Posts tagged with "self-improvement"

Reversal: Part 1 (The Inexplicable Catalyst)

19. Have you ever been in love? Unfortunately.

—LBJ

Well, here we are again.

I used to think that love was only pain. That was when the only expe­ri­ences I had with love were bad, when every­thing I ever felt was unre­quit­ed. The fact that I felt this way was rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fact that I had­n’t got­ten over those feel­ings at the time. How child­ish, inex­pe­ri­enced, con­fused, imma­ture I was. This feel­ing shaped much of my per­son­al­i­ty in the last few years, although I’ve recent­ly been able to come out of such an emo­tion­al block­ade.

Having a rela­tion­ship where most feel­ings, how­ev­er con­fused, how­ev­er tor­ren­tial, how­ev­er tem­po­rary, were shared, has allowed me to come to terms with the past. Such an inci­dent has ben­e­fit­ed me great­ly, has let me know that I’m not so numb any­more, that it’s pos­si­ble for such a rela­tion­ship to exist even if I may nev­er expe­ri­ence it again. Perhaps I was so scared that I would nev­er fall in love again that any such expe­ri­ence would have shocked me into get­ting over what had hap­pened in the past.

Now I embrace the feel­ing of love, embrace the fact that the sim­ple act of lis­ten­ing to a song can fill me such poignan­cy, com­plete­ly regard­less of whether it’s good or bad. Not only do I enjoy being able to care for some­one, I enjoy miss­ing them as well, as dif­fi­cult as it can be. I like the fact that some­thing can turn me ter­ri­bly, illog­i­cal­ly weak. Every emo­tion involved, whether it’s plea­sur­able or painful, fills me with the urge to write, to cre­ate, to express. This is what I look for. This is what I need.

Now only good can come of love.

The New Freedom

I did­n’t mean to talk about this so soon, but after con­tem­plat­ing this sub­ject for a while I feel as if I’ve done enough think­ing to prop­er­ly speak about it. I do feel like my mind is clear on this issue, that I’ve giv­en myself enough time to under­stand things well from as many aspects as pos­si­ble. This is some­thing that I had­n’t real­ly thought about in more than half a year, but more recent events have sort of spurred my mind on the sub­ject again.

Hah. It’s almost humourous, how imma­ture I seem back then to myself now, that it has­n’t even been an entire year and yet my mind­set has changed com­plete­ly in a total­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. I used to be so scared that I was indeli­bly affect­ed by a past expe­ri­ence, that I could nev­er change what I felt and thought. And yet I feel as if I see things much more clear­ly now. I feel less bur­dened, less biased, less neg­a­tive.

This does­n’t even have any­thing to do with hope or with chance, things which I dwelt on so much before. I’ve been able to see past these mat­ters, and free­dom from such things is great. Odd, that an expe­ri­ence that may have dam­aged or dis­cour­aged me has been able to resolve all my wor­ries.

And now, what has changed?

I’ve done what I thought I would nev­er do again.

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.

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.