Too much perspective? (Even this is too long still.)

Sometimes I feel like I see everything from so many different angles that I don't know which one is the one I believe in the most. I think I have this fear of being too absolute, too extreme, too single-minded. There's something to be said for stability and more to be said for permanence and legacy, but I like transience, too. I like being able to change my mind. To me, seeing anything as absolute is a trap and it hinders growth, it stops you from being able to learn and grow. I like being flexible and I like the fluidity of being open to multiple possibilities. I often don't like having to choose one way or another when I relate to both. I prefer to evaluate case by case, and not choose a blanket answer that is intended to encompass everything.

I'm in between about a lot of things, and sometimes I worry that I don't have definite, assertive opinions or beliefs of my own. I know I do. I just also know that it's not important to me to have absolute opinions on a lot of things, and I know I feel different ways at different times in different situations. I don't like feeling chained to one concrete belief. I don't like the feeling of being trapped that accompanies that. I like feeling free. I don't like narrowness.

Or maybe it's that I don't like broadness? I mean, I hate it when someone asks me if I'm pro-life or pro-choice. I don't think it's that simple. I understand logically and emotionally both sides of the argument. Sure, it's ethically shady, but I also think it's wrong for a baby to be born into a world that doesn't want it, where it will only be abused and mistreated. In that way it's cruel. At the same time, I'm usually an "everything happens for a reason" kind of a gal, and messing around with a potential life isn't something I think I'd ever consider. But my life is a piece of cake. I don't have to endure extreme adversity and it's easy for me to believe in some kind of fate. It's not like I'm a fourteen-year-old rape victim who's pregnant by her attacker or something. If I were, I don't know how I'd feel. I can't say. So I generally say that I think a woman should have the right to choose, but I also think most women shouldn't choose abortion. Even that's simplifying it more than I'd like.

I can choose to see things the way I want to. I can choose to see people as a bunch of foolish, ignorant jerks who are going to lead to the demise of all humanity, or I can see them as the last pillar supporting humanity from crumbling. I can be cynical and realistic or romantic and idealistic. It's not just that I can be these things--I generally feel like I am all these things. I'm sarcastic and cynical and pessimistic by turns, but eternally hopeful and idealistic at the same time. I want to see the best in people but often, they just show their worst. Being optimistic and idealistic can translate into naivete, though--like Gatsby or The Quiet American--and I don't want that, either. I see it sometimes in others and I know I know better than to have blind faith in people; I'll just end up painfully disillusioned if I do.

I go back and forth between the two outlooks all the time. I can try to be one way or another but I don't like doing that, because that's not me. As I told someone last night, I just am what I am, and that happens to be a lot of different things at different times. I hate it when people make me feel like that's wrong, like things have to be black and white, one way or another. Like I'm wrong for seeing things so many ways and relating to them all. There's a lot that I don't understand, that I can't relate to, that I can't imagine, that I disagree with. But I love it when I meet someone who is able to explain the unimaginable to me in a way that I can understand. Without being open to other perspectives and trying to identify with others, how could you understand anything?

I also decided today that I don't like it when I feel like I have to "try" to be myself around people. I don't like pandering and I don't like compromising myself, even though intrinsically I like making people happy, and there's a lot of things I don't mind doing or just don't care about that I'm willing to compromise on, if it'll make others happy. I hate it when I realize that I'm acting in a way I don't like around certain people, because then I have to make an effort to be myself and not to let them bring out this behavior that doesn't feel like my own. It's just not that frequently that I find people that I feel comfortable being myself around. I hide a lot, even though I know I shouldn't--that's just how I am. I suppose it's because I know there's so much that's contradictory about myself that I don't let myself show that unless I feel like a person will understand that I'm not being overtly, obnoxiously hypocritical or mockingly facetious and arrogant. I suppose. I don't know.

People close to me are always telling me to speak up more, or be more assertive, and stuff like that, but I like flying below the radar. Sometimes other people will tell me I'm the kind of person that doesn't say much, but when I do say something, others listen because it'll be good. I don't think this is necessarily true. Often when I do speak up, people still talk over me or just don't listen. I'm also quiet a lot of the time, though, because I don't have anything to say about the topic at hand. If I don't have anything to say, it's probably because 1) I don't have a definitive opinion or 2) one of my biggest pet peeves is people who talk pompously about things they know nothing about. You want to talk about how Michael Phelps smoked pot? Congratulations, talk away. I don't really have anything to say about it, other than I think it's been blown way out of proportion. You want to talk about philosophy or music theory? Awesome. I'll listen, and I'll be interested. But I'm not going to tell you what I think of Plato's Republic, and I'm not going to argue you when you say Beethoven is better than Mozart, because I wouldn't have a bloody clue as to what I was talking about. I know who Plato is. I listen to Beethoven and Mozart's works. But I'm not going to pretend I am anything more than vaguely familiar with them in a very rudimentary way. I'm not going to bullshit about it. But if you want to recommend a piece to listen to and explain why you like it and what I should listen for, then fantastic.

And if you want to talk about the injustice of the admissions process at tier one colleges and universities, or modern American playwrights, or why TV news programs make me angry, or pretty much anything I write about on here, then just try and get me to STOP talking. But who wants to have a conversation about any of that? Hell, that's one of the main reasons I write so much on this stupid thing--who wants to ponder all this shit with me. Hahaha. Someone told me the other day that I should write a screenplay, and I asked what should I write about? They asked me in return, "Well, what do you have to say?" I said not a heck of a lot, but that was a silly untruth, and I didn't realize it until later on. I have a lot to say--I just can't always find ways to say it, let alone creative ways, or people who care to hear me. That's how it finds its way here. Which isn't exactly an awful thing. I'd hate it if I had absolutely nothing to say about anything ever.

I realized one of my problems when thinking about the "Future" is not that I don't know what I want to do--there's just way too many things that I want to do, and I can't make myself pick just one. I can't shut out everything else to specialize on one thing. I keep telling myself that I'm better off for picking one thing and learning a lot about it than knowing a shallow amount about a lot of things, but I don't feel like anything works like that. Everything's interdisciplinary, especially in the arts. Everything overlaps. There is no one single field. Even my specialized classes overlap. Everything in both my majors intersects all the time. And I know I mention this all the freakin time, but it's true. And I don't want to pick just one thing to focus on. I don't want to end up cornered into one field. Even though I sort of know in the back of my mind that that will never happen. And I don't want my voice to be any more limited than it already is. Which is quite a lot.

Meh. Too much thinking.

"I'm not saying I don't cry, but in between I laugh... Plus, I look forward to a good cry. It feels pretty good."

There are several movies and books that are depressing that I watch/read when the mood strikes me, but when I’m looking for a good cry, I go to one of three things: 1) A certain section of Little Women, where Jo tells Laurie she can’t love him and then he comes back married to her sister, 2) something by Nicholas Sparks, be it book or movie, or 3) the season 2 finale of "Grey’s Anatomy" – the end, where the arrogantly obnoxious Alex consoles Izzie, whom he loves but who was engaged to another man who just died.

I always cry at the end of that episode – always. It was very well orchestrated, I think. You’ve got the other women in the background in their figure-hugging, black and navy colored dresses, with their dark hair simply dressed, and Izzie front and center in her garnet-colored, poofy pink dress, and blonde hair all curly and beautiful, lying in bed next to her dead fiancé. And you have Alex, holding her, and George, Meredith, and Cristina, there with her, and Callie and Olivia in the background. Cristina, who doesn’t agree with what she’s done; Alex, who is still bitter that she chose Denny over him; Meredith, who’s dealing with her own boy problems; and George, the best friend. They all took the hit and went down with her when she snapped and nearly killed Denny and compromised all their careers as surgeons, but they stood by her anyway, to the very end. I think one of the things that I love about this is that even though she loses Denny, when you get down to it, Izzie doesn’t end up alone. She has the other interns. Her friends. As she walks out, George and Alex follow closely, refusing to let her be by herself.

Alex is one of my favorite characters on that show. He’s dark, angry, selfish, arrogant, and utterly obnoxious, but he has a soft side and is still damaged from his past family life – alcoholic, abusive dad, etc. – and he’s just a charming fellow. I was thinking how once in a while one of my guy friends will ask, why is it that girls always fall for the arrogant guys who seem bad but really aren’t and they don’t like the guys who really are just good? I’m always tempted to tell them that the good guys are never as good as they seem (Grigg: Women never go for the nice guys. Jocelyn: Please, men say that, but when you get to know some of these men who complain the most, you find out they're not as nice as they think they are.), and at least the other ones are upfront about it. But really, I don’t have an answer to that. Or at least, not a good one.

Part of me thinks that it’s the tangibility of contrast, and desire to affect change. With a guy who’s arrogant on the surface yet sensitive in nature, a girl feels singled out when he reveals that sensitivity to her. It’s easier for her to feel loved because she can see the difference in how he treats her, in how acts around her. It’s reassuring. She has physical, concrete evidence of his affection – or, of her effect on him. She feels special. Worthy. I can’t really explain it, but sometimes I wonder if that’s part of it.

The other thing about Grey’s Anatomy. Everything is so tangled up. Everyone is in love with everyone else – all of their love lives and connections and relationships are confined to the small world of the hospital. Yet, despite its melodrama and the unrealistic feel of it, is it a microcosm exemplifying a certain facet of humanity? William Arthur Ward said, "Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you." And Marcel Proust: "In his younger days a man dreams of possessing the heart of the woman whom he loves; later, the feeling that he possesses the heart of a woman may be enough to make him fall in love with her." I feel like this implies that love can be a matter of convenience. In Grey’s, these people spend most of their lives around one another. They live in the hospital and the only people they see are each other. Is it that unnatural that they should grow to be attracted to each other? If a man is trapped on a deserted island with only one other woman, what are the odds that they eventually will fall for each other, out of convenience? What makes affection grow?

"If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Elizabeth's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise--if regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method in her partiality for Wickham, and that its ill success might, perhaps, authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment."

- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

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Now playing: Jim Sturgess - I've Just Seen a Face

"Wanna go get a drink?" "Yeah. I've had a shit day." "I've had a shit year."

1) I've been awake since 5:06 a.m., and I think that's completely unreasonable and unfair. I should be asleep right now. My brain should be asleep right now. Sleeping is my escape time. I guess that's wrong and probably a sign of clinical depression or some other psychological condition, but whatever. How I choose to get through life right now is my own business and I am perfectly capable of handling everything.

2) The title sums up my week. I don't even want to think about it. I just want this week to be over.

3) I was thinking the other day about how arrogant so many people are, and it made me really wonder. What is it that gives people the idea that they are better than others? Why do so many people think that because, say, they're slightly more intelligent than the average person, that makes them better human beings? Or more entitled to being happy? It sounds ridiculous that people think that way, but they do, even if it's subconsciously. It's annoying, because it's so completely wrong. But how do they arrive at that point? Is arrogance an inherited or acquired trait? If it's acquired, I'm inclined to think that it comes in part because somewhere along the line, we're being taught it. Like, for instance, in being praised by adults for being smart, intelligent children aren't learning the distinction that while it's something to take pride in, it doesn't necessarily make them better than others. They're not taught that there's more to being a good person than being smart. That might be a completely "liberal" attitude, but whatever. ( ;

I'm also inclined to think that in many people, arrogance is facade. It's a defense, a mask to hide insecurities, a lack of self-confidence, etc. I suppose that's understandable, but is it acceptable? I don't know why I just asked that question. I don't even think it's a relevant query. It doesn't really matter, does it? And I also have to think that arrogance can also be falsely attributed, that other traits/attitudes can be misinterpreted as arrogance. I mostly just have to think that as I've been told my shyness has been considered arrogance. It's annoying, but I suppose it's my own fault, and I don't care enough to change my behavior just so that people I don't know or care to know don't automatically assume I'm arrogant because I'm quiet. I have no idea what most people think of me, what kind of person / who they think I am, and I've given up trying to figure it out. Apathy is a bitch. Haha. Or maybe not in this case. Is it still apathy if you clearly take the time to think about it? Whatever. Again, irrelevant. And annoying.

Speaking of annoying, this is a complete digression and departure from the previous topic, but another thing that bothers me is when people argue with you about how you feel, and imply or state right out that what you're feeling is "wrong." That really gets me, that people feel like they have the authority to tell you that you don't have the right to feel the way you do, or that they feel like they can argue with you about how you're wrong in feeling the way you do, and win the argument. Sure, they may be right in that you would be a better person if you felt another way. But they can't tell you that you shouldn't feel the way you do. You're allowed to feel however the hell you feel, and you should never have to justify that. The moment you start letting other people dictate how you feel, is the moment you start to lose yourself, and lose everything you are. Letting others control how you think is bad. Letting them control how you feel is worse.

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Now playing: The Verve Pipe - The Freshmen

"Might be a quarter-life crisis, or just the stirring in my soul..."

So I was chatting with a friend the other day about college, post-college, and life in general, and it was kind of depressing. He's completely independent, working, going to college full time, and it's sad that he doesn't have much time to just be young still, any more.

It's so strange. I feel like I've grown a lot in the past year. Not even. In the past 6 months. At the same time, I feel so young still. Like now is my time to just have fun and not worry too much about the future. And I hate wondering if I don't do things for myself now (traveling, etc.) if I'll ever get the chance to later in life, and if I do, will it mean as much as it would now? I dunno. It's such an odd paradox - feeling so old, and so young at the same time. Those little contradictions fascinate me.

That old crew feels so far away - like it was so long ago, so much more than a few months. And I feel like I'm the one that left, moved forward - like they're still back there, in their same old routines and issues. That sounds supremely arrogant, and I know it's foolish and condescending to think for even a second that I've grown and changed and they haven't. It just seems like I've developed a way, over the years, of being ready to move forward before the majority is. I was ready to leave elementary, intermediate, and high schools before my last years at each. I left the elementary/intermediate group, and now I've left my high school/post-graduation group. The second group changed me so much, and helped me get past the first - they meant so much to me, and it wasn't so long ago that I couldn't imagine life without them. And now there are new people who are helping me get over those I thought I couldn't live without - new people who, mostly, have no idea how much they helped me this summer, how much they now mean to me. I haven't really told them, either. If there's anything good out of it all, it's that the good ones stick around - I've got a few friends that go back to elementary/intermediate, a few from high school, and a couple from just after, that I know will always be there in some form or another. And those, I know, are way too good to lose - really.

After I wrote that bit on love the other day, there was one person I wanted to read it - the first I thought of, and at first, the only one I wanted to send it to. I didn't. I can't. Not any more. It depressed me. I sent it to 3 others instead, and that in itself is quite a feat, for me. Haha. It's not quite the same, though...

One of his phrases always sticks out in my mind, from a letter he wrote me last fall trying to help me through my rough time. I finally finished my poem using it, that I wrote about 5 lines of months ago and never completed. It's eh.

“Jaded is death”
Of your soul, spirit, dreams
Float coolly away, severing all connections
Between beauty and everything else
Is secondary, meaningless
Petty fights, behaving like children
Grow old, but never really grow up
To realize your potential
Genius, talents, wonders
What we’ve become
Blind, self-absorbed, rusted
Cogs in a broken machine
Endlessly spinning on and on
The brink of tolerance you teeter
Off the edge into pools of frustration
Coursing through your body like water flows
Aggravated disappointment
To yourself most of all
You can do is fight
The complacency, dark and growing
Apathy, distorting your vision with disinterest
Spreads like a viral disease
Taints you, mind and soul
Shines out beneath the muck
Rinses away
Falls the cynicism, the bitterness
Tastes almost sweet
Is the sound of the rain relenting
Life returning
Now you see
Beauty
Worth
You.

It reminds me of him. I feel like I've actually regressed the past couple weeks. It sounds so cliche to say someone haunts your dreams, but in this case, it's true...a couple someones, actually. It's really not cool. Otherwise, I'm so more than satisfied with life right now...not in a complacent way, but in an accepting way. And yes, there is a difference.

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Listening to: John Mayer - Why Georgia

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Listening to: Rob Thomas - Ever the Same