Posts in category "Thoughts"

The Greatest Balance

When I went home a few months ago, I found a copy Soul Mountain at Chapters, which I had been look­ing for, ever since I found out about it. I’ve been read­ing as much as I can late­ly, when­ev­er I have the time and the ener­gy to con­cen­trate on what Gao Xingjian is try­ing to nar­rate to me.

The thing that makes the auto­bi­og­ra­phy inter­est­ing so far is that Xingjian was incor­rect­ly diag­nosed with fatal lung can­cer, and after prop­er review, had been giv­en a sec­ond chance on life. His out­look changes, and he begins to see every­thing around him very dif­fer­ent­ly.

I’ve late­ly felt that, although I’ve nev­er been threat­ened with any life-alter­ing inci­dents, I’ve begun to see things dif­fer­ent­ly as well. It’s as if I have noth­ing and every­thing to live for. That there would be no dif­fer­ence between dying tomor­row or in eight decades. It’s almost as if I’ve had my fair share of expe­ri­ences, each one as impor­tant as the oth­er in shap­ing who I am, good or bad, and that this is already suf­fi­cient for me to be sat­is­fied with my life. Perhaps I feel this is true when I com­pare the amount that I’ve already learned with the infi­nite amount that is impos­si­ble to learn. After all, what is the pur­pose of life any­way? For me, it is to con­tin­u­al­ly shape myself into a bet­ter per­son, whether it’s intel­li­gence, or a bet­ter appre­ci­a­tion of music, or dex­ter­i­ty, or any­thing. And since there is no absolute goal I have to reach (or can reach), there is no way for me to fail, and death hence­forth becomes mean­ing­less.

When I tried to explain this to some­one, he got con­fused, and thought that I was telling him about how I had expe­ri­enced all there is to expe­ri­ence already. This could­n’t be fur­ther from the truth. There are a pletho­ra of things I haven’t done, that I haven’t been through, and when­ev­er I’m giv­en the chance to actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence one of these things, I feel as if I’ve gained more out of life.

Instead of see­ing the act of liv­ing as cross­ing out items on a life-long “to do” list, I see it as writ­ing down items on a “have done” list.

The great­est dis­tinc­tion for me between these two world­views is that I can take my time in doing what I want, instead of feel­ing rushed to accom­plish as much as I can before I die. Seeing life this way has cer­tain­ly allowed me to be a much more relaxed, flex­i­ble, easy-going per­son, unin­hib­it­ed by the fear of death. The good thing about this is that I did­n’t have to fool myself into this view, sim­ply because I was unsat­is­fied with my life. Somehow, this mind­set shaped itself in my brain, and even­tu­al­ly man­i­fest­ed itself through my ever-con­tin­u­ing matu­ri­ty.

It has made life mean­ing­ful and mean­ing­less at the same time.

Gradient

Ever since I got my iPod, I’ve been a playlist lis­ten­er, as opposed to an album lis­ten­er like Nick. I had 10 main playlists, and each one would be for a dif­fer­ent genre or mood, although I lis­tened to my mood ones much more often, such as my bit­ter­sweet mix or angry mix. Now I’m find my mod­er­ate num­ber of playlists to be insuf­fi­cient. Often, when I step out into the intem­per­ate sky which has been so dom­i­nant late­ly, I won’t be able to find an appro­pri­ate playlist. Nothing match­es my moods now.

I think that my moods and emo­tions have become more sub­tle and diverse in the last year. It’s been hard­er to put my fin­ger on how I’m feel­ing, because noth­ing is as base as a sim­ple “sad” or “angry” any­more. I find that the flavours of my feel­ings have become more intri­cate and con­nect­ed, not only because of simul­ta­ne­ous highs and lows, but also because of a greater appli­ca­tion of dual-sid­ed­ness.

Sometimes it feels as if my emo­tions have evened out, that there is less range to the ups and downs. I’ve learned a great deal from the inter­est­ing set of sit­u­a­tions I’ve been placed in over the last two years. This, com­bined with my zeal­ous­ness for self-improve­ment, has allowed me to become a lit­tle stronger and a lit­tle wis­er. Perhaps, in time, every­thing will even out. I’m just not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Because I’d prob­a­bly cease to learn.

Why, Vera?

I just fin­ished read­ing A Hero of Our Time again. It’s the book I’ve read the most in my life, and I’ve lost count of the num­ber of times I’ve gone straight from cov­er to cov­er through var­i­ous trans­la­tions. Every time I’ve read it for the last eight years, I’ve grown a lit­tle more. Certain parts that I may not have under­stood before become clear and relate­able.

One par­tic­u­lar pas­sage struck me this time; Vera’s final let­ter to Pechorin.

For three hours now I have been sit­ting at the win­dow and await­ing your return…But you are alive, you can­not die! The car­riage is almost ready…Farewell, Farewell! I am lost — but what of it? If I could be cer­tain that you will always remem­ber me — I say noth­ing of lov­ing me, no — only remember…Goodbye! Someone is coming…I have to hide this let­ter…

I now ful­ly under­stand Vera’s final wish, hav­ing since wished the same thing myself. Yet it’s some­thing I can­not explain, even when I myself share this feel­ing. Why this need to not be for­got­ten? Why does remem­ber­ing mean so much?

Is it the need to know that I am impor­tant to some­one, even if it was some ephemer­al rela­tion­ship or some per­son­al mis­take? Is it so that I can believe that I was so spe­cial as to be unfor­get­table, an ego­tis­ti­cal or per­haps inse­cure shroud to fool myself? Is it to give my life mean­ing, a sort of pur­pose to know that I can indeli­bly change the lives of oth­ers? Or maybe it’s to know that the feel­ings I expe­ri­ence, how­ev­er bathet­ic or affect­ed, mean some­thing to some­one. I usu­al­ly pride myself in being able to per­fect­ly under­stand the feel­ings I go through, but this idea has left me at a loss. I won­der if oth­ers have ever felt the same way. I remem­ber not under­stand­ing this desire in myself at the time, but believ­ing that I would even­tu­al­ly.

Now I’m not sure if I ever will.

The Experience of the First Classification

People in rela­tion­ships can be divid­ed into two cat­e­gories; those who love the self and those who love the oth­er. Every rela­tion­ship is dif­fer­ent, not just in the sense of a dif­fer­ent pair of peo­ple, but also in the idea of the same per­son with a dif­fer­ent girl­friend or boyfriend. Although some­one may be of a cer­tain cat­e­go­ry through one rela­tion­ship, they may fall into the oth­er cat­e­go­ry in anoth­er. Even cross­ing cat­e­gories through the same rela­tion­ship is pos­si­ble, depend­ing on the dynam­ic of a cou­ple.

The lovers of the self care about the oth­er per­son, but only inso­faras their own vest­ed inter­ests are con­cerned. When the desire of this type of lover begins to out­grow what the rela­tion­ship can offer, the bond weak­ens and often breaks. The main con­cern of this type is what they are get­ting out of the rela­tion­ship.

The lovers of the oth­er are lovers in the clas­si­cal sense of the word. These are the peo­ple with an hon­est love, the ones who care most about whether or not the oth­er per­son is hap­py. This type of lover is the one least will­ing to break a rela­tion­ship, the one who is more will­ing to sac­ri­fice or com­pro­mise.

Relationships are based on match­ings of these two types. A rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the self will last as long as there is no con­flict involved. Once a dis­agree­ment is reached, nei­ther par­ty cares enough to make the rela­tion­ship work. On the oth­er hand, a rela­tion­ship between two lovers of the oth­er is the ide­al match, and gen­er­al­ly the longest last­ing. Both peo­ple are com­mit­ted and will­ing to work out any prob­lems that may arise. Usually, the only break in the rela­tion­ship may be from base con­flicts (dis­agree­ment on issues which are too basic to work out or com­pro­mise about, such as adop­tion).

The most com­mon type of match, how­ev­er, is with one lover of the self and one lover of the oth­er. At the end of such a rela­tion­ship one is left unaf­fect­ed while the oth­er is bro­ken-heart­ed, and the end of such a thing, in my expe­ri­ence, is inevitable. In cas­es like this, I’ve found myself on both sides of the coin.

And regret­ting noth­ing of either.

Janus

Sometimes I see the same movie twice with a large gap of time between view­ings, and I under­stand the char­ac­ters, thoughts, emo­tions, and actions very dif­fer­ent­ly each time.

A few days ago, I came to the real­iza­tion that I’ve been a dif­fer­ent per­son in every rela­tion­ship through my eight year dat­ing peri­od. Not all of me has changed, but there are a few aspects which I believe would be impor­tant in such a bond.

I’ve gained more matu­ri­ty and more con­fi­dence. I’ve gained a fair amount of intel­li­gence (though I still feel like I have infi­nite­ly more to learn). I’ve changed career goals, rela­tion­ship goals, and hap­pi­ness goals. I’m more out­go­ing, more tol­er­ant, more secure, less pre­ten­tious (I hope), less arro­gant, and less igno­rant. I’ve changed my opin­ions on chil­dren, abor­tion, and reli­gion. I’ve even changed my actions based on these shift­ing beliefs.

Although I view most of these changes as being good things, they may put strain on a rela­tion­ship nonethe­less. After all, change is change, and unless a rela­tion­ship is strong and flex­i­ble enough, it can­not endure such stress. It’s a lit­tle scary to think that I may be bring­ing extra strain into a rela­tion­ship, sim­ply by being myself.

At one point in my inex­pe­ri­enced youth, after hav­ing changed a fair deal already, I believed that I would­n’t change any more. Now I real­ize how stu­pid­ly obliv­i­ous a com­ment that was, and am of the belief that I’ll nev­er stop chang­ing.

The most impor­tant thing to keep in mind through all of this is whether the change is for the bet­ter, and as Tom has helped me real­ize, rela­tion­ships (friend­ships or oth­er­wise) should form around this idea.

Whether or not a rela­tion­ship will work out in the end is not based on one per­son, but the foun­da­tion and dynam­ic of two peo­ple.