Maturity is all about making decisions that are 'correct' even when they are hard. In that sense, I made a mature decision last night, because I got the 'correct' outcome. However, I am twisting the truth quite badly to be able to make that claim. My method of accomplishing this was tragically poor.
I often feel unable to make any difference in the world, even my own. Last night I proved myself wrong by affecting several people, including myself, quite strongly. Step one. Now, I must learn to do so in a moral and responsible way.
There have been times in the past, including quite recently, when I felt a strong desire to make mistakes for their own sake. Blame a fascination with Oscar Wilde:
"Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes."
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Still, I find this one even more appropriate:
"We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust..."
- The Arcade Fire
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
Time is a blind guide
I suppose that if you don't make choices for yourself, they inevitably make themselves. Which is really just a less blameful way of saying that a failure to act is itself the act of choosing. Big deal. How many choices are made on false pretense, bad assumptions, or irrational reasoning? Most?
Anyway, time passes and we learn. Things happen and we notice or we don't, and now tomorrow is here and our opinions have changed. I am holding on for something better, but I know the odds are unattractive that I will hit a moving target. It is the curse of no foresight (or maybe no patience of thought?) to get tomorrow what we stopped wanting today.
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We have been traveling. We have taken trips to Helsinki as well as Estonia in large groups (15-20), and I actually have to say that I am quite impressed - in two weekends, there were no examples of the group grinding into inactivity or even sore feelings through the difficulty of coordinating wishes or plans.
More importantly, wow. I have four needs, I am finally realizing - food, clothing, shelter, and travel. Not to even touch on the larger issues of what coming to Finland has done for me, but... traveling performs some kind of cleansing for the soul. It is strange, really, to anticipate transcendent moments and then actually have them arrive.
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I'm not sure that 'guilty pleasure' is the right term for something that can't really be planned, but I still love it when wonderful songs attach to wonderful moments or places... and I will always associate Band of Horses' newer album with laying in my top bunk at our hostel in Tallinn after everyone else had fallen asleep. Indeed, Tallinn will be a memorable city for many reasons.
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Time, I can see now, is both crawling and sprinting past me, the days dragging one by one out of thought, while the trip disappears in a slow flash. Some of my friends are already leaving in a couple weeks, their time here completed. If I were five years younger, this paragraph wouldn't include quotes around my usage of the words 'carpe diem'. As it is, I am left to wonder what combination of conscious and behavioral factors is bringing me to this strange phenomenon now.
Anyway, time passes and we learn. Things happen and we notice or we don't, and now tomorrow is here and our opinions have changed. I am holding on for something better, but I know the odds are unattractive that I will hit a moving target. It is the curse of no foresight (or maybe no patience of thought?) to get tomorrow what we stopped wanting today.
--------------------------------------------
We have been traveling. We have taken trips to Helsinki as well as Estonia in large groups (15-20), and I actually have to say that I am quite impressed - in two weekends, there were no examples of the group grinding into inactivity or even sore feelings through the difficulty of coordinating wishes or plans.
More importantly, wow. I have four needs, I am finally realizing - food, clothing, shelter, and travel. Not to even touch on the larger issues of what coming to Finland has done for me, but... traveling performs some kind of cleansing for the soul. It is strange, really, to anticipate transcendent moments and then actually have them arrive.
-------------------------------------------
I'm not sure that 'guilty pleasure' is the right term for something that can't really be planned, but I still love it when wonderful songs attach to wonderful moments or places... and I will always associate Band of Horses' newer album with laying in my top bunk at our hostel in Tallinn after everyone else had fallen asleep. Indeed, Tallinn will be a memorable city for many reasons.
-------------------------------------------
Time, I can see now, is both crawling and sprinting past me, the days dragging one by one out of thought, while the trip disappears in a slow flash. Some of my friends are already leaving in a couple weeks, their time here completed. If I were five years younger, this paragraph wouldn't include quotes around my usage of the words 'carpe diem'. As it is, I am left to wonder what combination of conscious and behavioral factors is bringing me to this strange phenomenon now.
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