Posts in category "Thoughts"

Ignorance, Humility, And The Need To Be Understood

This is such a grand top­ic for me that I don’t believe I will be able to go into suf­fi­cient depth today, but I will try.

Ignorance is some­thing that pains me. When some­one is igno­rant, I can usu­al­ly deal with it. After all, what can one expect of the world? However, when some­one tries to push their igno­rance on me, not only by patron­iz­ing me, but by being so zeal­ous in their beliefs as to not accept any­thing else, then it trou­bles me. Well, first it enrages me, but when that sub­sides, I am trou­bled.

I always ask myself, “How can you be so igno­rant? How can you under­stand noth­ing, and yet be so firm­ly plant­ed in your beliefs? How is it that oth­er­wise, you’re a lik­able per­son?”.

Something that comes into play is my need to be hum­ble. Humility is some­thing that is very impor­tant to me. I believe in only stat­ing my opin­ions when they’re asked of me. That’s prob­a­bly because it’s very rarely that peo­ple accept my opin­ions, and usu­al­ly I’ll see it as wast­ed time when I try to explain some­thing, and some­one will refuse to see it.

My tita­ni­um ring serves as a reminder. Whenever I feel the urge to speak out, I’ll sub­con­scious­ly adjust it on my fin­ger, and remem­ber that speak­ing out is not a good thing. It’s a very sim­ple ring, with­out any designs or pat­terns, except for a pale gold band in the mid­dle. It cost me a cur­rent months salary, due to the dif­fi­cul­ty in forg­ing tita­ni­um in an oxy­gen free envi­ron­ment, but seems as sim­ple as a mod­est band. A sym­bol in itself.

When some­one just aston­ish­es me with their stu­pid­i­ty, the need to speak can be very over­whelm­ing. I find that I can con­trol it now though, that my patience has increased. It would be great if peo­ple could under­stand me. There are only a few peo­ple who tru­ly do. It would make my urge to speak sub­side. I believe this urge stems from a cog­ni­tive need to be under­stood.

Instead, I have to deal with igno­rance, peo­ple not accept­ing any­thing past their expe­ri­ences or past their own fal­li­bil­i­ty. It’s some­thing that once cost me a sta­ble rela­tion­ship.

But it was worth it.

Jealousy

I would­n’t con­sid­er myself a jeal­ous per­son. After all, how can one be jeal­ous when one is sure of one­self? It’s a con­tra­dic­tion to me. Almost always, in my rela­tion­ships, this is true. However, a spe­cial case has come up, and I am jeal­ous, an emo­tion I haven’t expe­ri­enced in a long while. Yet there is noth­ing I can do about it. I can only sit here and take it. This isn’t some­thing that I can change about myself. I am very inse­cure about this, and I have rea­son to be.

This jeal­ousy nib­bles inside me, cre­at­ing an odd world of dys­thymia. As long as I am jeal­ous, I will be able to write and learn. God, I sound like some­thing out of a Graham Greene nov­el. I was once afraid that I was becom­ing bor­ing, hav­ing been giv­en much in life, with noth­ing to write about.

Ah, well, let’s lay this issue to rest for today until I learn some more, and I can see the sit­u­a­tion more clear­ly.

I do need to clear my head.

Buddhism

I just fin­ished watch­ing Shaolin Temple with Pita. It had a good sto­ry and amaz­ing fight scenes, but the dub­bing just killed any act­ing or tak­ing the movie seri­ous­ly. The mas­ter was a very for­giv­ing man though, as all Buddhist peo­ple should be, I’m assum­ing. It changed my per­cep­tion of Buddhism in gen­er­al. I always believed that it was an extreme­ly strict belief sys­tem. And, I believe, it should be. After all, if you break one rule, why not break them all? However, I do believe that there is a bal­ance that must be tak­en into account. If you are aware that you sin, and you sel­dom do it, then it should be alright.

I dab­bled in Buddhism once in first year. It was enlight­en­ing, but incom­plete. It just did­n’t fit in with my life well at the time. Of course, the belief that suf­fer­ing is inher­ent in life fit com­plete­ly, but I was still a child (well, I still am, actu­al­ly), try­ing to under­stand myself and the things around me. I think that I am bet­ter adjust­ed to some­thing like Buddhism right now. I’m just not sure how close­ly I should fol­low its’ teach­ings.

I mean, I think I could live on rice. But celiba­cy?! I mean…I’m human. And to make things worse, I’m male. I think it’s some­thing that I would real­ly have to work on. Practicing Buddhism would def­i­nite­ly stop me from being such a good hater. I’m always wor­ried that peo­ple will think that I’m con­ceit­ed from the way I hate peo­ple. I know I’m no bet­ter than the rest, but do oth­er peo­ple? It just wor­ries me.

But it would­n’t wor­ry a Buddhist.

Assumed it would be Easy

I saw an inter­est­ing inter­view yes­ter­day on Vicki. A man and his team had been the first to boat down the ama­zon rapids in a par­tic­u­lar path. They all took turns pad­dling, while they all ate, slept, and cooked in rota­tion, in the boat. It became their life for at least two months (I remem­ber it as six, but I can’t con­firm). When they final­ly fin­ished the trek, and emerged from the base of the riv­er, they had mixed emo­tions. They were hap­py that they fin­ished a very life-threat­en­ing jour­ney and sur­vived, hap­py that they had the ener­gy and tal­ent enough to com­plete it. However, they were also sad that their life was going to become a lot more com­pli­cat­ed again. That they would now have to answer phone calls, reply to e‑mail, get stuck in traf­fic.

It made me won­der if I would ever be able to feel that way. If I could stay away from my plea­sure box long enough, that I would for­get about it, and actu­al­ly regret hav­ing to delete my spam, or hav­ing to answer mes­sages from extreme­ly annoy­ing peo­ple. What could pos­si­bly make me for­get my beau­ti­ful music, or my com­fort­ing inter­face? I’m sure that there have been times where I left my apart­ment, for home, and I nev­er once thought of my com­put­er. This could­n’t have been more than two weeks, to be sure, so I haven’t actu­al­ly been able to test the lim­its of my depen­den­cy. Of course, one should always have more than one pas­sion, and I believe that I do, though some are more in prac­tice than oth­ers. Without my pas­sions, I am with­out being, and with­out my com­put­er, I am with­out my main pas­sion. Pita asked me if I would join him in ball­room danc­ing, but I refused when he asked (though after some care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion), cit­ing time con­straints as being too much of a hur­dle.

I believe, or hope at least, that I am cos­mopoli­tan enough to be able to pick up anoth­er pas­sion, should the need arise. Passions are my drug; some­thing that I can get into, be good at, stand out in, make a dif­fer­ence at. I’ve always need­ed that form of recog­ni­tion. I’ve always need­ed to know that I’m good at some­thing. Perhaps this need will go away when I gain some much need­ed self-con­fi­dence, when I can accept my past, and choose to be the per­son that I am.

No one said it would be fast.