Space
Today I spent a lot of time reading about the new things Virgin Galactic will be doing with its commercial trips to space and how badly I want to go there. And I thought about how if I could look down upon the earth in the darkness of space, the world would seem so small and insignificant to what I was experiencing. And how much I would love it.
Then I thought about how I wouldn't think of people, I wouldn't think of the issues that plague the world or my daily concerns; only this blue marble that I could stare down upon. And how if I went out farther to look upon our solar system it would be so small; farther to look at our galaxy and how small and remarkable it would be; and then if I went to the edge of the universe, it would all be so small. And I feel like if I took one step further to the outside of our universe, it would all be contained in this tiny ball that from my view on earth, to me right now, looks so vast.
And it would look like what's inside my head. When viewed from a spot where everything is small, nothing matters. It is all contained, small and insignificant. And well-- I don't know how else to express the kind of relief and tranquility that would give me. If my mind is that small, viewed from the right distance, and my environment as well, nothing matters so much that it must be overly-contemplated. When I think so much I zoom down to a small level on an Earth of thoughts which isn't even at the most basic level to understand everything that occurs. I feel like if I could look down at the entire universe and could understand what that meant to me there, I would be able to understand what it meant on this relatively micro level.
It Makes a Sound
For a bit today, I started thinking about the possibility of switching from what I know and believe and who I think I am to what others were saying. I went through this same thing over my winter break where I considered the possibility that I should just go with what I see as boring and be just like everyone else instead of fighting it so much. I soon decided, that day, that those thoughts were stupid and there was no reason for me to slip into the stream with everyone else.
I'm glad I did.
But every once in a while, I have these days where before I can recall my own self I actually listen to what others have to say to heart. They sneak up on me, and in my completely loose state it's not hard for them to make me disbelieve myself.
And I guess I was just getting to that spot again, after having my professor telling me how marketable and well-rounded I am and how cool she thought I was and me being glad to hear the positive enforcement on my personality today. But I was sitting on this picnic table I usually go to, at the Starbucks on campus, drinking a coffee and smoking a cigarette and I began to think that my negative views on people were wrong.
Fuck that.
I don't think I'm judgmental and I do everything to avoid "being" this concept but it's just little things like that that sneak into my mind unnoticed and make me doubt everything I stand for and who I am and what I think. I even started to think, as I tend to do whenever I finally start to really free myself from the world around me, that I was drifting too far from my environment. I always say people are the only thing that keep me grounded. But I think I need to take even more of a vacation from them; really stick to my guns and be as uncompassionate to their feelings as possible so I can reach the speed possible to escape their gravity that holds me so. Then I'll orbit them and their world-- held by their force but free as can be.
The other analogy I was going to use in my post yesterday was the idea that I used to believe: when a tree falls in a forest and no one's there to hear it it doesn't make a sound because there are no organisms around to perceive the sound it would make. I now see that's bullshit in relation to me. I'm the tree that falls with no one around, but with the ability to get back up and continue growing. And one day when someone comes across me on a random excursion into the forest, I'll be there; tall and beautiful; only because I didn't wait for those sound waves to hit someone far off and for them to come running to see what I've done.
Something Free
I was thinking about the post I made yesterday and decided to evolve that concept today. Since I find nature as a good way to provide answers to the inner-workings of my mind (being created out of it and all), I went to the river nearby that was flooding the nearby roads due to all the rain we've had recently.
While it's good that I don't need a pat on the back for every new action I do, it's still too constraining on me to need people around to simply perceive my actions. So, how do I give myself this validation without actually getting the validation? I instantly realized that it didn't involve validation at all-- I just need to do things as if no one is around and simply enjoy it. At the time I related it to the river's water: the surface of the water looked as if it was a surface with this life that moved beneath it; this energy. And this energy that moves beneath the surface of the water and creates waves travels down stream, and from where I was sitting, into the shore. Now if I was this ball of energy that propels the waves to crash into the shore, I might be compelled--seeing the shore and my impending doom--to want to stop; to travel no longer.
But that would be boring. Stability is overrated in my book because nothing happens when everything is stable. So, following in the wave's essential footsteps, I would rather crash into the shore and enjoy the results. The wave moves back into the stream once it can go no further and those pebbles on the shore have been changed forever because of that wave's actions; everyone wins (me being the wave and the pebbles being other people).
That works. I can handle events such as these because that's what we humans live for; no event that doesn't kill me is truly "bad." But what about when I'm just in the stream? This is what I was struggling with-- no events are occurring, or at least not ones strong enough to distract me from myself. But I'm really traveling through the world; there are things all around-- near and far; and it doesn't take much to see it all when you know how to.
So finally, what am I if I don't need people to tell me what I am? I'm a floating orb of energy. By nature, I hit dead-ends and bounce off to go in a different direction; I go around rocks that block part of my intended course; I even pick up smaller rocks in my stream that I have enough force over, but I never really control them-- they'll always go their own route, just as I do. I'm alone but comfortable. In my instability I'm stable. Nature dictates the power I have over myself (infinite), and I get to enjoy it.
I like that.
Something Solid
I've realized that the only reason I like to be crazy and go meet people and make sure I don't slip into a world of "everyone else" while I'm in public is because people are what make me who I am-- in the sense of, their perceptions of my actions are what assign a certain personality to me. They're all there is in the world; I can dance crazy alone in my room and sing loudly alone in my car but if I'm quiet when I'm around others, I'll be perceived as shy and other related personality types and not the person I really like to be.
Of course I know who I am when I'm alone. But "who I am" really has no meaning to me because I have no need to be one way or the other when there's no one else to pick up on which "way" I am. So if I want people to see me in the same light I see myself, I need to carry that personality consistently throughout all parts of my life.
So tonight I put on a wife-beater and went for a walk in the rain. I made a point to walk past some people in the hallway to make sure this craziness was perceived by someone other than myself. I don't need their verbal validation; I don't need them to tell me I'm crazy or that I'm sane-- that I'm stupid or doing "okay." Proving anything about myself to myself or anyone else is useless. I just need something solid in the world. Because I can see from any perspective, I can think about an infinite amount of possibilities and positives and negatives. But life is no fun when I do that. I become a ball of neutral-- no light, no darkness; no sound and no silence. I live in this world of hypothetical; this alternate dimension that exists but produces nothing useful.
It's this universe of nothingness that I try to avoid daily. In fact, not living in the way I want to is the only thing that depresses me these days because frankly, I'd rather enjoy my existence.
What I Believe
This is a common question and a concept that tells a lot about a person. So, as if everything I write here doesn't already do it (obviously I wouldn't write it if I didn't believe it), I'll spell out what I believe right now, at this point in time.
I believe the universe we see, feel, hear, taste and smell, is an entity much like our own individual minds. Thoughts and life-forms go through the same cycles: everything grows. A thought is started by the perception of an outside force or idea, and it grows even when it can't grow anymore. A real-life example would be: anything you feel passionately about is something that has grown bigger than the other ideas in your mind-- a huge galaxy, if you will. And, as is the nature of our mind and more than likely the universe, this promotes more growth-- almost the most basic requirement of existence.
On the flip-side of this example, if you worry about being accepted by other people (other universes), you will do anything to make sure you are and even change your behavior just to make sure this happens. This perspective is interesting because it essentially creates a black hole; it can keep an entire galaxy of ideas in perfect balance around it. However, allowing this worry (about things that are completely out of your control) to completely engulf you will put the surrounding galaxy of everything you know out of balance and take it to another realm. I try to avoid black holes.
Another function of the brain is communication; neurons and axons and synapses, at the basic level. They form ideas that communicate to form new ideas which form new ideas and so on ad infinitum. So the universe communicates in the same fashion through energy. We perceive information visually through the energy in light; we feel through the energy of heat; sound, motion, even words (the most blatant form of communication) are broadcast through the manipulation of matter that travels through space fueled by energy. In other words, we exist in this larger "brain," which dictates that everything, including our own mind, behaves in the same way.
So. These thoughts would be useless without some kind of meaning to me.
Since I deal with my own mind more than I do with the universe, I like to do anything that makes me enjoy myself. I don't like to hold on to any one idea for too long, because there's no telling how long it will hold up before it collapses; as with everything in the universe, thoughts essentially "die." And when you don't hold on to things, the world seems to flow; instead of seeing individual snapshots over time and analyzing and hoping that each one stays, they all flash by you to form a moving picture that makes sense, in its simplest form. From your own universe's perspective, you get to look down on all your perceptions and thoughts and bask in your creation. And that encompassing and ever-present beauty keeps all instability stable and unlogic logical and, more than anything, everything simply makes sense without it "making sense."
And I like that.
A Different Cycle
I'm learning when situations, ideas, environments are positive or negative for me. Everything in the world around me divides up a little better and forms according to my specifications more and more each day. This is good.
I'm also trying to stick with the "don't fixate" idea I've come up with. See, when you fixate on one idea, you become lost in it. And it seems that there is no one thing that is worth completely fixating on, due to the life-cycle of a thought: it starts as a simple abstract concept, possibly formed as a result of other ideas. The amount of information it is composed of is proportional to the thought's tipping point-- the point at which all the information that makes up that thought are not enough to expand that thought anymore; at this point, your mind can only speculate. And although it may provide some sense of comfort, nothing positive or solid will come out of speculation.
So I know these things. And I wake up every morning and go for a drive and try to remember to let everything flow through me so that I don't fixate on a single idea, and consequently live in that moment, know that nothing dies, etc. etc. But some days those thoughts become a contradiction themselves because I think I have to fixate on them to make them work and then I do and then shit falls through, plainly.
I think it's happened today. But it doesn't feel counter-productive this time; I reached that truly elated stage which I haven't had in at least a week, and then I had to deal with people so I started to whole people-cycle again, though I feel like I fought it slightly more than usual. I'm out of cigarettes but haven't bought more, I went to a job interview and laughed as I headed out because the guy was the typical salesperson-- and he was the one interviewing me; and then I had some more pseudo-frustration with other people. And at this point everything started falling down; the walls I had built, once again crumbled.
But this time was different. I've found comfort in knowing that not everything I do will work at this point in time. I'm used to it, not holding onto any thought as invincible and stable. Maybe it's because if I changed as much as my mind formulates a new "me," nothing in my life could be stable-- friends would leave, etc. etc.
But that's bullshit-- I shouldn't be concerned.
Yeah, talk about a bad case of the negatives.
Waking Up
The hardest thing to handle when you're working on something as complicated as yourself is this: when you wake up in the morning, you have to start all over again. The conscious thoughts you had yesterday have to be almost rediscovered today.
I've been recently coming to grips with my mind and how it's formed around negativity most of my life. So naturally, I'm trying to pull the unnatural when I'm trying to see all the events that happen to me in a positive light. And it usually takes some time to get back to the good mood I get in when I'm viewing things this way simply because it is so different from the actual makeup of my brain.
I usually wake up in an above-average mood when I fall asleep around people. That might be normal. But I want to be able to wake up and be in an excellent mood regardless.
I'm working on it.
“Offensive” KFC Ads
I'm tired of seeing these kinds of things, something needs to be said.
Here's a post from Mashable, with a completely subjective title reporting a KFC ad from Australia on YouTube which is offending some people. My thoughts: you're all idiots. Otherwise? See for yourself: Is This KFC Ad Racist? [VIDEO].
Look. People. I know there are still some in this country who haven't gained any kind of respect for humanity or considered a perspective from someone other than themselves, despite everything the country's gone through over the past half-century. Maybe there are still hard feelings. Maybe it's just another bad case of ignorance. But this is the time-- to get over yourselves. Whether you know this or not, every time you get offended by something, someone else gets power over you. If equality is what you're looking for, stop getting so offended. A word is a word. A stereotype is a stereotype. You are the ones who are giving it meaning, and a negative one at that.
They bring up how a poll was conducted, 27 percent say the ad is racist, 69 say it isn't, blah blah. Yeah, no shit. There will always be people who are so stuck on a negative idea that they could find spaghetti offensive. Business will never win in this field because they have to please the masses. Tough luck to KFC.
The point is what this means to the individual. Half of the women-friends I have don't get offended by the word "cunt." It's a word used regularly in daily conversation and exchanged both ways, in fact. But I also have friends so drawn back by the word that they'll smack me before I can finish the fourth letter. It's a mixed bag and always will be. But you give a word, stereotype, or idea its power by getting offended. Solution? Don't.
Seeing the Beauty
I like to think of any actions I take as this: something is bound to happen. Anything happening is good (and certainly better than nothing happening). So there's no balance to maintain-- everything becomes worthwhile.
This goes along with constantly thinking positively-- seeing the beauty in everything around you. I just recently took an 800-mile trip to the midwest because I felt trapped at my parents' house in my hometown. It snowed in Ohio and Indiana. Normally I would be upset, cautious, etc. But I enjoyed the light dusting on the road, the slight loss of traction I would encounter at 60 mph as I changed lanes, and even watching a semi jackknife off the road and barely avoid hitting an overpass' column head-on.
It goes along with the idea that nothing bad will ever happen to you if you avoid viewing it as such. This world we live in is too perfect to view anything negatively. So when there's something like a bag laying in the road, it's almost a decoration-- instead of a black segment of roadway (similar to the rest of the road), it's a more interesting piece of road in the world because it now has a white blob there.
It's a different view on life. Something that has, for the past month or so, been bringing me back to something happy when the world around me isn't working out in the way that I thought I wanted it to. We're just a tumbleweed in the wind, it's literally you and the world. And everything in it is, in the right light, beautiful.
Assigning Meaning
When you break everything down in life, you soon learn that nothing in life has an inherent meaning. I might've said this before, but now I'll take it a step further.
The only fool-proof way to have meaning to anything in your life is to assign a meaning to it. By the time you're the age you currently are, reading this, you've already assigned meaning to many things; fairly universal objects you've assigned meaning to would be money, time, your mortality, family, possibly spirituality, etc. But what about those things you don't quite have down so much as these? A common phrase I hear is "I'm [so many] years old and I still don't know what I want."
The truth is you'll never know. In fact, you'll never know anything for sure in your lifetime.1 Scary thought, possibly, but in this case it is a matter of choosing-- realizing that ultimately, all the decisions you make come down to you. Confidence is such an envied personality trait because it take a certain kind of individual to be so certain of oneself. Anyone who has this trait has had the balls to disregard external forces for one second, make a decision on what he/she likes, and just go with it. The same is required when deciding what you want.
On a personal note, when you break existence down as much as I have, you get to the point where you have all the pieces spread out before you and the only thing left to do is find out what to do with them, because they do you no good on their own. This is probably where the cliché "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade"2 comes from.3
Some people are content working 9 to 5 all their life, retiring, and dying at a "reasonable" age. Some would rather do what they want to regardless of the standard. Some want kids, some don't want to get married. Some people believe in a higher power, some don't. These are all examples of different assigned meanings, each one specific to the individual who created them; it's in our nature.
1 For example, a discipline such as science involves using precedent and a created method to produce meaning out of rationalizations and logic; essentially nothing says the results produced are correct besides a set of guidelines.
2 In fact, life itself is lemons and, really, lemonade is simply one option.
3 It's always interesting how clichés usually have some kind of ridiculously true meaning to them but aren't ever explained. So when used when giving advice or something similar, the effect is next to nothing due to the fact that the phrase only scratches the surface.
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