Posts in category "Thoughts"

Complacent With Complacency

I was walk­ing through the mall today, when I saw some­one who seemed to be alone. His face was ripe with Down Syndrome, and he moved with a air of emo­tion­al detach­ment, as if he had eas­i­ly accept­ed the cards he’d been dealt.

Of course, I make no assump­tions about his sit­u­a­tion. After all, I know noth­ing about his life, and my pseu­do-con­clu­sions (I almost nev­er make def­i­nite con­clu­sions) based on pure­ly obser­va­tion could be com­plete­ly wrong.

However, it made me real­ize how lucky I am to not only have a cer­tain amount of intel­li­gence, but to have lived the life I have lived. Although I agree that igno­rance is bliss, I have become quite con­tent with the lim­it­ed aware­ness that I pos­sess today. I’m grate­ful for the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have loved and…given up, and to have been loved in return, even if my giv­ing up of such things will mean that I may nev­er love again. I have lived a life of finan­cial secu­ri­ty. I am fair­ly (although not ful­ly) con­tent with the per­son I have been able to become.

What could I pos­si­bly have to com­plain about? Not much. Only about a few things unre­solved, from a past I’m still try­ing to under­stand.

Life, as it were, appears to be good. So why do I not feel as hap­py as I should? Perhaps a chem­i­cal imbal­ance of some sort, although I don’t want to be so arro­gant as to make such a claim with­out more sub­stan­tial symp­toms.

I believe the answer lies in the fact that the last few things in my life which need res­o­lu­tion are major enough to leave me only feel­ing com­pla­cent. The next step, past iden­ti­fy­ing such mat­ters, would be to resolve them.

But per­haps com­pla­cen­cy is the best one can do.

Quixotic

People who know me know that I gen­er­al­ly tend not to get my hopes up. I nev­er see the point. If I get my hopes up and things work out in my favour, then I would have expect­ed such an out­come, and I become unap­pre­cia­tive. If things don’t work out, then I feel even worse than had noth­ing hap­pened. On the oth­er hand, if I don’t get my hopes up, I’ll feel great when I get my way, or I’ll feel fine when noth­ing works out.

Yet I can’t help but get my hopes up for what the future may hold. Lately, things have been going well in such a way that I feel com­fort­ed. Jonathan has made a great attempt at try­ing to get me a com­put­er relat­ed job with a decent salary. I applied to a beau­ti­ful apart­ment with Nick which, I was told, I should have no trou­ble obtain­ing occu­pan­cy. I will be grad­u­at­ing soon, and free to live my life with a free­dom only matched from the sum­mer days of my child­hood.

But most bright to me seems to be the future with my friends. I’ve met a great bunch of peo­ple, of which I immense­ly enjoy hang­ing out with. They have offered to help me move. They enjoy the same things I do. They are peo­ple I can con­fide in. They have got­ten excit­ed about my ten­an­cy with Nick. Who else do I know is inter­est­ed in my hap­pi­ness? What oth­er friends that I’ve had are so keen in spend­ing time with me?

My friends make the future seem warm and bear­able. Even when I admit to myself the way the future may work out, the fact that I may not get this job and indus­try con­nec­tion, the fact that my rental appli­ca­tion may be denied, I can’t imag­ine any­thing going wrong with these won­der­ful peo­ple. Sometimes I wish that I did­n’t feel this way, that I could keep my mind in check. But I can’t.

And I don’t care.

I Need To Tell You

I won­der if I come off as a per­son with emo­tion­al bag­gage. One of the (very few) things that I pride myself in is my “self-aware­ness”, the abil­i­ty to see myself objec­tive­ly, but this is a char­ac­ter­is­tic that I am unable to deter­mine with­in myself. Has my past made me a per­son of fright­en­ing, unper­son­able dis­po­si­tion? Do peo­ple think of me as some­one with deep root­ed emo­tion­al issues?

I won­der if my his­to­ry even mat­ters to oth­ers. I real­ize that it’s when I let my his­to­ry inter­fere with or affect my rela­tion­ships that it becomes a prob­lem. I’m afraid, how­ev­er, that I let things become affect­ed more than I’d like, more than I under­stand.

The past is some­thing that I rec­og­nize as being sig­nif­i­cant, and I try to keep it only as that. It is some­thing that I learn from, some­thing which can affect me and my deci­sions today, but not some­thing that I should present­ly be deal­ing with.

So, is it?

Well, I’m not com­plete­ly sure. On a night like tonight, when the mid­night sky burns bright enough to illu­mi­nate my room, I can’t help but feel unheard, unheard in some­thing I wish to express. What becomes this need to be under­stood?

It’s a voice I wish to have, to bring me clo­sure, to let me be free.

It has tak­en me three hours to write this final thought, along with the resur­fac­ing of many dis­tract­ing mem­o­ries. Things still feel unre­solved, of course, but I have suf­fi­cient­ly quelled my mood until there is a more appro­pri­ate time to express myself.

When I see you again, you will under­stand what I’ve become, and what you’ve done to make me this way.

Event Horizon

I was talk­ing to Eugene, or Yoog as I used to call him, the oth­er day after hav­ing no con­tact with him for over a decade. It was good to rem­i­nisce about the good times we had so long ago, me going to Australia for the first time to meet a friend of my moth­ers’, and him com­ing to vis­it from Australia, to stay with me.

It was odd to hear that I affect­ed his deci­sion to shift the focus of his card col­lec­tion to base­ball, as odd as it was to find out that one of my ex’s would scream my name in her mind while mas­tur­bat­ing.

I’m sur­prised, aston­ished, at how much influ­ence I could ever have on any­one. I still can’t believe it, since a card col­lec­tion can be such a sig­nif­i­cant part of a young boys life, and unat­trac­tive Chinese guys aren’t gen­er­al­ly the object of any­ones’ fan­ta­sy.

The more I think about it though, the more I real­ize all the lit­tle things that I’ve done to affect peo­ple, whether it’s some­one’s choice of uni­ver­si­ty (which, I feel, is no small deci­sion), or how I could ever bring some­one to tears.

I’ve felt like my life has been so worth­less for so long that I’ve been blind­ed to the part I’ve played in the life of oth­ers. It’s only with this new infor­ma­tion, this cat­a­lyst, that I’m able to begin to real­ize that I’m not so worth­less after all.

There have always been peo­ple whom I admire and respect. It’s only these peo­ple who real­ly have an affect on me. After all, hear­ing hurt­ful words from a per­son you look up to is much worse than from some­one you don’t have any respect for. I’ll always won­der if it’s respect which allowed me to have influ­ence on oth­ers, or whether there was some oth­er rea­son, such as love or friend­ship.

And per­haps, with time, there will be more.

Moving Towards k

I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve achieved my sta­bil­i­ty. That’s not to say that it won’t dis­ap­pear once a new sit­u­a­tion aris­es, but it seems that my loss of bal­ance has giv­en me prac­tice in regain­ing it.

The future seems so uncer­tain. I don’t have a room­mate for the sum­mer, and I don’t even know if I need one. Everyone is talk­ing about mov­ing in with each oth­er, but none of our leas­es end on the same month. I might not be grad­u­at­ing in a month if I fail any cours­es, a very dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty. That means that my grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny would be delayed, and I would need to reg­is­ter for a sum­mer semes­ter. I don’t even give a shit about the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, but it’s not like I would be going for myself. I don’t even have a job lined up any time soon, some­thing which I am des­per­ate­ly in need/want of.

Yet in the face of such uncer­tain­ty, I have been able to remain rel­a­tive­ly sta­ble. I’m not sure why this is. Possibly, the taste of good liv­ing I had last sum­mer has cre­at­ed a kind of hope in me, a hope with no-strings-attached.

What an odd turn of events, that hav­ing a con­tent sit­u­a­tion (and even los­ing it) has made me “hap­pi­er”. I won­der if it’s just a phase, that I’m still rid­ing off a store of emo­tions, and that once the store in drained, I’ll become a bit­ter per­son. Somehow I doubt it, but one can nev­er tell.

I can now safe­ly say that I am a bet­ter per­son, although if his­to­ry has taught me any­thing, it’s that any­thing can change.

And yet there is still a wish for change.