Posts in category "Thoughts"

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Things feel very dif­fer­ent right now. I know that every­thing is always chang­ing, every­thing is con­stant­ly mov­ing, and that no mat­ter how sta­t­ic my life seems at the time, my mind is always work­ing. I begin to see things quite dif­fer­ent­ly. I’m real­ly not sure how to explain it. For some rea­son, my thoughts begin to come around full cir­cle every six months or so. My mind is nev­er at the same place I am.

It’s an odd real­iza­tion, to know that I’ve changed so much, yet so lit­tle with­in the last six months. I remem­ber telling Sam one time when I was 15 that I prob­a­bly would­n’t change from the way I was back then. How wrong I was. There has been noth­ing but change, change that I can only see long after it has passed. I look back on what I was like in first year, and I become so embar­rassed.

And now things feel so odd, as if I’ve nev­er been in such a sit­u­a­tion before, as if I’m look­ing through a new pair of eyes, yet kept my old expe­ri­ences. It’s such a hard sit­u­a­tion to define, since I feel like I can nev­er tru­ly under­stand it until is over, like the dead in Dante’s Inferno.

None of this feels famil­iar.

Pandora's Curse

I had a dream last night, a dream that seemed so real, a dream I did not want. A dream of scat­tered mem­o­ries sewn togeth­er, cre­at­ing such a per­fect world, where love was requit­ed, where I was bliss­ful­ly hap­py. When I awoke, every­thing I had was gone.

All I was left with was hope, and empti­ness. I imme­di­ate­ly knew that what I had was false, too per­fect a world for me to live in. I felt bit­ter, as if I had some­thing tak­en away from me which I felt was right­ful­ly mine.

Why would my sub­con­scious trick me so? Why should I feel so ter­ri­ble, so laden with hope? Couldn’t my mind sim­ply give up this strug­gle, freely, with­out inter­fer­ence?

Hope is not a good thing for me. It makes me weak and vul­ner­a­ble. When I have no hope, then all is known. Nothing is uncer­tain. I am sure of what I have and what I don’t have. Progress can be made on accept­ing this. But when hope enters my mind, all progress is lost, and I can only try to fight for what I’ve gained.

Yet I wish to dream again tonight, of mem­o­ries strewn togeth­er, for they were so won­der­ful, that any let down seems worth it. I don’t know why I’d want to tor­ture myself again, feel­ing emp­ty and bit­ter when I wake up. Somehow, the high seems worth it, like some addic­tive drug Pandora was sell­ing out of her mag­i­cal box of plagues and death.

Perhaps I actu­al­ly do believe in what my hope is telling me. Perhaps I need to believe in some­thing, that some­how this will change, that things will be dif­fer­ent. Or per­haps I’m sim­ply a fool, will­ing­ly falling for some­thing that may make me hap­py, but emp­ty in the end.

Nothing good ever came out of Pandora’s box.

Respect Through Self-Understanding

I real­ized a lit­tle while ago that I respect self-under­stand­ing much more than self-con­fi­dence. It’s such a pity, because many peo­ple I know have much more of the lat­ter than the for­mer. I use the words self-under­stand­ing in an almost con­tra­dic­to­ry man­ner, though one can be both. I see it as an under­stand­ing of one’s faults and one’s lim­its. I use these words in this man­ner because I find that one whom is blind to one’s faults is some­one who has lit­tle or no self-under­stand­ing.

When some­one has lit­tle self-under­stand­ing, it almost angers me. The igno­rance involved is a very dif­fi­cult thing for me to com­pre­hend. If some­one refus­es to admit to his or her faults, or per­haps is aware of them but refus­es to change them, then I see them as being very child­ish. And child­ish­ness, of course, is some­thing that both­ers me great­ly.

I usu­al­ly find that an open-mind­ed per­son is very aware of his or her faults. Perhaps I sim­ply asso­ciate a lack of open-mind­ed­ness with self-igno­rance, though I haven’t seen much evi­dence to the con­trary.

My expe­ri­ence with this idi­ot­ic char­ac­ter­is­tic has made me bit­ter. I seem to have lost much faith in the human race, some­thing that I real­ized even longer before this. It has left me alone, with few peo­ple I can tru­ly feel com­fort­able with, or respect.

Maybe it’s bet­ter this way.

The Question Of Kids

I just received (with­in 10 min­utes) a one page let­ter deny­ing my appli­ca­tion to become a Big Brother. It great­ly, great­ly sad­dens me. I wish I knew why they decid­ed this, but they aren’t at lib­er­ty to dis­cuss it. I actu­al­ly had to sign some­thing acknowl­edg­ing that if I was reject­ed, I would­n’t know why, if the orga­ni­za­tion chose not to tell me.

I’ll always won­der why I was not allowed this oppor­tu­ni­ty. I thought I’d be good at it, but I’m sure that this com­mit­tee of peo­ple know bet­ter than I. After all, I have lit­tle expe­ri­ence with younger peo­ple. I just wish some­one could under­stand how much this would have meant to me.

I won­der if it could be my matu­ri­ty. If it could be my time restraints. My rela­tion­ship with my par­ents. My being a good hater. Could it be that they feel my motives are out of self­ish­ness? Could it be that one of my ref­er­ences gave me a bad rep­u­ta­tion? Or sim­ply that I’m not the right kind of per­son for the job? I real­ly have no idea, since I believe that I gave an extreme­ly good impres­sion at the inter­view.

I always believed that my expe­ri­ence with par­ent­ing would help me become a good par­ent myself. Many peo­ple whom I’ve spo­ken to believe this of me as well. Yet, the idea of hav­ing chil­dren of my own still scares me. It’s the idea that I am in con­trol of some­one else’s life, when I believe that my own life will always be full of entropy. What hap­pens to my child if I ever got divorced? What hap­pens if I ever died? So many uncer­tain­ties make the whole idea very fright­en­ing.

I also don’t believe I have the capac­i­ty to love in this man­ner. It’s not a pater­nal emo­tion that I have been able to devel­op or learn. I have my rea­sons.

The sub­ject of kids has always been present in my rela­tion­ships, and it’s usu­al­ly been a source of con­flict.

About three years ago I came upon a site called WebMD. It’s a pret­ty good resource for health issues, and psy­chol­o­gy issues. One of their events was a chat ses­sion with a par­ent­ing expert, and I could­n’t help but try to ask a ques­tion that I had been ask­ing myself at the time. The tran­script can be found here (my name was jesterz_webmd).

At the time, I felt like her answer was quite uncon­ven­tion­al.

I had been brought up my whole life think­ing that I need­ed chil­dren of my own to be hap­py. I sud­den­ly real­ized that think­ing this way was not for every­one, and that not hav­ing kids could be as ful­fill­ing as rais­ing kin. It was then that I decid­ed that I most like­ly would­n’t have chil­dren of my own.

Then again, I was only 19 on the time.

Unwanted Balance

I went to the Black Tomato yes­ter­day, which was a small restau­rant with a decent atmos­phere (though I think it would have been bet­ter at night), which served jazz along with your meals. You could pur­chase jazz albums from the side of the restau­rants, and numer­ous por­traits of jazz greats were hung near the top of the walls. The meals were pret­ty pricey; the sand­wich­es cost over 10 dol­lars, and the 7oz. filet mignon was $24.95. I was real­ly con­sid­er­ing the filet mignon since I so rarely get a chance to go out and eat at a nice restau­rant, but I decid­ed that I had noth­ing to cel­e­brate. I went with a flank sand­wich, which had thin­ly cut strips of mar­i­nat­ed steak with sauteed onions, and melt­ed cheese, baked on French bread. The put a sort of sweet mus­tard with it, that gave it a spicy, juicy taste, which was excel­lent. I had to get a pint of Strongbow, since they did­n’t have Double Diamond. In total it cost me about $20.00.

It was com­i­cal to see what kind of man­ners peo­ple brought to the table. You could tell who was an exec­u­tive by the way they broke their bread, or you could tell who was a admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant by the way they cleaned their teeth with their tongue. I won­dered if their man­ners were a result of their pro­fes­sion, or their upbring­ing.

Continue read­ing “Unwanted Balance”…