Evelyn: Don't worry about 'why' when 'what' is right in front of you. (The Shape of Things)

Friday, February 23, 2007

Deconfusing the confusion inside


Time. Time. So little time. Yet time is so slow...
I miss...
I want time to go faster now and then stop. But wait, it is so. It stops when I see you... it stops and then something fills me up. With love, hope, faith. I...

I miss me. I miss you. I miss the past, present, and future within us. I miss everything. And I'm so tired that it barely hurts. And I'm smiling, you know, the beautiful smile; I feel so alive!

---

You fight with yourself for something for so long, and think that you'll keep it up, keep believing, keep fighting, and when you succeed you don't know what to say. How to react. Nothing. Nothing!
I am naked in front of you, and I don't even know if I want to cover myself or to let you see...

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I'm not sure I'm ready for this. How would I know when I'm ready? Every night I go to sleep without knowing what I'll be feeling the morning after. I wake up and wonder what happened that night, where was I, where were you, where we were...

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Breaking away from a world is hard. But coming back might be even harder, no matter how much faster it could be...

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Fragments. Pieces. Of the same puzzle? Hope so.
That's what I've got. And I can't put them together. What's missing?

---

Thank God life gives me this chance: to wait for everything to come to me and make me feel and think again, to wait for the Universe to find me again; not that I've lost myself, but I must be somewhere very dim. Somewhere... in the dark. It seems that I just can't find the will to look inside of me, anymore. And tomorrow I'll wake up feeling differently...

---

There are days when I can't focus on anything. There are periods of time that fly by, and then I look back and think something like: "wow, where did the last hour go?" Sometimes I'm in class. Or at home. In the car. In bed. Taking a shower. Eating. Dreaming. Walking. Feeling. Thinking. Being...
Everywhere I am I can't be without you. Yet this strikes me so bad, so big that I'm almost blind. I can still remember, I can try to feel everything I felt once again, but it will never be the same.
Should it? I don't know. But I feel it shouldn't. I think we're supposed to make a new path for ourselves now. To find... a new way. More our way than it ever was before. Our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions. Our plans (yep, we don't have many actual 'plans', but...). Our lives... our whole lives are just beginning. And all that is so new and so exciting, and so big... that I'm not sure I can even begin to comprehend it.
It's overwhelming!

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Sometimes I just want to be alone. Alone with myself so I can be with you.

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Sometimes I just want to be alone. Alone. Alone with myself.

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Sometimes I just want to be alone. Alone. Without myself...

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Sometimes...

---

Pupi.

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I would love to read you, think you, feel you. Write me, anything. (And yes, I'm writing to you. Don't wonder who! If you're reading this, I'm writing to you!)
Maybe you don't realize this but I'm helpless. I'm so helpless that I'll keep writing you even if you hate me. Even if you ignore me. I'll always be here. Here for you...

---

I realize my life means a couple of things first and many many many many many others after that. A while ago, I think I was in 11 grade (so that makes it 3 years ago almost), I wrote about what means most to me in this life. There were three things: being needed/loved(1), knowledge(2), creativity/nature(3). Here's a short explanation about each of them:
1. "In viata de pe pamant, excluzand viitorul meu ca fiinta spirituala, suflet, in Rai sau Iad, prima mea prioritate este sa ma simt necesar." (In my earthly life, excluding my future as a spiritual being, or my soul, in Heaven or Hell, my first priority is to feel I'm necessary.)
2. "E pe locul doi, fiindca fara cunoastere nu pot indeplini prima parte."(Second place because without knowledge I cannot fulfill the first part.)
"Cunoasterea aici cuprinde cateva domenii mari si late: psihologia umana, pe primul loc, la mare distanta de urmatoarele (era inainte, iar acum s-au apropiat celelalte), informatica, matematica, engleza, practica materiala (prin asta se intelege cat de bine ma descurc de unul singur cu materialismul [adica generic vorbind banii, sau gatitul, s.a.]). "(Here, knowledge embraces a couple of big areas: human psychology, first, followed by computer science, math, english, and practical stuff (anything materialistic [e.g. cash, cooking, etc.]).)
3. "Creativitatea consta la mine in randamentul folosirii resurselor." (Creativity, from my perspective, includes the ratio/efficiency with which I use my capabilities.) To put it simple, the outside brought inside through the first two, the way I see the world resonate with my own self.
*** Excerpted from an old chapter

It's interesting, for me, to notice that even since back then I knew a lot about who I am. It's amazing that, to some extent, I am that same guy. And what's also a big thing is how the first is the only independent part of myself that always surfaces, through anything. I believe in love... I believe in love as a reason to be here, in a way. And anytime I don't quite get why I am this way, something happens, and It shows me again. It who? Dunno. The Universe, God? One and the same, maybe...
Whenever the course of events lets me down, the second and third parts of me came to the aid of the first one. And each one depends on the ones above it... which is why the first one is ... everything :)
Even though I'm essentially the same, some things changed...

The "new" me:
1. Love. Hope. Faith. (it changed the orientation compared to "the old number 1")
2. Knowledge. Spirit. Will. (Metaphysical) desire.
3. The world as an opportunity. The Universe as the "other". The purpose of everything else.

1. Although my reason for being is not only this, love, hope and faith are essentially the three things that make me... me. I believe I'm made to live life as everything, get involved as much as I can, put my heart in it and not take it back. Live it till the end. That's love. Hope... hope that I will make it through. "Hope is what makes us wake up in the morning", says a famous quote, hope is what one needs to believe in love during those hardest moments. Faith is what you need when everything else fails. Do you know that song: "Have a little faith in me"? Sometimes, love hurts, hope is almost nothing, and we run away. And then faith kicks in, as the last drop in the ocean... the last piece of you above sea level, perhaps. This trio is not mine, originally, but it's now a part of me. I know it's also in the bible, but, as it happens with me all the time, the people I care most about bring me my beliefs. This also works the other way: my beliefs bring around people I can bond with most. I think this happens to many of us, honestly...

2. All those are intertwined into a strong... web. Knowledge encompasses my unceasing curiosity, cause I almost never get sick of learning new things, understanding life, and feeling my own reality, or imagining other people and their world.
Spirit is the tiny thread that climbs on the ladder of life, on its way swirling around other spirits, yours perhaps, maybe, actually hopefully finding a dear company, and pushing forward through the web of the Universe...
Will is... not so much free will, but will as the strength and ambition to move on through life, the part that is possible because of the LHF.
The (metaphysical) desire is strongly connected to all the first three.
Metaphysical = Literally, beyond the physical realm, beyond that which we can realize or discover with our five senses. Also, a branch of philosophy which studies the “beingness” or inherent nature of reality. (Google definition)
Don't think of desire in the literal term of wanting something to posess. Rather, desire in the metaphysical sense means wanting to give yourself to that something or someone, making you a part of it, instead of grabbing and pulling it towards you. This may sound generic or too broad, so you can imagine a metaphysical desire as the reward of you meaning more than just yourself, the spiritual significance of, say, the cup you drank milk in every day when you were a kid. If you can give yourself to something/someone without expecting anything in return, you remain there, and you gain so much more. Because, see, whenever you expect return, you are actually less, regardless if you receieve it or not! I'll write about this soon, only I haven't researched enough. But if you want to look into it, read about intentionality and psychism, works by Francisco Romero and Emmanuel Levinas.

3. This is kind of equivalent to the creativity I chose before. The idea is that the Universe is here and it gives me the opportunity to be a part of it. Thus, I intend to look at it as if it were at least as great as I am, and give it at least big a chance as it gives me. So to speak, the "other" is not to be reduced to "myself", by similarity or anything else. That is disconsidering the whole nature of the Universe. I'm not sure I can even comprehend what the Universe means, much less make sense of its little parts. At least I should not disrespect it. And the impossibility of KNOWING something entirely is a source of infinite creativity. I hope you understand this.
I'm still not sure of how to explain and fit in my belief that, even though you can't KNOW something entirely, you can FEEL it. Or him/her... It's a naive belief, perhaps, but I feel that, even though our senses are limited, there is a... way... special way, through which you can really be something else... someone else... oh and that sounds so beautiful to me... I'm such a romantic kid!

So, this is where my reasoning ends today, and here's another part of me heading out to you...

Sink into it! (expand)

Friday, February 16, 2007

One of those moods

Wednesday
I'm at school. I'm just in one of those moods after the philosophy course. As I was listening to the teacher lecturing us on Francisco Romero's philosophy...

He also got into Kierkegaard, Derrida, Descartes, Husserl, Hegel, etc.
Kierkegaard said "Subjectivity is untruth".
Quote
Subjectivity, inwardness, is the truth. Is there a still more inward expression for this? Yes, there is. If subjectivity is seen as the truth, we may posit the opposite principle: that subjectivity is untruth, error. Socratically speaking, subjectivity is untruth if it fails to understand that subjectivity is truth and desires to understand itself objectively. But now we are presupposing that subjectivity in becoming the truth has a difficulty to overcome in as much as it is in untruth. So we must work backwards, back to inwardness. Socratically, the way back to the truth takes place through recollection, supposing that we have memories of that truth deep within us.
EndQuote
- from here

In the analysis of truth, Romero discusses the psychism: intentional and pre-intentional. This got me thinking about the implications of philosophy itself, for some reason, and I questioned myself: "Why do I enjoy every course so much?" What I found is that philosophy offers a perspective to interpret everything around it. Like a series of schemes, each designed to interpret and justify that interpretation of reality. Obviously, the way we conceive the world is crucial in our attitude towards is. Such as I have sort of decided to take as many philosophy courses as I can afford, and read as much of it as I can. Hopefully I'll stand by this decision and I'll make it a rule to read philosophy whenever I've got time.

Though I already found my way, I'm at a point in my life when everything is confusing due to the horrendous number of meanings I can find. Now that I know my way, I am open to any thinking, I'm looking for the surroundings of my path, so to speak, looking for what I'm supposed to be looking for in my journey. I want to recognize what I'm interested in, and for this, philosophy is the best means. Realizing this, I'm slowly shifting some of my attention from the scientific evolution perspective to the philosophical perspective, a.k.a. our humble existence on Earth.

---
Thursday
Okay, now I'm home. And I could write forever. I've managed to let out what I've forcefully held in for so long it was almost bursting out of me. And I feel so much better. Yet I still need to write, more and more. When will it end?

Yesterday I read in philosophy how after an object exists for a certain period of time, and people observe it, attribute meaning to it, make it part of their culture - then the object gains an existence in itself. That's another way to express the power of creation in human beings - amazing!

It's so wonderful to learn how to feel again after a time when you were numb. The best things in my life always happened after a very depressing, boring, or monotonous period of time. Maybe best in contrast would be the right way to call it, though I'm pretty sure that fate made it such that those great times were also very great in themselves...
I've got so many thoughts and in such a random order. Yep, that's me. Always confusing my reader without the intention to do so. Let me see...

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It's funny how it takes so much work to close your heart, and a single second can open it up again.
The life within our soul is much more than life. We, as human beings, are capable of things that we can barely understand...

And maybe some of you dislike or misjudge this difference I point out between mind and soul. Maybe you think of the human being as just mind. Or mind and heart (well, where the soul is, although not exactly). Or mind, soul/heart, and spirit. Or just spirit. Whichever way, think of the soul as the part of you that feels and travels through those feelings. The spirit is somehow more general and rather not contained within ourselves, usually regarded as a guardian or a presence above our heads maybe. The mind is the easiest of all, right?

...So, I was saying, our soul is capable of much more than our mind thinks. The secret is (listen to this one) to not take yourself seriously. Every time you make a big fuss about the sudden feeling you've had, you're probably going to fail to understand it. Why is that?
It's interesting to notice that over involvement, tumultuous activity inside of yourself makes you feel so much alive (in the sense that time passes so much slower), but it also makes you see less of the actual soul you possess. Most of the times when you try to think about what you're feeling, you're practically looking for signs and question your heart about what it's doing. Blah blah blah, why are you feeling like this and that?

Want to know a secret? That's not the way to do it! Whenever you would like to understand yourself and your feelings better, open your heart to the "what if" and just put your mind aside, observe what your heart does, what it feels. Follow it.
Of course that may sound absurd. I mean, where's myself if I follow my heart? Is the heart its own entity? No. Of course not. The heart is the nucleus of our deepest feelings and our intricate design always ends with it. It's the center of our inner life and as long as you listen to it - the heart, a part of yourself which you cannot completely control (even though you'd so much like to, sometimes) - you will not just be happy, you will know thyself, what you represent, which way is your wind blowing and what to expect. Since, with evolution, human beings have gotten so complex, it is predictable to see that now so few people understand their hearts and get to think "hey, screw the heart, I can do so much more with my mind." No, you can't. You can control the heart more than the mind, yes. But that only means that others can do so in your place too. What do you make of that? If you like to be in control, you have to learn how to communicate with yourself. Because, just as you can't force someone else to feel, think or do something, you can't force yourself, or at least not without losing what you once had. Being in control is a good thing only if you don't cross some certain boundaries. If you're trying to control everything, even if it's just about yourself, you're not doing very well.
Let's put it this way. Can you recreate yourself? No! God can. God gave you these complex heart and mind to deal with, so unless you're God, you better get used to the idea that you're not almighty. No, only God is omnipotent. Hence, stop trying to have everything under control, you will almost certainly fail, every time. Knowing yourself is not an act of being bossy, of challenging yourself and following your own orders. You have to agree with yourself, to love yourself, to be patient with yourself and care about your own existence. It's also all part of what the society nowadays tends towards - freedom of the individual. If other times it was more important for groups to be free, now the focus lies on the individual: same-sex marriages, more rights for every citizen, equality, freedom of opinion, acceptance, and the list can go on (I just don't read the news:D)...
Care for yourself.

I just recently found out that the one girl in this world right for me will be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very hard to find. And to get. And to keep. And the reason I believe all that is because she has to have a couple of things that 99.9999999 of the people in this world don't have. She has to be capable of love, and understand how much that means and how much a part of oneself it becomes once present. She has to be able to live without me. She has to believe in me, at least half of how much I believe in her. She has to believe in love. And in people. She has to love people. And the world. I'm not even gonna start with the smart, cute, and adorable kinda things.
And then, I'd really really want her to have long hair. Love walks in the park, rain, snow, sunsets and sunrises; she should know how to be a kid but be able to act as an adult, and capable of doing the right things when the situation calls for it. She should be selfish enough not to let me go without a last kiss, and selfless enough to tell me everything she feels even if it hurts me like hell. She is everything. Have I already met her? I don't know. How do you know when you've met the girl of your life? You don't. You just feel it... I guess that relates to what I wrote above... I feel it now and I hope that she will stay.

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Friday
I'm just in one of those moods when I don't know what the next word I type will be. It just comes straight out. Here. And here. And here. Wow. That's fast. That's me... thinking... How fast could I be thinking? Sometimes when I wrote something I was so inspired that I knew, ahead with a few paragraphs, what I was going to write. I was so desperately concentrated on what I was writing because I didn't want to forget that last paragraph. It was the key scene. The thing of the things. Here, now, I have no plan. I'm just hoping this goes somewhere.

The way I figure it, someday, somehow, I will re-read my writings and - cling! - I'll have THE IDEA. The idea of a best-seller. THE BOOK I've always wanted to write but never before did. Gosh, I pray I'm right. Speaking of praying, I believe in God more and more lately. Could God be an entity that life teaches you exists, and those who don't believe in Him just ignore the signs? It's a definite possibility. Signs. I believe in signs too. They're not coincidences. It's all part of the reason you have to be patient with yourself, spend time and care about your inner being. Yet I'm always open to your point of view. So tell me, don't be silent. Silence is not golden on my blog.

Did I forget who I am? I think not. It doesn't feel like I did. But why, then, do I have trouble remembering what I thought yesterday? Wait. I lost my trail of thoughts. I forgot. I was going to write about a lot of things and now it just feels like I've only one thing to talk about. L - O - V - E.

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What do you see when you see what I see? What do you see when I see what you see?

This picture makes me shiver. It's called "Don't be afraid little girl", and I'm the type who gives credit, so, I got it from here, by MessedUpMind.
That's what I thought about a lot lately. The fear. Of life. Of distances. Of obstacles. What's fear, anyway? Can we defeat it? Some famous quote says "Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear." (Mark Twain) Fear is what? Not understanding? Not believing in yourself? Not thinking ahead? Most of the times you are not wrong to believe in yourself. You are wrong to believe in things blindly. If you're blind about yourself, you might be wrong. But don't be. Stare at yourself in the mirrow. What do you see? Are you afraid, little girl? Or little boy. This picture has so much meaning, I don't even need to tell you anthing else. You can see for yourself, in yourself, can't you? (whadda ya know, the title of my blog)

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No matter how confused I am, I've still learned something today. A lot of things. Right now I'm just thinking about one. Concerning myself. I've found a new passion: I want to meet, know, and understand people. Another disturbing discovery, for what could I be? A shrink? A therapist? I feel not only I can help people and understand them, but I can relate to most of them as well. I can bond with someone in a few minutes. And, whatever you're thinking, no, it does not imply any lying, cheating, or pretending. I've just been through a lot. At least, for my age. And I think this, somehow, states the new future of youngsters. They will have to deal with more and more, grow up faster, live as kids for a longer period of time. I think this is already happening in the US, more than anywhere else perhaps. People here all seem very young, at heart, so un-challenged. It's like they haven't yet had to deal with the hardships that other people have had to fight through.
It's sad, if you ask me, all people having to grow up faster. And work. Assume responsibilities. More and more countries in the world are beginning to employ teens for easy jobs. And even hard ones. I don't think that is right... I think we're trying to accelerate the world towards something we don't even know yet, and submitting our young to such a risk is not only irresponsible, but foolish, stupid, and unfair. Why should they have to go through all that? Why should the adult individual have increasingly more free time and the youngsters have less and less? Think about it, what's the best time of your life? Your 50's? I doubt it. At least for most people. But, anyway, this is a very big issue... too much to talk about just on a simple blog post. The pressures on the teenager nowadays are huge. Read Christoph Dufosse's Sfarsitul Orelor (L’heure de la sortie, School’s out) to get a picture of it. A strange picture of it.

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I want to learn. I want to master three wholly different areas. I want to be... as close to THE TRUTH as I can be. Yet that is not what I desire. I believe in love. And as long as I can, I will fight for it. Sure, there might be times when I give up, times when I can't handle THE TRUTH as a whole, when I only choose one side, like most of us humans do, and live with it, for a while. But, see, I think it's best to realize as much of anything as you can. To be able to accept someone else's interpretation. To really put your heart into it, and try to see it not only through the other's eyes, but through his mind and heart as well. To believe in the other like he was yourself. That's how Kant said we should treat others anyway, isn't it? As "ends in themselves, not as means to an end." How many times do you hear the phrase "Oh, if only someone could see it like I see it", "if only someone could see it through my eyes." It=life, love, the ocean, the sunset, the world, the passion, the excitement, the smell or taste even. How many times have you wished someone could live inside of you for a while and see everything through your eyes?
To me, really knowing and understanding something means knowing as many sides of its truth as possible. Yes. And then living it. And, pratically, you can never know every side => You can never know the truth. Which reminds me of a quote:
"1. Never tell everything at once." (Ken Venturi's Two Great Rules of Life).
You can never know everything. The truth. But you can feel it. That's how we're made, I think, to understand life better by living it, feeling it, being every moment. But that's not carpe diem. It's all part of being crazy responsibly. Doing what you do and not forgetting yourself along the way. And your responsibilities. And your beliefs. Your top three. Mine? Love, hope, faith (these three words have changed my life).

I am alive. And I am so glad to be alive that I can't actually describe it. What have I done today? Facts, there are so few I can barely count them. (Which reminds me, funny. Do you think that counting up to three is done so rarely that you'd actually have to think a bit to remember how to do it? I can't remember the last time I counted.) But what I realized is an entirely different thing. I am so glad to be in my shoes right now. I love the Universe. And how it works. And how lucky I am. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to have stories to tell, and now I think I do. I have the story of my life, which is very beautiful to me, and that is enough. I thank God for this day. I thank God for this story. And I thank you for being a part of it. This is so exciting! Oh wow!

---

I've thought about doing some pretty wacky things. And now's the perfect time to think and talk about them again. I wanna try bungee jumping. I wanna try sky diving. Scuba diving too, maybe. I wanna jump using a parachute. Drive at 200 miles per hour. Make love on an airplane. Visit an ice-water hotel (that is, a hotel made of ice). Ski. Pop a really big balloon. See a shark live. Spend a night on the bottom of Grand Canyon. Shoot with a bow and arrow. Be hypnotized. Kiss upside down. French. Jump from the second floor (or as high as possible without hurting myself). Eat on someone else's body, heh. Tear clothes. Sleep in a cave. Watch the rain lying down, on the ground. See an avalanche. Hug a tree - this one I did, but I'd do it again. Build a really big snowman. There's also a couple of weird things I'd like to try. And also some things with meeting people. I love to see people's reactions to what I do, and I mean that not in a "hey lemme test this bomb on this guy" way, but in a "i feel like being this way now" way. Get it? There's so much I can barely stop. I wanna try myself. Challenge myself. Prove myself that I can do so much. And that's not just for me. Right now, it's not just for me. But I want to be my own entity, even if I feel I depend on someone else. We all do, I think. Being happy is not a consequence of self-sufficiency. And, anyway, most people are not sufficient to themselves. If they were, they wouldn't need anything or anyone else in the world. Wow, not even things! Who can be that self-absorbed?

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I wish I could write a poem now. But I think I will go dream, instead. Dream of a beautiful world. And remember who I am. And why I'm here. And what I can do. I wanna be alive, so much alive! And I'll keep discovering who I am through philosophy. And life, and dreams. It's all too much now, but time will take care of me. It sure will...

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Wanna read some Romanian language posts about time? See this.

Sink into it! (expand)

Friday, February 09, 2007

The unexpected

Quote:
In psychology, there is a concept called learned helplessness, which arose from a series of animal experiments in the nineteen-sixties at the University of Pennsylvania...

... Dogs were restrained by a harness, so that they couldn't move, and then repeatedly subjected to a series of electrical shocks. Then the same dogs were shocked again, only this time they could easily escape by jumping over a low hurdle. But most of them didn't; they just huddled in the corner, no longer believing that there was anything they could do to influence their own fate. Learned helplessness is now thought to play a role in such phenomena as depression and the failure of battered women to leave their husbands, but one could easily apply it more widely. We live in an age, after all, that is strangely fixated on the idea of helplessness: we're fascinated by hurricanes and terrorist acts, and epidemics like SARS - situations in which we feel powerless to affect our own destiny. In fact, the risks posed to life and limb by forces outside our control are dwarfed by the factors we can control. Our fixation with helplessness distorts our perception of risk. "When you feel safe, you can be passive," Rapaille says of the fundamental appeal of the S.U.V. "Safe means I can sleep. I can give up control. I can relax. I can take off my shoes. I can listen to music." For years, we've all made fun of the middle-aged man who suddenly trades in his sedate family sedan for a shiny red sports car. That's called a midlife crisis. But at least it involves some degree of engagement with the act of driving. The man who gives up his sedate family sedan for an S.U.V. is saying something far more troubling - that he finds the demands of the road to be overwhelming. Is acting out really worse than giving up?
EndQuote
Even though the passage mostly relates to driving safety, and how S.U.Vs are much more dangerous than cars - easier to control, the appearance of safety and helplessness is very broad (as the article itself says). It's easy to give up what you believe and adopt something that seems safer or more comfortable. It's easier to just enjoy life and run away because you can't handle it. It's easy to pretend the past never happened, give up, and fight for something new. Or just think of it as "moving on". But is that what we should be doing instead of "acting out"?

---

I've spent a lot of the past weeks trying to understand yet another curiosity about human nature. Also trying to figure out who I am. Looking back, I've changed so much from who I was 4-5 years ago. I'm more confident, more of a believer. Back then I was more of a hoper. And as I looked through my past I've learned one critical aspect of understanding oneself, or anyone else as a matter of fact:
It is much easier to understand someone by understanding what that one is thinking, by looking above the words, and seeing the idea behind the thought, the original launch site. Descending into another being's soul (or mind), or even my own, is a whole process. It's like imagining yourself in a blank room - just white, no shape, no time, no space - and then coloring the surroundings with impressions, ideas, facts, hunches, feelings, anything will do. On the whole, you start to get a picture of who the person is and how that correlates to you - even more likely since you are in the middle of the room. Now, you might not be one of those people that like putting themselves in other people's shoes, but I am. And I love doing it, struggling to understand, feeling what the other is feeling. What's interesting is that 99% of the time this doesn't necessarily have to do anything with analyzing the other person. By actually trying to live in that other world I get such a good picture of it that I don't have to think about his or her inner feelings and thoughts, instead find myself already knowing some of them.

I'm also a believer in self-education. Since probably most of us are twisted human beings, either because of our (often traumatizing) childhood experiences, or surprisingly bad things happening one after the other, or maybe just the plain old go-with-the-flow-forget-who-you-are-along-the-way kind of thing, I strongly promote (slow-)careful-paced self-control and self-manipulation. Even though that may sound evil (>:)) to some of you, it's not... not in the right hands that is. And love yourself. Appreciate yourself. Don't forget that you are most at knowledge of what's inside of you and always exert your ability to see yourself through others - the better you're at it the more confident you will be in what you do. I've recently been told how important it is not to use strong words such as 'never', 'always', 'very'. It's always very important never to forget that :))

Time was slow, life was empty, I guess the beginning is often the hardest part. For a while I thought that the universe was holding me back. Now I see IT has actually been pushing me forward - thank you God, for your blessing. Aside from the sudden boost of energy that I had (I've been sleeping much less because of that, I felt so well rested, amazing!), I've been more determined to fight for myself and to see that I can do anything: without boundaries, without any inhibitions that I might've had when I was younger. Yes, damn it! I am a fighter! And I will keep being who I've always been, I will keep doing the things I've done and start the things I want to do.

Sometimes the best way of arguing something to someone is through that someone's words, through his/her thinking. In writing whatever it is I'm trying to write, I've usually thought that when the target of the essay is "any reader", I can only be myself. And I consider myself a bit better when it comes to person-to-person discussion, perhaps a reason I think I could become a therapist or something similar. Today I've added the "Contact me" link on this blog. You can write me personally... Here's a quote from Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic: "... the dimension of the imagination is much more complex than those of time and space, which are very junior dimensions indeed..." Sometimes the best way to understand someone is by abandoning yourself and living through their eyes, through their imagination. That someone might even help you with a good description, heh.

I've taken a math exam today. Quite predictably, last night at 11 p.m. I was still studying for it (typical student attitude, isn't it?), when I noticed how fast I went through the book. It has about 800 pagess. Addmitedly, I didn't go through all of them, yet after an hour I almost did 200. And it took me 4 hours, skipping some chapters too. Of course it can be done faster than that. And I only skipped through, carefully reading all the definitions I found and looking at the hardest exercices (if I could do the hardest, the others wouldn't be a problem, right?). It has been a while since I thought math, or learned anything fast-paced at all, except reading and writing essays. I remembered why I like it so much: I enjoy building up on the skeleton of reasoning - in math's case: math reasoning. It's like a sort of pyramid, you learn and learn and build up until you reach the top. It won't fall if you ommit a couple of bricks along the way, but it would not last that long; nor would it be easier to keep building up afterwards. Try being good at math, then not doing it for quite a while, then coming back, and see how easy it seems to catch up, and how creative it is. That's how it was for me, I was in top shape, really! And I hope I'll pass. It was actually fun. Missed it...


Recently, I was hit by a wall, metaphorically speaking. "Carpe diem" - Live (in) the moment. That's what I hear, that's what I've heard. Unfortunately, this great phrase often has to do with frustration, abandonment, the refusal to fight or the need for plain ol' human enjoyment. I believe we all do it from time to time, whether we like it or not. However, a life lived by such standards is usually very empty - that's the life of a non-believer. What makes people non believers? Failing. Being overpowered. Lost. Exhausted. Underestimating obstacles. Overestimating themselves, or living in a dreamworld for too long. I think this too goes like a roller coaster: the 'downs' are those moments when you just don't believe anything you used to anymore, yet justify every act of yours by the same phrase: "carpe diem", either in this form or in relation to others. Say, time - it's about time I did this, or age - I'm too young for this, or space - the obstacles are too much for me. Then the 'ups' would be those moments when life has so much meaning that you feel it through every inch of your body.
So, my advice to you is: don't "carpe diem" through life for too long, or you'll end up lost and empty. One point of being alive is making a difference, and to believe in making that difference. Wandering around undecided about anything is wasting time. Unless, of course, you are searching for what you're supposed to do (hate this clichee, give me a better one). It's true: life's much more enjoyable if you just take in everything life has to offer, make it a rule not to sacrifice too much or to keep yourself within the limits that you think of yourself as being - those are all killers of the truth, the bigger truth, which, in my opinion, encompasses every little thing there is to know, feel, and understand in this world. I just realised last week how much I believe in love. And that's been true since back then, 4-5 years ago. I believe in devoting yourself to whatever it is that you are involved in, to believe in what you do and follow life with care and involevement. True, there is too much happening and so little room in your mind (or heart, although...) for all of this. Uhm... yeah. NO! Actually, your mind is unlimited, as far as you consider the short life you're gonna live, you are 99% unlikely to ever fill up your head fully. Since we probably use little of our brain for focused thinking and reasoning - because we're lazy, not to talk about memory, you're unlikely to ever run out of space :). So, you can't really put too much brain into it. And the heart is even bigger, as most human beings are capable of a wide range of emotions and remember them to a very great extent. We're fascinating beings, you and me! Really! Be happy for that! Live life. And believe in yourself. And in life. I can't tell you to believe in love, you might feel something else is most important. There might be. There's so much to fight for... and so few fighters.

I want to learn to write with my left hand. It's one of my wishes from childhood actually, cause I was originally left handed, but was sort of forced to write with my right hand. And now I want both. Ambidextrous, that's how it's called.
Too much talk about me, I feel. But I hope that you can see yourself somewhere along these lines. Understanding someone else is a priceless thing sometimes. We can learn something even from the people we least expect to teach us. The moment will come when the unexpected happens. That's life, isn't it?

Sink into it! (expand)

Friday, February 02, 2007

Myself

Have you ever had a Déjà vu?

Howdy y'all... I've put a new look on this blog, although I said I wouldn't. But, then again, I was lost. Now I might have found myself again, yet I'm confused. A bit. Funny, isn't it?
I also wrote about the design and about me a bit, check out the About me page.

Lately I've asked myself (over and over) Who am I?, and mostly Who am I for you? And I asked others as well. Gee, it's so nice to know that I'm constantly misjudged and misinterpreted by most people around me...

... but I'm sort of asking for it. It takes a long time for someone to get to know me (or at least to think so), and I always end up doing something new and apparently prove them wrong. Again. "I didn't think you were this way..."
This has simultaneously been my excess and my deficiency... a problem and a solution, ability and inability to recognize who I am, more in the eyes of others rather than my own. I know much of who I am, but others don't. I guess it's true for everyone, to some extent, that people see as much of who you are as possible, but almost never all. However, for me, it's weirder than that...

I suffer from Déjà vu (since I was very little), meaning I feel something happening now has previously taken place in the past, in a strange way. Those of you who have had any Déjà vu feeling at all know how it is like. When I was little I was very confused about this and nothing more - I just figured "hey, I must've dreamt about this before", or "this happened yesterday too", but I knew I couldn't exactly point out what it was that made me feel I had been there before, what triggered the feeling. For some periods of time I thought I was paranoid, or weird. There were weeks when I had a Déjà vu each day, which was amazing. Those weeks were golden for inspirational writing and thinking in general. I always thought Déjà vu's helped me figure out a lot of things about myself that otherwise would probably be unknown to me. A Déjà vu is not exactly like a revelation, even though it feels like that a bit. You're somewhere, sometime and a minor detail of what you're seeing, hearing, or feeling in any way triggers your brain - "this happened before", and you start detaching from reality...

... or at least that's how it works for me. And then I think and think, try to look back and remember: where did I stumble upon this again, what happened before that got me here... again. Again is the key word. Hence, with time, I desperately (well, not quite, but a bit) tried to figure out what made me have them, and I feel I've constantly gotten better at it. It's great. For one thing because some of the Déjà vu's revealed that I really had been there before (once I remember walking nearby a bus station with a friend, and a bus with a certain number passed by, which actually DID happen again, and the friend remembered that too), and for another thing I remember events that I dreamt about or places I've imagined previously, which I wouldn't have remembered otherwise. The Déjà vu can also be related to premonitions, since, if you feel that you've experienced something before, you could think you know how's the test you're going to take, or what will be the outcome of a challenge you're about to face. Indeed, I have taken a test which I had dreamt before, and it really didn't feel at all like I'm solving problems for the first time. I thought I remembered each answer instead of making it up, and after the test I really didn't remember what the questions were, but I did remember the answers.

As a matter of fact, it's important to point out my belief in Déjà vu's since it answers my question: Why am I this way?
Intense events that happened when I was a kid have a strong influence in my life now. In this case, it made me question the nature of life, reality, and reason. I believe I'm a very open minded person, and one of the other things that makes me... me is my belief that you can pretty much be any way you want. And the weird things I experienced when I was young make me treat weirder things that happen now with much more understanding. But they also make me much harder to understand in the eyes of others.

I've read on Wikipedia that "Many theorists believe that the memory anomaly occurs when one's conscious mind has a slight delay in receiving perceptive input. In other words, the unconscious mind perceives current surroundings before the conscious mind does. This causes one's conscious self to perceive something that is already in one's memory, even though it was in one's memory only a split second before it was perceived."
"the unconscious mind perceives ... before the conscious" - hey, that's exactly what happens to me! Or at least the scientific description of it. My unconscious mind... that sonds scary, it's something in me that I can't control... something in every human being. I'm dreaming, or I'm absent, and then I perceive and it
unconsciously hits me... Thankfully, I don't seem to suffer from jamais vu! But I've experienced all three Déjà vu's: Déjà vécu, senti and visité (seen, felt or visited), each of them much more than once. For me 'felt' includes smelled, touched, tasted - all of them! And for most of the time I can remember when and where, or how come. Especially for the most recent ones, although it's been a while...
It's all part of being myself!

What does Déjà vu have to do with how others perceive me? Well, even without Déjà vu I have experienced and lived strange things. As I said in the About me, my life's not very unusual, it's just original, like everyone else's I guess. But I've met a lot of people and almost none of them intuited who I am right. This doesn't mean that they judged me wrong or I thought that they did, it only means they told me, or appeared to be surprised when they found out new things about me (what can I say, maybe I'm exciting, maybe not). Only a few intuited who I am, most of which are my friends. Another couple or so had an idea about parts of me... Well, I probably won't intuit who you are either, I'm just saying this so you can see how hardly ever people really know who you are...

So I have a question for you: How do you know you've found yourself?
It sounds like a basic question, yet I have a few issues I'd like you to consider:
1. Since you probably found yourself after an intense event that changed your life, and then see how the way you feel is so right and so much better than what you had before, you believe that this way is THE WAY to be and live. But how do you know there's no better way? And, isn't it possible that your inertia, your desire to remain where you already feel well, safe, and perhaps even happy - all these make you just not ask this question anymore?
2. Finding yourself often means knowing what you will do and make of your life further on, what's your character and what represents you. However, after a while of being the same self you end up knowing lesser and lesser about who you are. How do you keep in touch with yourself once, supposedly, you have found who you're supposed to be? Your need for certainty and knowledge of this certainty might undermine your ability to understand the new and the unknown. If you've found yourself and you're not changing that (well, at least not much), what's your relationship to you from now on? 'Cause if you've found your character, you've got to have a relationship to it, erm... him/her :) based on what? if you already know...

So I think maybe nobody really knows who he/she is, but just thinks so (in the best of cases; most people recognize they haven't found themselves). I'm beginning to believe that finding yourself is not a teenager-type-o' event, but rather a lifetime achievement, just like happiness... not a goal, but a path. What do you think?

Sink into it! (expand)