Don’t Drown
one day,
you will fall
broken
lost
and wonder where
and who you are
consumed by feelings
you will think
it will pass
it’s just a phase
everyone feels like this
it is not universal
and you think
you are alone, so very alone
and it’s true
but before you submerge
hold your breath and
realize that
you are not alone
it’s them that
blind you
and them who
silence you
toss the blindfold aside
i beg you
and scream at the top of your lungs
because you are not alone
we are here too
Things
The fiery promise of independence burns brightly in the recesses of my mind, but the chilling thought of loneliness freezes those dreams. Independence is an ideal that I hope to one day grasp, but I don’t know why. Is it to prepare for a possible future loneliness? Those I see who have the least loneliness also have the least need for independence. Yet they are the ones with the most.
Seeing his independence is frightening: a stagnant, dull tradition of mediocre occurrences. But it’s simple. That’s what it’s always been about, hasn’t it?
Person Versus Value
Every person is made up of so many different things. We have our own memories, personalities, behaviors, syntheses of DNA parts to make unique who we “are,” whatever that means. Some people have blue eyes, while others’ are brown. Some are INTJs, while others are ENFPs. It’s not like you’d be able to immediately tell what personality type someone is just from looking at them, though.
You’d have to have them take the test, and then their result would become official (somewhat, as personalities are subject to change), at which point they themselves would know what personality type they are. Then, they could hide their result from you; they could lie about it and say they’re something else. But there’s no reason to lie about personality types.
Some people may be hemophiliacs but they’ve never been cut before so they wouldn’t know, but since they don’t know, they’ve never told anyone not to accidentally stab them with a toothpick.
Or maybe it’s the same situation but with an allergy to bee stings.
Or maybe someone’s seen the result of their HIV test, and they’re embarrassed or scared or too idiotic or have some other reason not to tell the people they’ve had sex with in the past, or the people they’re going to have sex with tonight and next week, and this time they’ve not only hurt themselves, but they’ve hurt people they’ve been intimate with, too.
But the point is, there are plenty of things that people may or may not have discovered about themselves, that you don’t know about them that might hurt you or them, or might be completely benign. Yet you can still befriend them, love them, “minister” to them, or “love” them as you’ve been commanded to.
What if one is a serial killer (to make it more interesting, one who murders friends)? Does this new fact that you’ve learned grant you dismissal from the friendship, on the pretense of personal safety? (Maybe you’ll just pray for them and hope they’ll change their ways.) At what point will you turn in any of your friends to the authorities to enforce the laws that you follow but they’re breaking?
This makes me wonder what I see in friendships. Generally speaking, I have two groups of friends (it’s more like a spectrum, where people fall in a whole range in between). There are friends of convenience: acquaintances who I hang out with because I’m already at some place hanging out with them, and it would be inconvenient/impolite not to talk to them. One trend I’ve noticed from these friends is that I have almost no inclination to pay attention to and respect what they’re saying, so it’s easy to just smile and nod and dismiss. It happens vice versa, too. They respect me little; I’m there as just another, and I do not matter to them, unless I can help them. For obvious reasons, I would not choose to hang out with these people out of whatever place/group that is, and if they ask me for a favor, I’d probably try to shirk the duty onto someone else, or do it in the laziest manner (not that that last thing is bad, because many good things are done best/quickest lazily).
The other group are friends who I like. Pretty much everything is different about this group. They all begin as friends of convenience, but I’ll grow attached to unique people who I click with. (Side-note: people I like are lobbed into this group automatically here, but once I realize that our personalities clash and they don’t qualify at all, I get angry that they got here.) Mentally, they’re on par with me: my jokes don’t go wasted, my wit is met with their understanding of my jokes and fantastic (as in fantasy, not great) ideas, my sarcasm and humor doesn’t go whoosh over their heads, and all of those vice versa (though references and quotes often get lost in translation). Most people in the first group don’t make it this far because maybe they can’t stand (or understand) my jokes, or maybe they can’t entertain the idea of bicorn-unicorn racism, or the pope living at the bottom of your glass of orange juice, or maybe they’re too “simple.” Suffice it to say, I care about and respect the people in this group.
One thing that stands out is that I perceive people in this group to tend to appreciate people over values. That is to say, while some in the first group might love a person because of how stoic or “holy” they are (obviously those in that group won’t think to themselves that this type of thinking is bad, it’s just my wording that makes it sound terrible, which I think it is), people in this group love people because they’re people. Contrary to those who appreciate values more, friends in this group are happy to know X about me, even if X isn’t necessarily a good or new thing. They’ll be happier to know the truth about someone, rather than to believe that I’m a (straw) man of ideal values or some blank slate who’s worthy of investment.
Person versus value is the bottom line here. For me, how would I react to the serial killer news from either group? If a friend of convenience tells me that they’re a serial killer, it wouldn’t matter much to me (I might go “Wow, that’s interesting”), so long as whatever function they’re providing (friendship at work, or bagging my groceries, whatever it is) doesn’t cease. If a friend I like tells me that they’re a serial killer, I’d probably first ask and learn about it, what their views are, why they’re doing it, etc. I doubt that I’d disown them or turn them in to the authorities; I sit on no high horse. But learning something so earth-shattering like that would force me to contemplate my own views on the subject. What metric am I using to judge my friend? Should I turn a blind eye to murder when it’s my friend? Should I backstab the friend and sever the friendship for the safety of strangers, who possibly are even worse?
And if you take out the stakes of others’ lives and health, all of this makes me wonder: what is the problem with learning new details of people who have different traits? Shouldn’t it be easier to love people for being unique when you learn more about them, rather than use what you just learned as ammo against them?
Why is it so difficult to tell people things about yourself that they don’t know?
The Impossible
I stopped believing that the impossible could happen the same time I found out that leaders were flawed and that my ideals could not exist in this world.
Intuition
Intuition is often my trump card. Combined with cold reading and response eliciting, I can easily learn things by just taking a look at someone and talking with them for a bit. Not that I’d ever do anything with that information though; my sole purpose is just to know, to get to know people more, to learn about them and see what’s going on. How wonderful is it for me to look through someone’s blog or journal and just…learn about them. But my intuition is also my flaw: to think and to learn requires material to be learned. Everyone is going through something, and I can usually find out what it is.
Unfortunately, the only time where intuition never fails to fail me is when I need to find out someone’s true feelings, especially about me. But there is not always something to be learned about the person. Every small detail that I usually use to learn something true gets blown way out of proportion, and my sense of objectivity goes out the window.
- “I love you more than you’ll ever know” — a song reference, or a subtle confessional?
- Only having close girl friends — merely coincidence, or an distinguishable symptom?
- Texting with me late at night — are we becoming friends, or is there something more?
- The way we make eye contact sometimes — just a glance, or are we sharing moments?
Sometimes I just wish that I could read minds instead of playing the guessing game, doing laps around the track of my mind to justify why I should persist in doing something stupid, like stick around the person. Oh how great it would be to mind read my own rejection before it happens (or before it doesn’t), and transform myself instead of become transformed by someone else.
Direction
I often wonder what my life would be like if I had been something else than a programmer. An actor, an author, an artist, an atheist are some that come to mind. What if I had grown up somewhere else, learning not theories of computing, but of horseback-riding and of archery? What if I were a Buddhist monk living in a secluded monastery with others for the same goal? Would I have been happier or more wholesome?
Though I know it’s not too late to change my identity, part of me feels crippled — like I’m unable to empower myself over my own life’s path and that I have to become a programmer. That’s the feeling I’ve been getting these past few days. I’m not so sure that I want to commit my career (both college and work), let alone my life, to programming.
I know I’m good at it (relative to my peers), since I’ve been able to pass the hardest programming courses left and right without batting an eye, and that this is one of the few things that I’m both good at, and interest in (I get slightly euphoric after finishing a program, or fixing a bug). However, however confident I am now of my abilities, I simply remind myself that Cal Poly is not only less than distinguished, that there are so many other, better schools from which the same employers are recruiting. It seems like every successful person I know who’s an adult back in the bay has graduated from some big name school, like Stanford, UCLA or Cal. It feels like that by getting A’s in my courses here, I’m just tricking myself into thinking that I’m good for something, that I’ll eventually find my place in society.
Western society, that is. For someone in this country to be valuable, they have to be a “good” member of society, whatever that means. I think it’s something to do with them having money or the capability to do a certain specialized job that involves years of school.
But why must I measure up to the standard of western culture? What if I was raised in such a way that money was hardly the central point of so many of my peers’ lives? If I could live earnestly in that simple life of horseback-riding and archery in some European village, or live earnestly seeking nirvana with fellow Buddhists in a secluded monastery, I’m so sure that I would feel more accomplished than I’ll ever in this life from programming thousands of lines of code for a company that, in an instant, can outsource me and my lackluster education to an underpaid worker in India.
I am not the only one who might feel this way. But others can convince themselves so easily that their life was the best possible one by having a partner to live with for the rest of their lives. If I were to find someone of my own to share my life with, I hold little doubt that I’d also become one of society’s tame sheep, and I know that I would gladly change my values and forgo these opinions for a chance at a sliver of true love.
And thus, love is the remedy (albeit a highly pharmaceutical one) to my problem. But perhaps if I truly wanted to heal myself, I would cut ties with America and the western tradition for good, put aside my unempowerment, and simply live life with the goal of self-discovery in mind.
One of these days I need to flee to the mountains, never look back, and never stop, lest I be swept away.
Some Days
Some days you think that you’re special, that you’re here to make a mark in the world, that you’re here to take a crack at the world’s problems, that you’re one day going to be a revered name that people know.
But then you remember that there are nearly 7 billion other people on the planet here with you, most with their own dreams and aspirations, and suddenly you’re not so sure of yourself anymore, despite what the novels, stories, TV programs, plays, and comics have all grounded into your mind.
Just another
I’m just another, you’re just another, we’re all just others.
If to live is Christ and to die is gain, why does it feel so melancholy either way?
