Posts tagged Thoughts

Between conversations with female friends and the ever suffering misery of my cousin’s “female problems”, I have nothing but admiration for all women have to go through just as part of their normal bodily function. Just the idea that it’s perfectly normal for women to spontaneously bleed on a regular basis makes me queasy, to say nothing of the cramps or the pain of child birth.

Any man who thinks it’s easy to be a women should just go and peruse the “Feminine Care Products” section of a given store and actually think about what women need those for. And then go home and bake their wife/girlfriend/mother/all of the above some muffins or something. It won’t equal what they go through, but it will at least be a good start on an apology.

I really hate it when people tell me that I just need to “live in the now.” 

Now is an ephemeral thing.  Now is gone before you can even think about it, before we even realize it.  Now lasts for so short a time that it may as well not even exist.  For practical purposes it doesn’t exist.  It cannot be defined and attempt to define it is nullified by virtue of it’s ever shifting nature.

Making matters worse is the train allegory that I have been repeatedly exposed to.  Where people claim that life is like a train and that the part that matters, the now, is the point that you are moving down the track.

But I reject this notion.  It shows a hopeless fatalism in likening life to a fixed journey on a preconceived track.

There are only two fixed points in life: Birth and Death and the rest is a complex set of branching paths, like the intersections of a road.  In fact, rather than seeing life as a journey on a train, life is more like driving a car.  You have fixed starting and ending points, but the turns you take at intersections are entirely up to you.  Sometimes you get into an accident, true, or the road is closed, but there are always more options.  Drive down to the next intersection and come back around.

And just like driving a car, it pays to have your eyes on the road ahead of you and keeping your eyes on the rear view mirror.  Thus just “living in the now” is terrible, because it means you aren’t paying attention to where you are going, or making choices on your journey.  If I were to restate the idea, I would say that one must live in the present. 

The present is not such a narrowly defined concept and it includes things in the immediate future.  It opens your view from just the chaos of the “now” to the interlacing patterns of the present, which, with an understanding of the patterns of the past can be understood and predicted.

In summery: Life is not fixed.  We have power.  That power is dependent upon our willingness to learn from the past and cast our gaze into the future rather than focus narrowly upon the ever shifting “now”.

As to the whole “So many likes and I’ll show you something special” thing.  I’ll just say that it’s the right of the presenter to present their presentation in whatever way they see fit.  

On the other hand, I inevitably feel disgust for people who demand praise before product.  I don’t care for being manipulated and made to beg.  It makes me think of bullies who take the last research book at the school library and refuse to share it until you tell them how much you like them.

I’m not saying that’s necessarily the intention here.  I’m sure there’s a perfectly legitimate reason to hold information ransom for nothing more than self-gratifying ego-stroking… I’m just not sure what it is.  I wonder how it would be if other people worked this way… “I’ve discovered a new species of beetle, but I won’t show anyone unless I get 1500 likes on my Facebook page.”

See, there are two kinds of bullies:  The kind that beat you up and take your lunch money, which we all hate.  And the kind that have something you want and will use it to make you do things for them.  It’s not good enough that you show them regular gratitude, you have to show them a sort of groveling, sniveling subservience before they’ll let you see, say, that comic you’ve always wanted to read. 

“Tell me how much you like me and I’ll let you look at my first issue Fantastic Four.”

It’s base manipulation and almost masturbatory ego-stroking which immediately puts me against whoever is making that kind of “deal”.  I would sooner never see whatever it is than submit to that kind of attitude.

I have a saying: The brightest light casts the darkest shadows.

I am beginning to realize that the secret to housework is in not in trying to do everything in one day, all at once.  Especially if you live on your own, the secret seems to be to realize that, no, after eight hours at work you’re not going to get all the dishes washed and all the laundry done and all the trash taken out and all the floors swept.  You have to accept that you can’t do everything.

That said, you can do something.  So do something today.  And then do something tomorrow. So you have a full trash can or yesterday’s dishes, fine.  Perhaps you have to prioritize one over the other, but if you keep doing something, then you might suddenly realize that everything keeps getting done.

This is also a good way to look at life progress in general.

So I’ve been thinking about the flood and my car.

At the time, when the fire department came knocking on my door at 3am, when I looked down my walkway and saw my car already up to it’s bumpers in water and made the choice to leave it rather than trying to get it out, it seemed like such a straightforward choice.

It didn’t look feasible to save and it would only have endangered me to try.  But now I look back and I wonder… could I have saved it?  Should I have tried? Did I do the wrong thing?

Obviously there was a safety risk. The water appeared to be already up to the bumpers and the drive slopes back and there’s no way to go further forward.  Had I got in there, and had the car started, I would have had no choice but to back into deeper water… and then what?  Would the car have stalled?  Would the water have come pouring in around the door frame?  Would I have been trapped?

Of course there’s no way to know now.  The flood came and went and left my car inoperable.

Reason dictates that driving a car into uncertain deep waters is a bad idea and so it was the better choice to leave it.  But now I will never know.  There will always be a question lurking in the back of my head about this event.

I do regret not trying.  If I had tried, then I would have known for certain and there would be no question now.

But ultimately I have to remind myself that I made the best choice I could at 3am during a flash flood evacuation.  I look back with sadness, but I came back to a dry home and the knowledge that though the loss of the car was unfortunate, it doesn’t cost me my job or hinder me nearly as bad as it would some others.

Maybe I could have reacted sooner and made better choices post-flood but from everything I’ve read, the chances of ever recovering my car were slim the moment the water got up to the engine block.

I did the best I could and sometimes that’s all you have.

The best part of creativity is looking at what is and imagining what may be, dreaming of the infinite possibilities of the future.

Then to take those dreams and bring them to the brink of reality on the page and in the words - that is ecstasy.

It really comes down to what you care more about, in the end, doesn’t it?

Some people wear things because it make them happy, with little regard to what others think about it. I know it’s that way with the way I dress, especially my most wonderful Fourth Doctor scarf. I know that, if someone were to regularly make fun of me for wearing it, it would bother me, but not half as much as having to put it aside on their account. I love that scarf so much and it gives me a lot of joy to wear it. That happiness is more important to me than the annoyance of one loud-mouthed fool.

On the other hand, some people really hate being teased and might find that the misery of being singled out in a negative way is greater than the happiness that their attire brings them. So it would be worth it to them to put aside that one thing in the hopes of being left alone.

…

That said… as someone who was endlessly harassed in high school over being different, I have a hard time accepting the appeasement route. I mean points to you if you don’t care, but I tried keeping to myself and hiding the “offensive” things, but that lead me down a very dark path of self-hatred and it was only years later that I would realize that people like that don’t stop just because you comply. That would imply a sense of fairness and maturity that bullies simply do not have. It’s an abusive relationship and it can be very bad for your mental health to find yourself saying “If I just ____ they’ll stop bothering me.” 

Ultimately, the best advice was given above: Get over it. Get over them. They’re not worth your time and concern. Anyone who treats you poorly because of something like that isn’t worth the time it takes to think about them. You have better things to do with your neural pathways than burn them out on idiots.