Yearly Archives: 2002

Ignorance, Humility, And The Need To Be Understood

This is such a grand top­ic for me that I don’t believe I will be able to go into suf­fi­cient depth today, but I will try.

Ignorance is some­thing that pains me. When some­one is igno­rant, I can usu­al­ly deal with it. After all, what can one expect of the world? However, when some­one tries to push their igno­rance on me, not only by patron­iz­ing me, but by being so zeal­ous in their beliefs as to not accept any­thing else, then it trou­bles me. Well, first it enrages me, but when that sub­sides, I am trou­bled.

I always ask myself, “How can you be so igno­rant? How can you under­stand noth­ing, and yet be so firm­ly plant­ed in your beliefs? How is it that oth­er­wise, you’re a lik­able per­son?”.

Something that comes into play is my need to be hum­ble. Humility is some­thing that is very impor­tant to me. I believe in only stat­ing my opin­ions when they’re asked of me. That’s prob­a­bly because it’s very rarely that peo­ple accept my opin­ions, and usu­al­ly I’ll see it as wast­ed time when I try to explain some­thing, and some­one will refuse to see it.

My tita­ni­um ring serves as a reminder. Whenever I feel the urge to speak out, I’ll sub­con­scious­ly adjust it on my fin­ger, and remem­ber that speak­ing out is not a good thing. It’s a very sim­ple ring, with­out any designs or pat­terns, except for a pale gold band in the mid­dle. It cost me a cur­rent months salary, due to the dif­fi­cul­ty in forg­ing tita­ni­um in an oxy­gen free envi­ron­ment, but seems as sim­ple as a mod­est band. A sym­bol in itself.

When some­one just aston­ish­es me with their stu­pid­i­ty, the need to speak can be very over­whelm­ing. I find that I can con­trol it now though, that my patience has increased. It would be great if peo­ple could under­stand me. There are only a few peo­ple who tru­ly do. It would make my urge to speak sub­side. I believe this urge stems from a cog­ni­tive need to be under­stood.

Instead, I have to deal with igno­rance, peo­ple not accept­ing any­thing past their expe­ri­ences or past their own fal­li­bil­i­ty. It’s some­thing that once cost me a sta­ble rela­tion­ship.

But it was worth it.

Being Troubled Troubles Me

I’m very tired. For some rea­son, I’ve been sleep­ing pret­ty well though. I guess long days just tire me out. I think I’ll turn in ear­ly tonight, and work on my assign­ments tomor­row.

She loves to watch me play Starcraft, or play hide-and-seek under the bed. She loves to clean her­self on my lap, then nap there. She loves her tuna flavoured cat food, and her two mousies (I think I’ll name them Mutius and Quintus, after Titus’ two sons, whom Titus believes were pray to Rome).

I felt trou­bled this week-end, some­thing that I’m not prone to feel­ing. I usu­al­ly feel love or hate, with not much in between. And being one who can expect any­thing, like two sons killing their father, being trou­bled trou­bles me.

Maturity

An attrac­tive woman got on my ele­va­tor yes­ter­day, which sur­prised me, con­sid­er­ing the num­ber of stu­dents on my floor, let alone my build­ing. I’m not sure what she was doing there, wear­ing her nice gray suit and check­ing her mail. I real­ize that I’m becom­ing more and more attract­ed to much old­er women, while becom­ing less and less attract­ed to girls my age, or even girls 10 years with­in my age. They all seem to be so…child­ish. It’s some­thing that’s almost repul­sive to me.

Childishness seems to be so super­fi­cial to me. And yet it’s some­thing that’s so hard to define. I sup­pose that it’s child­ish think­ing that real­ly gets to me. Even if one acts as a child, one can still be defined as an adult through a mature mind­set. After all, a man who cre­ates research mod­els with Lego should be seen as an adult with ideas, not some­one with a child­ish hob­by.

It’s these old­er women who seem to have a wis­dom that I admire. Perhaps it’s their mind­set, which I feel like I can relate to late­ly. Perhaps I just don’t real­ly know enough about them to find their faults and their weak­ness­es.

Or per­haps I’m just grow­ing up.

Jealousy

I would­n’t con­sid­er myself a jeal­ous per­son. After all, how can one be jeal­ous when one is sure of one­self? It’s a con­tra­dic­tion to me. Almost always, in my rela­tion­ships, this is true. However, a spe­cial case has come up, and I am jeal­ous, an emo­tion I haven’t expe­ri­enced in a long while. Yet there is noth­ing I can do about it. I can only sit here and take it. This isn’t some­thing that I can change about myself. I am very inse­cure about this, and I have rea­son to be.

This jeal­ousy nib­bles inside me, cre­at­ing an odd world of dys­thymia. As long as I am jeal­ous, I will be able to write and learn. God, I sound like some­thing out of a Graham Greene nov­el. I was once afraid that I was becom­ing bor­ing, hav­ing been giv­en much in life, with noth­ing to write about.

Ah, well, let’s lay this issue to rest for today until I learn some more, and I can see the sit­u­a­tion more clear­ly.

I do need to clear my head.