out really under­stand­ing why.

It’s only in the last year that I’ve come to real­ize Pat is a Taoist. This comes with the real­iza­tion that I’m a Taoist myself, and explains why I try to be more like him.

The inter­est­ing part is that he doesn’t even know that he’s a Taoist — sort of like Winnie the Pooh — which is exactly what makes him a true Taoist.

One of Chuang Tzŭ’s para­bles illus­trates this point. In an abbre­vi­ated ver­sion, Knowledge seeks a con­scious reflec­tion to know the Tao, and asked Silent Do Nothing and Reckless Blurter, before ask­ing The Yellow Emperor (ahhh, the Romantic per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of Chinese fables):

Knowledge said to The Yellow Emperor, “I asked Silent Do Nothing and he kept quiet. Not only didn’t he answer me, but he didn’t even know how to answer. I asked Reckless Blurter, and though he wanted to tell me, he didn’t, and even for­got my ques­tions. Now I’ve asked you, and you know all about it. Why do you say that you’re far from it?”.

The Yellow Emperor said, “Silent Do Nothing was truly right, because he didn’t know any­thing. Reckless Blurter was nearly right, because he’d for­got­ten it. You and I are far from right, because we know far too much”.

The same is true for Tai Chi1, or any mar­tial art for that mat­ter. Dissect it too much, and you lose the mean­ing. Think about it too much, and you don’t react. As Michael Babin wrote in his arti­cle on self-defense train­ing:

It is sad but true that real skill comes from seem­ingly end­less drilling of the basics and then learn­ing how to transcend/forget most of what you have so patiently learned.

In other words, learn­ing struc­ture is essen­tial to learn­ing to react to a com­plete lack of struc­ture (i.e. a real fight); but if you focus on struc­ture for too long it becomes counter-productive to “being with­out struc­ture” in mar­tial terms. One of the many annoy­ing para­doxes in the inter­nal arts.

One of the many para­doxes in the Taoist phi­los­o­phy as well. As much as I try to study it, learn it, and apply it, I find myself think­ing about it too much. As a result, I occa­sion­ally stray from being cen­tered, and lose my balance.

It’s the con­scious reflec­tion which Knowledge is seek­ing that pre­emp­tively dooms his search. This is my prob­lem as well. I buy Taoist books with a thirst for knowl­edge, but they’re all telling me the same thing now. Not that the books haven’t helped at all, but I feel like I’ve reached a limit. Perhaps even the sim­ple act of writ­ing about this is counter-productive.

I have the under­stand­ing, but I can’t apply it with­out think­ing about it first, and it’s the attempt to apply it that ruins the point. I’ve yet to reach a stage of pure reac­tion and spon­tane­ity, like Pat.

But I’m get­ting there.

  1. Yet another exam­ple of how Tai Chi is the phys­i­cal expres­sion of the phi­los­o­phy. Or per­haps this could be reverse-generalized, and said that the Taoist phi­los­o­phy is reflected in every­thing, such as mar­tial arts. [↑]
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September 23, 2005

Oh, The Humanity

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Although not in any nar­ra­tive Herbert Morrison sense.

I had a dif­fer­ent entry half-written, but the dark­ness was debil­i­tat­ing. All I wanted was a sec­ond sun; it felt like a case of SAD because the night was mak­ing me both anx­ious and uneasy. It’s noth­ing close to a panic attack, but it was bad enough that I felt com­pelled to called Pat to help talk me out of it. He’s one of the only peo­ple I can count on 24/7, and just talk­ing to him for an hour helps me fig­ure out more about the world than three months of writ­ing here. I know my eyes’ll feel like lead weights tomor­row for stay­ing up this late, but I need to get this entry down before I lose it. Hopefully, know­ing that it’s Friday will be enough to keep me alive through the day.

Self-improvement has dri­ven me for most of my life, a never-ending goal that’s guided me through my actions and beliefs. This is usu­ally based on com­par­i­son, since improve­ment is always rel­a­tive. Those who can accom­plish what I have dif­fi­culty doing always have my respect, and give me some­thing to work towards.

Before I com­plain about get­ting six hours of sleep the pre­vi­ous night, I think of Navy SEALs who get four hours total dur­ing Hell Week, a five day under­wa­ter train­ing exer­cise dur­ing the first phase of the BUD/S. That’s when I real­ize that I should be able to sur­vive an extra hour of work with­out much dif­fi­culty. When I feel like throw­ing my hands in the air after work­ing on an ad for four hours, blinded by the depth with which I’ve star­ing at the mate­r­ial, I think of my boss who can work through count­less inter­rup­tions and dis­trac­tions. That’s when I real­ize that I should keep at my work, because per­se­ver­ance will almost always yield results.

If I can sur­vive it, any­thing can make me stronger.

But as I dis­cov­ered tonight, every­one has their weak­nesses. Even Pat. He’s always seemed as solid as a rock, com­pletely unfal­ter­ing, but he admit­ted that there are also moments of weak­ness, how­ever brief. Times when he can’t get any work done because some­thing is both­er­ing him that he can’t let go. Times when he just doesn’t feel like going out or social­iz­ing. To find this out about Pat, was to dis­cover that the most cheer­ful, friendly, con­fi­dent, and men­tally strong per­son I know has his off days. Even the hard­est work­ing, most pro­duc­tive per­son I know occa­sion­ally falls vic­tim to a case of the Mondays or the 9–5 grind. There must be some sem­blance of bal­ance, in how much to push one­self, and how much to accept.

To strive for per­fec­tion is fine, but to lose sleep over imper­fec­tion is foolish.

Being a dom­i­nant, respon­si­ble for another per­son, means that one should be solid as often as pos­si­ble, but even this extreme case should allow for some lee­way. This doesn’t mean that I won’t try as hard in my attempt at dom­i­nance, but know­ing this cer­tainly makes the approach, and even self-improvement in gen­eral, much easier.

Some may say that it’s a fal­lacy to com­pare one­self to other peo­ple. After all, every­one has dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties and tol­er­ance lev­els, and it’s no fault to born bet­ter at some things than others.

But even then, everybody’s human.

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June 26, 2005

Trinary Maturity: The Girlfriend (or The Lifestyle)

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It’s easy for some­one to asso­ciate an expe­ri­ence with the last mem­ory involved. I’m not with­out guilt in this issue myself. I’ll admit that the rough patches near the end of my rela­tion­ship with Loo have come to define the expe­ri­ence a lit­tle unfairly. Sometimes I have to remind myself of how much it’s helped and changed me.

In real­ity, I learned more from my time with Louise than from any pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship. This was a per­son who inspired (and pushed) me to be bet­ter, but it wasn’t only her, it was the lifestyle as well.

I try not to have too much respon­si­bil­ity at this stage in my life, so when I do have it I take it seri­ously. Being a dom­i­nant means that respon­si­bil­ity is assumed over another per­son, another being, another liv­ing soul. To be given this respon­si­bil­ity, as a bond of supine trust, pro­vided me a sense of con­fi­dence I had never felt before.

And with this trust came a reju­ve­nated zeal for self-improvement. She was strong her­self, so I had to be stronger. If Louise’s con­tri­bu­tion was to push, my con­tri­bu­tion was to grow. It helped me fig­ure out what I want in the next few stages of my life. I stopped slouch­ing. I started speak­ing with more author­ity. I started walk­ing into restau­rants first, some­thing I could never do before, for rea­sons I could never explain. I demanded more out of life.

In the end, it didn’t work out. The dynamic wasn’t right. Unfortunately, I never felt like I was able to com­pletely han­dle every­thing until it was actu­ally over. Funny how life works out like that. What I’ve lost is only rel­e­vant now.

But what I’ve gained is more important.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion
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June 19, 2005

Trinary Maturity: The Job

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The first cat­a­lyst involved in my “trans­for­ma­tion” was my job. It could be said that the only rea­son this job was so sig­nif­i­cant is because I had never had such a job before. Perhaps things would be dif­fer­ent if I started my cur­rent career at a dif­fer­ent time, although the same could be said about the other two factors.

I was hired to work closely with one of two own­ers, a man with the drive, mind, wit, and per­son­al­ity to run one of the top com­pa­nies in the indus­try. I see myself as a tool, an exten­sion of his per­son, respon­si­ble for things that he doesn’t have time to do. By free­ing his time, the com­pany is able to grow faster, because his resources can then be put to bet­ter use.

My role is as a sort of sub­mis­sive. This works out well, because in (most of) the rest of my life I’m dom­i­nant. Like me, many sub­mis­sives at work are also dom­i­nants at home, and vice-versa. People want change from the every­day life of their career, and in fact, my sub­mis­sion in this role is what makes me a bet­ter dom­i­nant in oth­ers (more on this extremely sig­nif­i­cant point in the forth­com­ing part of this series).

I don’t have the per­son­al­ity to run a busi­ness, the way my boss doesn’t have the per­son­al­ity to work for some­one else. Our roles are clearly defined, and I’m much more pro­duc­tive as a sub­mis­sive in this sit­u­a­tion. It’s this pro­duc­tive­ness that has given me so much con­fi­dence. I know how good a worker I am, how inte­gral my role is in the com­pany, and how dif­fi­cult I would be to replace.

Relational roles aside, how­ever, there are sev­eral other fac­tors of my job that con­tributed to what I con­sider explo­sive growth. The respon­si­bil­ity I have was a big thing. As the only IT per­son there, I have to make sure that all our hard­ware and soft­ware is suf­fi­cient for what we’re doing. When the nature of the busi­ness changes, the upper ech­e­lon comes to me for a solu­tion, whether it’s upcom­ing VOIP imple­men­ta­tion to save on long dis­tance, wire­less track­ing of our pick-ups and deliv­er­ies, or some­thing as sim­ple as a server upgrade to han­dle the mar­ket growth.

Even things like mak­ing phone calls have changed me. I was never com­fort­able on the phone. Only a year ago, order­ing pizza was a dif­fi­cult thing to do, and Trolley can attest to this after get­ting him to call for me sev­eral times. The only expla­na­tion I could come up with for this behav­iour is that there are peo­ple on the other end, but I still can’t really make sense of this aside from poor self-confidence. All I knew was that my tele­phone shy­ness was a prob­lem. I got over it by forc­ing myself to make phone calls at work. After all, one does not stop a project at a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion when one’s boss wants some­thing done. I still have my off-days, of course, when I avoid mak­ing calls alto­gether, but those are few and far between.

Not only has my job sparked a change in me, it’s paved a way for other growth as well. Even finan­cially speak­ing, I now have the free­dom to pur­sue my other goals and hobbies.

Every day I work, I’m thankful.

The Trinary Maturity Series

  1. Introduction
  2. The Job
  3. The Girlfriend
  4. The House
  5. (In)Conclusion
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May 15, 2005

Cornus Canadensis

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Many things to say, but this is the most rel­e­vant right now. This also hap­pens to touch on almost every aspect of my life, and I find myself con­sid­er­ing things from a gigan­tic range of angles. Unfortunately, I can only briefly touch on each of them, in an effort to stave digression.

The first and most impor­tant goal I’ve ever had was to gain a healthy amount of con­fi­dence by the time I was middle-age. This was so that I could enjoy at least half of my life as a strong indi­vid­ual. I set this goal because I real­ized that I had an unhealthy amount of self-doubt, which con­tributed to a depress­ing life and lifestyle, as well as unre­al­ized potential.

This meant fight­ing off the inse­cu­ri­ties that were bred into me, which amounted to most of my child­hood. It hasn’t been easy in the last cou­ple of years, but it’s worked. Every six months, I’d real­ize how much I grew. This time, I real­ize that I’m there.

I finally feel like I’m in con­trol of my life. I speak to peo­ple dif­fer­ently. I think dif­fer­ently. Instead of avoid­ing con­flict, I can meet it head on. For me, this was prob­a­bly the most dif­fi­cult thing to do ever imag­ine doing. I would plan my life around such an avoid­ance, from my friends to my rela­tion­ships. I had a con­flict pho­bia, an illog­i­cal fear of a spe­cific sit­u­a­tion, but I fought against it and won. In psy­chol­ogy, peo­ple over­come their pho­bias by remain­ing relaxed in the face of their fears (because one can­not men­tally be relaxed and scared at the same time). I had the oppor­tu­nity to do this, by plac­ing myself in uncom­fort­able sit­u­a­tions over the last four months, and approach­ing them cere­brally at the same time.

I also have to say that a major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the suc­cess has been going through the D/s lifestyle with Loo. Having a sub­mis­sive as expe­ri­enced as she was, plac­ing her trust in me, gave me a sig­nif­i­cant boost in con­fi­dence. She once pointed out to me while watch­ing Secretary, that Edward Grey’s con­fes­sion to Lee Holloway about pre­vi­ously being shy was a very accu­rate detail. In Loo’s expe­ri­ence, many put in a dom­i­nant posi­tion are able to break out of their shells, and I never under­stood or believed her until now.

So now that I’m here, where do I go? I’ve accom­plished the biggest goal in my life, some­thing I’d planned on work­ing on for the next ten years, and it feels like I’ve lost a major part of my rea­son for liv­ing. I feel like an astro­naut who dreamed of land­ing on the moon as a child, only to accom­plish the goal and real­ize that he had never dreamed of any­thing else.

I sup­pose I still have the rest of my life to decide.

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February 15, 2005

Double Standard: As Hypocrisy

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While John was here, we got into a dis­cus­sion about hypocrisy. Being the com­plex per­son that he is, he admit­ted that he sees no prob­lem with act­ing in a hyp­o­crit­i­cal man­ner. In fact, he tried to con­vince me to feel the same way. “You’re let­ting your morals get in the way of advance­ment”, he would say. I don’t heed any of this advice, of course, because our mind­sets, goals, and rela­tion­ships are founded on two dif­fer­ent sets of val­ues, this being one of them. Having built the first twenty-four years of our lives on this foun­da­tion doesn’t make it dif­fi­cult for us to change them, but makes us indif­fer­ent to change instead. As much as we like to con­sider our­selves dynamic indi­vid­u­als, able to adapt to a sit­u­a­tion in the best man­ner pos­si­ble, this is lim­ited by our desire (or lack thereof) to do so.

In any case, I find it dif­fi­cult to be a hyp­o­crit­i­cal per­son, and in turn, I find hyp­o­crit­i­cal peo­ple dif­fi­cult. The most aggra­vat­ing are those who are hyp­o­crit­i­cal crit­ics. I don’t have a prob­lem with peo­ple point­ing out my flaws. I have them, and I admit it. It’s the first step towards self-improvement. It’s also great for gain­ing per­spec­tive, for learn­ing how dif­fer­ent peo­ple inter­pret things (because I know that many see prob­lems where there are none).

I do, how­ever, have a prob­lem with the peo­ple who freely give crit­i­cism, when they can’t take it them­selves. These are the hyp­o­critial crit­ics; the peo­ple who judge oth­ers past them­selves, when they are the last ones who should be pass­ing judge­ment on any­one. This hypocrisy may stem from some­thing as com­plex as inse­cu­rity, to some­thing as sim­ple as upbring­ing (espe­cially as a result of par­ents who refuse to admit fault to their chil­dren). It becomes espe­cially impor­tant in equal (non-authoratative) rela­tion­ships to rec­og­nize the bar­ri­ers that get put up by such a dou­ble standard.

Funny how an autho­r­ata­tive rela­tion­ship taught me this.

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February 1, 2005

Relevant Renaissance, Part 2

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it’s dif­fi­cult to be upright and per­verse, emo­tional and intel­lec­tual, impen­e­tra­ble and vul­ner­a­ble, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the integrity and value of all of them.

—corus aquilo

This is the first time that a com­ment has been so good, it spawned another entry (although I fail to see how being a well-rounded indi­vid­ual has any­thing to do with per­sonal iden­tity, so I cut that part out).

In P.E. dur­ing high school, I learned that there’s no such thing as the per­fect ath­lete. If some­one builds up their speed, they lose endurance. If some­one works on their strength, they lose flex­i­bil­ity. To be a per­fect ath­lete is impos­si­ble, because there’s a very strict phys­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion involved.

To be well rounded in a much more gen­eral sense, to be a mod­ern day (non-pedagogically rel­e­vant) Renaissance Man, on the other hand, is only lim­ited by the mind. This means that many qual­i­ties do not oppose each other the way phys­i­cal qual­i­ties do. One can be cere­bral, intel­lec­tual, yet emo­tional at the same time. One can be firm and opin­ion­ated about recy­cling, yet open-minded about god and reli­gion, all at once. One can appre­ci­ate fuck­ing hard and fuck­ing gen­tly, because one does not take away from the other.

The key to this is a sep­a­ra­tion of self from bias. One has to be able to appre­ci­ate any­thing from any other point of view. To do this requires an almost purely sub­jec­tive mind­set, tear­ing one­self away of ones own bias. Only then can one improve in any aspect. The hard­est thing, as noted by corus aquilo, is keep­ing the integrity and value of both, because appre­ci­a­tion, not enjoy­ment, is the true mea­sure of being rounded. They may go hand-in-hand, as appre­ci­a­tion often leads to enjoy­ment, but it’s the basis of such that becomes impor­tant. There’s a fine line between those who enjoy a box of Kraft Dinner as much as 20 oz. New York steak, and those who can appre­ci­ate the two. The for­mer is con­sid­ered a per­son with no taste, the lat­ter can be con­sid­ered a cosmopolite.

The Olympic decathlon record holder often holds the title of “the Worlds Greatest Athlete”. It’s the only objec­tive test of all around ath­letic abil­ity, mea­sured in speed, spring, strength, and sta­mina. To be a bet­ter per­son in the gen­eral sense, is to be a rounded in much the same man­ner. The mea­sure is any­thing from con­ver­sa­tional skills, to gen­eros­ity, to golf hand­i­cap, to patience, to aca­d­e­mic achievements.

The only objec­tive test is life.

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