Posts in category "Thoughts"

The Self

I don’t know if you have ever observed this strange thing, the self. Often the more you look the more it does­n’t seem to be like it, and the more you look the more it isn’t it.
…
If you con­cen­trate on look­ing at your­self, you will find that your self will grad­u­al­ly sep­a­rate into many star­tling forms. So if I have to make a sum­ma­ry of myself, it ter­ri­fies me. I don’t know which of the many faces rep­re­sents me more and the more close­ly I look the clear­er the trans­for­ma­tions become, and final­ly only bewil­der­ment remains.

—nar­ra­tor, Soul Mountain

Out of the few things that I do well, it’s know­ing myself that I take the most pride in.

Or believ­ing that I know myself at least.

I often feel as if I know myself enough to under­stand the work­ings of my sub­con­scious. I think it’s ludi­crous when some­one tells me that they have me “fig­ured out” and this image they have of me isn’t the same as my own image of myself.

Yet how do I know which is cor­rect? As a human, one is nat­u­ral­ly biased when look­ing at any­thing, and when look­ing at one­self this bias becomes even worse. The most that one can do is rec­og­nize one’s bias, and present it so that oth­ers can under­stand the per­spec­tive of each opin­ion.

All that I can say for sure is that I will nev­er be cor­rect in what I think of myself. Everything that I speak about, when relat­ing to my per­son­al­i­ty, my ideas, my thoughts, my mind­set, might be total­ly wrong.

And know­ing this has become more impor­tant than know­ing myself.

Reversal: Part 2 (The Floundering Mindset)

Out of the storm of life I have borne away only a few ideas — and not one feel­ing. For a long time now I have been liv­ing, not with my heart, but with my head. I weigh, ana­lyze my own pas­sions and actions with severe curios­i­ty, but with­out sym­pa­thy.

—Pechorin, A Hero of Our Time

When I was younger, I decid­ed that I want­ed to cast all my emo­tion aside, because at the time I knew noth­ing but pain. I set this as my goal, and start­ed to work towards a ster­ile, cere­bral mind­set. I want­ed to feel noth­ing, and this idea fol­lowed me through to uni­ver­si­ty.

At this time, I nev­er believed that I was com­plete­ly suc­cess­ful; I still felt too much. However, as my sit­u­a­tion changed, as I met new peo­ple with good hearts and minds, I expe­ri­enced what hap­pi­ness was like. I was nev­er sat­is­fied though, nev­er hap­py enough, and always want­ed more but could nev­er achieve it. Suddenly, it felt as if my cere­bral goal was too suc­cess­ful, and I was stuck, I was numb.

I’ve gone from one extreme to the oth­er, from want­i­ng noth­ing to want­i­ng every­thing. In both cas­es I was a fail­ure, but it’s only now that I real­ize that suc­cess would have assured­ly meant no turn­ing back. I believe that when a cer­tain extent is reached, one becomes igno­rant to any­thing that could pos­si­bly change one­self. Now I under­stand the bal­ance, the dichoto­my that absolute­ly must exist in order to have a healthy mind.

And things are much bet­ter this way.

Reversal: Part 1 (The Inexplicable Catalyst)

19. Have you ever been in love? Unfortunately.

—LBJ

Well, here we are again.

I used to think that love was only pain. That was when the only expe­ri­ences I had with love were bad, when every­thing I ever felt was unre­quit­ed. The fact that I felt this way was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fact that I had­n’t got­ten over those feel­ings at the time. How child­ish, inex­pe­ri­enced, con­fused, imma­ture I was. This feel­ing shaped much of my per­son­al­i­ty in the last few years, although I’ve recent­ly been able to come out of such an emo­tion­al block­ade.

Having a rela­tion­ship where most feel­ings, how­ev­er con­fused, how­ev­er tor­ren­tial, how­ev­er tem­po­rary, were shared, has allowed me to come to terms with the past. Such an inci­dent has ben­e­fit­ed me great­ly, has let me know that I’m not so numb any­more, that it’s pos­si­ble for such a rela­tion­ship to exist even if I may nev­er expe­ri­ence it again. Perhaps I was so scared that I would nev­er fall in love again that any such expe­ri­ence would have shocked me into get­ting over what had hap­pened in the past.

Now I embrace the feel­ing of love, embrace the fact that the sim­ple act of lis­ten­ing to a song can fill me such poignan­cy, com­plete­ly regard­less of whether it’s good or bad. Not only do I enjoy being able to care for some­one, I enjoy miss­ing them as well, as dif­fi­cult as it can be. I like the fact that some­thing can turn me ter­ri­bly, illog­i­cal­ly weak. Every emo­tion involved, whether it’s plea­sur­able or painful, fills me with the urge to write, to cre­ate, to express. This is what I look for. This is what I need.

Now only good can come of love.

This Is Why You Don't Know Me

I nev­er tell any­one to keep my secrets. I only tell secrets to those I trust, which hap­pens to be less than a hand­ful of peo­ple. These peo­ple know me well enough to under­stand the grav­i­ty of what I talk about and gage whether they should keep it to them­selves.

Whenever peo­ple ask that I don’t tell any­one else about what they’re about to say, I nev­er even acknowl­edge the request. For me, it’s a com­plete giv­en, some­thing that should­n’t even have to be said. I will rarely talk about any­one to any­one else, because one can nev­er be too sure about what should be kept secret. Some peo­ple find that I take this a lit­tle to the extreme, since I won’t even talk about some­thing like what some­one ordered for din­ner on the off-chance that they’re on a diet and don’t want oth­ers to know. The risk of hurt­ing some­body is nev­er worth it to me.

I think this way main­ly due to the fact that I’ve gone through a lot of pain and trou­ble, sim­ply due to some “inno­cent” gos­sip. I can’t fuck­ing stand it when peo­ple talk about things that don’t con­cern them in any way, aside from only know­ing the peo­ple involved. I espe­cial­ly can’t stand it when some­one knows that say­ing some­thing is wrong, and they go ahead and do it any­way. It’s made me a very unopen per­son to most. It’s not just the poten­tial for hurt though, there are some things that I sim­ply don’t want peo­ple to know.

But that’s anoth­er sto­ry alto­geth­er.

"Cause It Isn't Fair"

There are times when a com­mit­ment is made on good terms and the bond of such a com­mit­ment can be eas­i­ly hon­oured. However, there are cas­es when these terms become sub­ject to strains that may threat­en the rela­tion­ship on which the com­mit­ment is based. When these strains over­whelm, the bond is bro­ken.

The com­mit­ment, entan­gled with the rela­tion­ship, should be bro­ken as well.

However, this bond some­times does not end. In such cas­es, the com­mit­ment can­not be said to be hon­oured; rather, it exists out of pity. Such a motive is rarely some­thing to be desired. It is best to end such an engage­ment instead of false­ly keep­ing it alive, for com­mit­ments, much like rela­tion­ships, are par­tial­ly based on the self-inter­ests of those involved. When they are not, one per­son assumes the role of a liar.

And the oth­er is being lied to.