Thursday, March 31, 2011

In Which I Am A Wave Rather Than A Particle

"People, even adults, rarely do what they are told to do if they don't actually want to do the right thing. And many of our thoughts and emotions that are going on in parallel are in complete conflict with each other and we just hope through repeated training that the right ones win out and suppress the other ones." - My dad


"People alive are better than people not alive." -Craig Benzine


Note: This post is tagged "just ignore me." Please feel free to do so. :)


Here's a cool site my grandma sent me the link for. It simply gives you a new, interesting word every day. Today's is "waithood" - the period after college in which things are put on hold until a job and therefore also money can be obtained. Word Spy is somewhere between Urban Dictionary and Webster's in terms of content.


This morning I wrote the beginning of a song, conjugated a bunch of Latin verbs, finished early which then enabled me to send the song off to rock4ever95 and to read Kenny's most recent blogpost, all before 9 a.m. That is what I call a productive morning. That's also what I call utilizing the stagnant minutes during 1st period to the max.


Upon reading aforementioned post, I started to laugh, because it's a much more general, eloquent version of what I meant to write about on here today. So I will take that (which you should go read, unless you are Kenny, in which case you should continue) and run.


He talks about how the self is in a constant state of flux, and speculates on whether or not we can be held accountable for something a past version of us did if we are now totally different people who don't condone the action at all. Personally, I very much hope we can't be held accountable, because I've done some things that I'm rather ashamed of/wish I hadn't. But I suppose that's normal.


I've written on here before about how I don't want to suddenly become an adult, completely separate from my teenage self. I don't want to perpetuate the "no one understands me" stereotype. I want to remember what it's like.


But that makes it sound like I want to remain completely the same, which isn't true either. Hopefully I will become a better person. Hopefully I will do less things that I'll later regret, and learn from those that I do without dwelling on them too much. Hopefully the person I will become will be more awesome than the person I am now, etc. etc. etc.


But the thing is, I am this person right now, and I rather value this identity, because if I'm not me, then I'm some form of dead (since I would consider being someone else the demise of that which is "me."). It's a paradox: I want to change and become better, but I want to hold onto that which is currently me, mainly because fundamental change is freaking scary.


So how do I attempt to solve this? I blog, and I journal, and I write, and I save keepsakes and other items simply to trigger memories. (Yet I hate having my picture taken-- why is that?)
And that's partially why I'm as open as I am on here, even though it sometimes worries me-- those archives on the right hold 374 ever so slightly different versions of me.
Weird thought, yes?


Which brings me to less of me rambling about what I want to talk about, and more of me talking to you:


Hi. Pleased to meet you. Reading a blog like this, I think and hope, is a unique experience to watch a journey. Maybe it's an interesting one, and maybe I'm boring and overly-verbose and you just haven't bothered to un-follow, but hey. This is a different kind of story than the ones people tend to read and write in novels. It's certainly not one that would ever be classified as "narrative," but it's a story nonetheless.

2 comments:

  1. First off, thank you! It is always nice to hear eloquent used to describe my writing.

    I don't think you have to worry about suddenly becoming an adult, it sneaks up on you insidiously. Not that I really have earned adult status yet myself, but I am startlingly left to my own devices to survive, so I am working on it.

    In regards to remembering who you were, I think that keeping a written record does help. On the other hand, sometimes it is kinder to let yourself forget, I have certainly cringed when I read something I wrote at how emo sounding past me often was. Not that present me doesn't totally rock the "sorry for self" emo vibe, but I don't notice it as startlingly until I get some distance from the present.

    The quote from your father reminds me of Aristotle's view on virtue. He felt that the truly virtuous person did what was right not from obligation, but from habit, and further, from enjoyment of that habit.

    Anyway, I am glad to be along on the journey where so many interesting thoughts abound!

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  2. (You're quite welcome.)
    Oh, very much agreed on letting yourself forget. I don't intend to re-read most of my stuff until I'm old. Or maybe I'll let my great-great grandchildren handle it. That's the form of immortality of my choice, I guess (although I certainly won't mind actually living beyond my current life-expectancy).

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