Posts in category "Thoughts"

Wavelength

It’s so hard to wit­ness some­one being made fun of, sim­ply because they’re mis­un­der­stood. I get flus­tered and bite my lip, because try­ing to defend them nev­er does a thing. I also get either angry or sad, depend­ing on whether or not I know the per­son who’s doing the mock­ing. In my expe­ri­ence, some­one who’s so quick to come to a con­clu­sion will refuse to see things anoth­er way. They have enough pre­con­ceived notions to keep them­selves igno­rant and secure.

Perhaps I’m like this because I can relate to what it’s like to be mis­un­der­stood. As an exper­i­ment in one of my English class­es, I wrote an extreme­ly graph­ic sto­ry about a necrophil­i­ac doc­tor who ends up get­ting raped up the ass, and pre­sent­ed it. I want­ed to show that the inten­tions of an artist are irrel­e­vant if he or she is mis­un­der­stood, because oth­ers will con­tin­ue to care­less­ly judge them. The more odd­ly my class­mates stared at me while I was pre­sent­ing, with­out try­ing to grasp what I was try­ing to do, the more I felt like my point was proved.

The thing is, some­one is usu­al­ly mis­un­der­stood because they don’t explain them­selves well. A per­son can be extreme­ly provoca­tive, con­tro­ver­sial, or com­plex, but as long as oth­ers see what they’re try­ing to get across then every­thing is fine. Of course, it’s much eas­i­er said than done, and some­one is most often mis­un­der­stood because their ideas are hard­er to grasp. In addi­tion to this, I find that the eccen­tric­i­ty relat­ed to a per­son with such ideas clouds their per­cep­tions as to what they believe oth­ers are capa­ble of com­pre­hend­ing.

Sometimes, I wish the world could see what I see.

More Gosu Than You

It’s always fun­ny when some­one tries to play a mind game on me. For some rea­son they nev­er work, so I real­ly don’t mind them.

The secret, often con­fused with apa­thy, is actu­al­ly the will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice every­thing, or the accep­tance of such. Unless one is pre­pared to give up every­thing, there are no guar­an­tees about what will hap­pen. When one accepts the fact that they may lose a rela­tion­ship, then one has noth­ing to lose.

It’s this pow­er, this weight, that guar­an­tees a vic­to­ry. Bluffing such a thing is unpre­dictable and gen­er­al­ly not rec­om­mend­ed. Of course, know­ing the oppo­nent inside and out is an advan­tage. It’s like see­ing his or her hand in a card game, and some­times, this is enough to win if one is unable to pay a high a price as a rela­tion­ship.

Such a strat­e­gy may leave one with few friends, but who’s a friend who plays mind games?

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.

Patchwork Mindset: Part 1

I haven’t seen Pat in more than two months. We’re try­ing to sched­ule some­thing for March, and by that time it’ll be an entire quar­ter year since we’ve hung out. I’ve come a long way since I last saw him, in terms of mind­set, and he’s prob­a­bly the only one who total­ly under­stands how grave­ly impor­tant that is to me. It’s too bad that my oth­er close friends don’t com­plete­ly under­stand me, although it’s no fault of their own and I don’t hold it against them.

It takes pain to under­stand pain, and Pat is the one who’s had the most sim­i­lar expe­ri­ences. If there was one per­son in this world who has me fig­ured out, it’s him. It used to feel as though he would have to come to my lev­el to talk to me, to under­stand what I was going through, to give me guid­ance and sup­port.

Now it feels as if I’ve come to his lev­el, and I under­stand his atti­tude, moti­va­tions, and world­view much bet­ter as a result of this. He admit­ted that he always won­dered when I’d get there, and he’s curi­ous if he’ll notice a change the next time he sees me.

I see all the influ­ences that change me as adding more to my mind, anoth­er piece to the quilt.

Keeping every piece becomes as impor­tant as gain­ing more.

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.