Posts in category "Thoughts"

Has It Come?

Tonight I ordered the escar­got, while Tinsley Ellis, a man who seemed to have a cer­tain uncom­plex wis­dom beyond his years, sang his ver­sion of the south Florida blues. I admit that I was skep­ti­cal at first, but was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by the time his first num­ber had end­ed, an instru­men­tal piece that one could tell was writ­ten as more than a sim­ple intro­duc­to­ry song.

And while he sang his words with a com­bi­na­tion of gruff sin­cer­i­ty and sto­ic con­fi­dence, I sat there. Wondering why sad music can’t make me sad right now. Feeling some­thing I had nev­er felt before.

Lost in a moment of clar­i­ty.

The Inherent Investments Of Happiness

Life is a lot like busi­ness. There’s invest­ment in every­thing, and rela­tion­ships are no excep­tion. One has to spend mon­ey to make mon­ey, the way one has to give trust to get trust. There’s no guar­an­tee involved that says one willl get their invest­ment back. On top of this, one can choose how much or how lit­tle to invest. Just like every­thing else in life, the more one risks, the more one can lose, or the more one can gain.

And the world can be divid­ed in two accord­ing to this clas­si­fi­ca­tion: those who play con­ser­v­a­tive­ly, and those who play it all. Those who stay dis­tant, and those who throw them­selves into love.

If we’ve been hurt in the past, if we’ve lost all that we chose to give, it’s nat­ur­al for us to hold back in the future. But at some point we have to break out, and we can’t be scared to give as much as before. The key to liv­ing this way is under­stand­ing that our past invest­ments, rela­tion­ships, have no bear­ing on the ones we have now. It’s like the coin flip prob­lem taught in sec­ond-year sta­tis­tics, or, more appro­pri­ate­ly, the Gambler’s Fallacy: even after 10 suc­ces­sive occur­rances of a sin­gle out­come, the chance for the same out­come remains at fifty per­cent. We have to treat every tri­al, every case, every rela­tion­ship dif­fer­ent­ly.

Life, in rela­tion to peo­ple, is a series of invest­ments. We end up gain­ing from some, but not all. That’s what life is about. That’s what love is about. Nothing is worth it if you don’t put your­self out there. It’s impor­tant to fig­ure out which ones are worth­while, but not as impor­tant as fig­ur­ing out that the worth­while ones need to be giv­en a chance. We need to put at least a lit­tle bit of our trust into them, or noth­ing will hap­pen.

For what use is rec­og­niz­ing a good invest­ment, if we don’t treat it as such?

The Inherent Risks Of Happiness

There is a risk, there’s a risk when your deal­ing with love
You could snap my neck
Any speed you dri­ve can be dan­ger­ous
When this frame fails me
Will I trust you to car­ry me through?
I know there’s no such thing as safe­ty
But I know what a promise can do

—Trust, Thrice

I’ve alway been one to put a lit­tle too much faith into peo­ple. Although this often ends up hurt­ing the par­ties involved, myself includ­ed, I’ve always felt like it was worth it. I’d rather give some­one the ben­e­fit of the doubt, and per­haps this is why I end up being let down so much (____ would add that my intol­er­ance is par­tial­ly to blame). Some peo­ple don’t like to take that risk and need oth­ers to make the first step, need oth­ers to make that leap of faith. I know, because in some cas­es, I used to be one of them. One may hold back until they know that the oth­er per­son has as much at risk as they do. It’s the eas­i­est way to not get hurt.

There’s always one per­son who has to make that first step, to lay every­thing on the line. It’s one per­son who has to be the first to go for a kiss, the first to say, “I love you”, with­out know­ing what the oth­er per­son will say in return. It makes it eas­i­er, of course, if one can under­stand or accept the fact that there are risks involved in any sort of rela­tion­ship, that not every­thing will go the “right” way.

But that’s what life is about. That’s what love is about. Nothing is worth it if you don’t put your­self out there.

There’s a Simon and Garfunkle song that goes, “The roller coast­er ride we took is near­ly at an end / I bought my tick­et with my tears, that’s all I’m gonna spend”. When Paul Simon penned those lyrics, in the man­ner which he plays with words and rhymes to cre­ate his beau­ti­ful, renowned lyri­cal vers­es, he should have writ­ten, “That’s all I need to spend”. There’s absolute­ly noth­ing more that one can give.

Tears are a small price to pay for a chance at hap­pi­ness.

This Is Why You're Not Allowed (Save It)

This is the rit­u­al.

We meet. Usually by Greyhound.

We get stoned. In the car, in the park, or in the apart­ment.

This is what we’ve been sav­ing for. What we’ve cho­sen to deny our­selves of, until the present com­pa­ny, so that the expe­ri­ence is more intense. The rea­son why we’ve with­held for so long.

We intro­duce to each oth­er what we’ve dis­cov­ered on our own. Songs. Videos. Experiences.

There is no pride. No bias. No judg­ment.

We cher­ish these times. These week­ends. These mem­o­ries.

When we can grow from one anoth­er.

Because we’ve grown from our­selves.

Front

No, I did­n’t learn this mean­ing of the word from grade school, or even from the ebon­ics primer at Dolemite Dot Com.

(Actually, I learned it from 2Pac’s Life Goes On)

Yeah.

I only recent­ly had a mod­ern day poseur point­ed out to me. This isn’t the same as an intel­lec­tu­al poseur, this is the poseur of per­son­al­i­ty. The one’s who want to be quirky, eccen­tric, dif­fer­ent.

At first, I did­n’t notice; I was just annoyed. Then Loo’s per­spi­cac­i­ty put a name to it. I can’t stop catch­ing oth­ers now. I find that the one dis­tin­guish­ing behav­ior is the over-state­ment of char­ac­ter traits they wish to have, such as, “I did this fun­ny thing because I want you to see me in a cer­tain way, and by telling you this, I will make you believe that I am who I want you to believe”. Or “I like this song too₀ I lis­ten to any­thing because I have wide­ly vary­ing tastes!”. Over-state­ment such as this may or may not be based on some kind of inse­cu­ri­ty; some do it to hide because they’re uncom­fort­able with them­selves, oth­ers just want to be mem­o­rable and only end up being remem­bered for the wrong rea­sons.

Sometimes it’s even worse on blogs, where peo­ple write one line posts that don’t say any­thing because they think they’re cool and cryp­tic and that peo­ple are inter­est­ed in what they have to say. Or oth­ers who post con­ver­sa­tions, and expect every­one else to under­stand or appre­ci­ate the humour behind them. Or even peo­ple who actu­al­ly write about how they’re fuck­ing INTELLIGENT, or GRAMMAR FREAKS, or ATTRACTIVE. Why the fuck do you need to state it? LET THE WORDS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES. The key to writ­ing is to SAY not TELL. Telling an audi­ence how some­one is feel­ing is nowhere near as effec­tive as describ­ing direct actions/thoughts/reactions relat­ed to those emo­tions with­out actu­al­ly stat­ing the emo­tions them­selves.

In the end, it all makes me even more zeal­ous about being hum­ble, unassertive. I’ve always been one to “speak soft­ly and car­ry a big stick”, as Teddy once put it. There are tons of great sur­pris­es when one does­n’t present all of one­self from the start. And after all, when one is revealed as a true self that does­n’t match the false image that’s pro­ject­ed on oth­ers, one ends up being a pho­ny.

And I fuck­ing hate phoneys.