Posts tagged with "self-evaluation"

Awakening: The Reborn Dreamer

I wake up every day look­ing at Death, and you know what? He ain’t half bad.

—Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp

Its not until you lose every­thing that you are free to do any­thing.

—Tyler Durden, Fight Club

I used to take pride in the fact that I felt like I could die sat­is­fied any day. I was at a place in my life where I could­n’t ask for more, and there was a tremen­dous sense of over­all sat­is­fac­tion. I had every­thing that I deserved. After that, all I had left to expe­ri­ence, every fall morn­ing caught or tear shed, was a bonus. Of course, the clos­est I had ever come to death was a minor case of pneu­moth­o­rax, which I imag­ine is as fatal as pinch­ing one’s skin between two Lego pieces while build­ing the Death Star, so this feel­ing was nev­er actu­al­ly put to the test. I’m sure I’d feel dif­fer­ent­ly if I ever came fright­en­ing­ly close to the end of my life, although just how much remains a mys­tery.

Perhaps this grew from a cogent sense of frailty, per­pet­u­at­ed by all the sto­ries of freak acci­dents echoed through­out the media. The stu­dent who impaled his heart on a num­ber 2 pen­cil while try­ing to catch a foot­ball in the mid­dle of class. The gen­er­al who drowned in a pool of his own blood from a nose­bleed on his wed­ding night. Even the pres­i­dent of the United States almost choked to death on a pret­zel. To dis­tance myself was the only way I could deal with it.

The prob­lem, I’ve only recent­ly dis­cov­ered, was that this left me alien­at­ed and unat­tached. I have no dreams, noth­ing to live for. Not even a goal to work towards. During high-school, the goal was to get into a uni­ver­si­ty. After uni­ver­si­ty, the goal was to get a ful­fill­ing job. After the job was the house. Now that I own a house, it feels like the rest of my life has been laid out in front of me. No risks, no sur­pris­es. I appre­ci­ate every­thing that I’ve been giv­en, but it feels like it’s been a lit­tle too easy. Even my most sig­nif­i­cant goal was rather sud­den­ly accom­plished this year. As Logan Pearsall Smith once wrote in his book Afterthoughts, “How many of our day­dreams would dark­en into night­mares if there seemed any dan­ger of their com­ing true!”. A simul­ta­ne­ous ful­fill­ment and dis­sat­is­fac­tion.

I pre­sent­ed this prob­lem to Pat, and from his infi­nite wis­dom (at 24, no less) I real­ized that one should nev­er live for what might hap­pen. Otherwise, a per­son would go crazy. Of course, to tru­ly live this way, it does­n’t hurt to be a bit of a fatal­ist. Having this belief means that one can only do the best that they can, and to go means that it was meant to be.

For now, I’ve been keep­ing myself occu­pied, until I can fig­ure out what I want in the last rest of my life. Blessed is the per­son who is too busy to wor­ry in the day­time and too sleepy to wor­ry at night. It’s only now that I’ve dis­cov­ered that I need a few dreams to sur­vive.

And I can only hope to nev­er reach them.

The Awakening Series

  1. Introduction
  2. Cause
  3. The Reborn Dreamer

Stepping Through The Shadow, Part 2/2: The Friend Aspect

I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be para­noid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.

—Tool, Forty Six & 2

Unfortunately, I’m not myself when I’m around my friends.

With them, I’m hap­pi­er, more con­fi­dent, extro­vert­ed. It’s usu­al­ly only with them that I can test the bound­aries of social con­duct, because I know that they under­stand me, accept me, and are will­ing to back me all the way. Sometimes, I end up say­ing some pret­ty embar­rass­ing things off-the-cuff, things made more embar­rass­ing by the fact that even my friends aren’t laugh­ing. But to find the bound­ary, one has to cross it at some point. And it’s such a fuck­ing pow­er trip to know that I’m test­ing myself as well, test­ing how far I’m will­ing to go, some­thing that I can only do with the right peo­ple.

Without my friends, I recede into my shell. I require them at par­ties, events, social func­tions just so I can inter­act with peo­ple nor­mal­ly. When I do find myself in absence of their pres­ence, I force myself to be social. I con­sid­er how I would behave if I was with them, and pro­ceed with cau­tion. It’s slow­ly get­ting eas­i­er for me when I’m by myself. Perhaps I’m gain­ing my own self-con­fi­dence when I’m not around them.

Something I that can only gain when I’m with them.

The Stepping Through The Shadow Series

The Uncertainty of Complacency

What do I have left to do today? I’m not real­ly sure. I’ll roll my frozen choco­late mix­ture into truf­fles tomor­row. I should show­er tonight. Fold up some clothes. Throw expired trans­fers in the garbage.

Sometimes it feels as if my life has become sim­ple, and all I have to do is turn on auto-pilot. I don’t real­ly have any­thing to wor­ry about. Money, com­pan­ion­ship, school, health, every­thing I used to think about con­stant­ly before have all ceased to be prob­lems for me. I even have peo­ple that I would con­sid­er friends.

Lately it feels as if I’ve reached a sort of equi­lib­ri­um, where any­thing can hap­pen but I’ll be able to deal with any prob­lems that arise. This is quite a change from before, where I was always wor­ry­ing, turn­ing over in my head the things that both­ered me.

It’s almost a form of com­pla­cen­cy. However, this is a sense of total com­pla­cen­cy, unlike even my pre­vi­ous com­pla­cent feel­ings. I’m unsure of whether or not this is a tem­po­rary thing, and how long it will last if this is true. Being com­pla­cent means that the excite­ment I used to feel, from the strug­gle to con­trol unde­sir­able emo­tions, to the ner­vous­ness asso­ci­at­ed to attrac­tion, to the sim­ple uncer­tain­ty of pass­ing a course, has most­ly lev­eled out. These were all scary things, but exhil­a­rat­ing nonethe­less. This com­pla­cen­cy is dif­fer­ent from feel­ing numb because it’s on a dif­fer­ent lev­el. Numbness deals more specif­i­cal­ly with emo­tion, where­as com­pla­cen­cy refers to life in gen­er­al, includ­ing emo­tion. This means that com­pla­cen­cy is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing.

I’m just not sure what to make of it as of yet.

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.

The Leaking Accent

My English accent seems to be com­ing through in my Cantonese more and more now. I’m not sure if being sur­round­ed by Cantonese speak­ing peo­ple has sim­ply made me more aware of my accent, or whether my tongue is tired from speak­ing so much. When I’m rushed to say some­thing, it’ll come out so slop­pi­ly that it’s unin­tel­li­gi­ble. It’s rather frus­trat­ing when my Cantonese seems to be get­ting worse, although the fact that I can rec­og­nize my improp­er pro­nun­ci­a­tions means that I can at least work on them.