Make things simple, but no simpler.

In Sociology my teacher told us that many times how we see the problem is the problem. For example, the problem with hunger in the world is not that there are people starving, but that people will do nothing about it. This idea works on a macro level as well as on a micro level.

It is funny how just getting a simple pair of eye glasses can change the way you see the world. It is such a simple thing too: a pair of lens and a frame. And just wearing it makes everything else better. All those “better” things are still there whether we have the glasses on or not, but it’s just clearer now that you have a different way of looking at it. We can see so much by changing the way we look at the world. Each situation has an infinite amount of views we can take. We try to polarize a situation as either being good or bad when a lot of times it is neither. Going to the mall can be a good thing. You buy clothes for yourself or for your friends to make them smile. You can even say you are contributing to the general welfare of the country by putting money into the economy! But there's a bad side to it too. You could be using that money to help someone else who needs it more than you do or you could even be spending money wastefully. Everything depends on how you look at it.

If you had a bad day, try looking at it in a different light. Not so much the boyfriend that ignored you or the grade that failed you but the experience you learned from each. Experience is something you can only get if you want it. Without experience we would be pretty much lost in every situation we were put in to. The more you experience stepping outside yourself and taking another prospective at the same situation the more you will be able to understand where other people are coming from.

People rarely do something irrational. They see reason in it, therefore, they rationalize it. Rationalization is not irrational. The situation is the same but there are a thousand different ways to look at it. Give it another glance and see what you'll find.

I Can't Wait To Have Patience!!!

My brother Joey and I have been talking alot about a book he is reading- The Silent Planet. He made a good point about when the character in the story goes to another planet and eats a fruit that is absolutely delicious. The character, Ransom, tells the alien creature whom he's with that he wishes he could have more and more of this fruit because it's such a new experience. The alien, who is extremely smart, tells Ransom that how he feels is exactly what's wrong with his planet- earth. Anytime a human experiences something delightful, they want to completely gorge themselves with it. In which case, after they've fulfilled themselves, there is no longer anything special with that which they were gorging themselves with. Next, Joey and I began to watch a news reporter state how "sad it is that is hasn't snowed for this superbowl" and that "they wont be able to have a giant snowslide now." Then the another reporter buts in, "But that's not stopping these folks! They have snow machines running 24/7 until the superbowl, hoping to pump out at least 200 tons of snow!"

Back in the day when we didn't have this sort of technology it would be special when it did snow. But now-a-days if we want it to rain and it doesn't we say, "Hell, we'll make it rain!" and so, we proceed get firetrucks, hoses, and begin to pour thousands of gallons of water; and we "make it rain." We've lost all faith in spontaneous order within nature it seems.

I have realized this in my own life. I always want things to be going great...in fact, not just "great", but rather getting "better, and better, and better!" And when things actually start going, God forbid, normal, I think there must be something wrong. In reality nothing at all is wrong, I've just been having such a great time consistently, and I hit a point where it couldn't get any better.

The sayings "Things are so bad it can only go up from here" is completely true. It's also true in the same respect when times are going fantastic, and it can only get worse.

Moral of the Post: Just because you are not having a constant climax of fun doesn't mean somethings wrong. Time is the most amazing thing; you'd be surprised what it can accomplish, even if you are facing the worst of the worst time in your life.

Another tale of facebooking

I can not get over how amazing WiFi is. Even more amazing is how it is available to me during class in a lecture. Why on earth do they have WiFi floating around here anyways if we are not supposed to use it? The person to my right is playing World of Warcraft. The person to my left is watching “Lost”. The person in front of me is writing a paper for his Psychology class, which must be next period judging by how quickly he is typing. And the person behind is probably on Facebook as well, seeing as how from the corner of my eye she keeps trying to catch my name to add me to her friends, no doubt.

I am still paying attention to class, although every few minutes I glance to my left and watch a scene or so from Lost. Mary Kate Van de Woude just sent me a text message and my phone was not on silent. “What a horrible ring tone! Get some Mozart or Trotsky for goodness sake,” is the critique my teacher directs to me in front of a three-hundred strong Economics class. I would have been embarrassed, but I was more interested in what the text message said than what everyone was thinking about me.

a year ahead of a year ago

Have you ever picked up a diary or journal that you wrote a year, two years, or even three years ago? Boy is it interesting! A little less than two hours ago, I stumbled upon a journal I kept from a little over a year ago. I just read through every entry before writing this blog, and I can’t help but notice how much and how little I have changed in the course of a year. Reading through each entry was even more surprising and interesting than the entry before it. I didn't read my own journal because it was well written, heck, it couldn't have been any less grammatically or punctually correct. I read it because it was my life one year ago. Where were you one year ago? I can tell you exactly where I was. I was crazy about the girl I am still crazy about now. I was surprised with how easy my senior year was starting off. I was making a promise to myself to keep my notes neat and clean (a promise I would habitually and unknowingly break throughout the year). And I was looking forward to the senior play Arsenic and Old Lace. That's what was going on in my life. Where were you? What were you doing? What were you thinking?

I found that reading the journal of my past year was, putting it lightly, extremely interesting and insightful. It was interesting because I was reading my thoughts exactly a year ago. I read everything I was going through, and everything I struggled with, and everything I overcame. It was insightful to me because, besides putting what happened day by day in each entry, I put how I felt about what happened during that day. I was upset a couple nights, on cloud nine sometimes, and even depressed on other days. I can literally see the ups and downs of my last year like a scatter-plot graph, going up and going down.

Looking back, I am glad I kept a journal. If not for the sake of venting, which reading some of my entries I did quite often, then for the sake of being able to read it exactly a year later and say, “I got over that, and it wasn’t even important to begin with.”

"Boy, how this past year was so interesting." I get the feeling I'm going to be saying that again a year from now.

don't lose touch

Originally posted October 16, 2006

Carpe Diem. In latin it translates as "Seize the Day." I wonder how many people outside the Terminal Cancer Wing of a hospital actually take that saying to heart and live it to it's truest meaning. Another popular phrase is "Make Someday - Today." I used to talk with one of my friends about how if I added up every memory I have, in all the eighteen plus years I have been on this earth, that it would only amount to maybe a little more than a two or three months. How easily I have been inspired in the past to seize the day and do something worth remembering and smiling or crying about later.

On each of my birthdays I take a year-long stroll down memory lane to see what I have accomplished and what I have overcome. What strikes me as sad is that I can only compile maybe a few weeks of memories. How badly I want to go back in time and re-write my own personal biography to make my life more interesting and meaningful.

I've also heard of a saying that went something like don't contemplate on the past, it's over and done with - live only for today and live it to the fullest. How I would love to practice what I preach, and how I would love to say something I didn't say, or do something I didn't do.

We are formed and defined by what we do and what we didn't do. I commonly tell me friends who are struggling with relationships to always keep in mind that more often than not people believe they are doing what they feel is right. No one can help how they feel, and to get upset at someone for how they feel won't really accomplish anything. People can't help how they feel and how they feel influences how that act. Always keep this in mind when in a relationship and don't hold it against them.

Everything always works out for the best. Not one thing in my life, no matter how horrible it seemed, has turned out for the worst. Sure, I miss some things more than life itself, but you jut always got to keep in mind that God knows best. The only thing I can ask for is patience to see it through, and for strength to accept it. That's all. Nothing else.

Moral of the Post: Be yourself. After that, all you gotta do is not look back.

college < chinese algabra

Originally posted September 21, 2006

I am pleasantly unsurprised by how my school year's been going so far. I planned on it going well. Not so much stress, not so much work, no lack of time to do the things I still love to do. I was fired from my job, then they said that they mistook me for someone else. So, upon hearing that, I immediately quick my job. I have two weeks left and then I'm free. Free to work on school.

i dont want to write this...

Originally posted September 11, 2006

“To do or not to do?” This is the question I am poised with right now. I have a brilliant thesis ready and waiting to hand in tomorrow, but I have to come up with two more. "What to do?" I ask myself, as I lean back in my chair with folded arms, and a glass of chocolate milk in my hand.

After a few minutes of swinging slightting left and right in my chair, I find doing nothing is just as good as doing something if not better. So, rather than staring at this screen making the noise that only a straw can make, which signals "there's not enough chocolate milk left!", I shall come up with something.

Back to my thesis. I have decided to force myself to do something which I don't want to do, but I have grown accustomed to doing, which makes me wonder in the first place, "Do I honestly wish to not do another thesis that badly?" And you will see that in the end perhaps doing no additional thesis was better than doing one thesis at all.