Post-holiday Clarity

I had been on holiday for about 5 days somewhere between end of November and beginning of December, and during that time I had loads of time to think. Beach-walking, introspective thinking, that stuff.
So here’s what I have drawn from that.
My life is a massive spiderweb. In it are tangled very many individuals and things that either have an impact on me or that I have an impact on…
And usually what happens is these webs is that the impact of such people is soon forgotten, until, say, major crisis happens and there is a recollection. Or the disappeared person reappears and there is a recollection. Like a primary school buddy suddenly happens to be in the same school as me, and all the recollection about how we were the fiercest of rivals comes up… then I realize I kinda took my foot off the gas after that pressure was eased…
In my life I’ve had various pressures to succeed, some of which persist, others which wear off. With time I get used to the persistent pressures and just tune them out… But then they kick it up a notch and I end up beating myself up for generally sucking at something i should be good at.

I thought I had myself figured out at 19… The world was there for me to take over and completely pwn, but with time I realized there was way more than I could manage by myself. I’d always been the independent rebel-sans-cause type, the world couldgo hang for all I cared, but that came to change as well, having to factor in other people into my life and live with them and for them as it were… Not exactly the idal situatiom, but that’s how we’re programmed, to be social and everything…
So here we are, having barely lived our lives. What’s it to be? For one, I need to learn to stop taking things so seriously. It’s only life. And much as I have come to learn to live from regret to regret, there’s also the happy bits in between…I need to take those and learn from them. I also need to start working out how to move on to level 2. And to make use of what I have. And before that, to appreciate what I have.

Above all, I need to learn how to speak my truth.

Proximity vs Distance

So my roommate and his girlfriend have been going through some rather interesting phases of late, like they’ve broken up and made up several times. Yesterday was the calling-and-no-answering stage, and before that was the disowning of everything. Now my room is rather small, so I have become an unfortunate participant in these sharings, including being asked over and over again by roommate what roommate’s girlfriend’s texts mean. And they were rather cryptic. So basically it was me agreeing to whatever he said to get him off my case…
They seemed to be outdoing themselves in an attempt to prove that familiarity breeds contempt.
But no, now they’re back together.
So that got me thinking, is it a thing about familiarity, through proximity, that wears people down and makes relationships so weird?
Long distance relationships have the added strain of having to compensate for the physical closeness with other things, like communication. So i have the opposite problem… Miss Girl has been away for a while, and in the meantime I have sucked majorly at my attempts at communication with her.
Proximity makes everything trivial, like too much contact and such. And distance makes a difference. Bring in a relationship with someone you can’t see/be with is hard.
Somewhere along the great slide rule of life, a compromise has to be struck…

You will be # 1 in the world…

So that you don’t look at me funny, I start with what has to be the creepiest lolcat ever…
Ok, now that I’ve started with that, I just wanted to creep you out. Cats are evil. And soft and warm at the same time… It’s a niche market, the perfect conspiracy. Make them nice and cute, but with a sprinkling of evil, and soon they shall yield. But this one wins.

I concur, having watched Disturbia. Thank goodness we don’t have one of those, both the cat and the basement.

So yesterday I was thinking about the way we strive to climb up the hierarchy, become the best of anything. And just as you get to the top of the pile, you realise that your pile was at the bottom, supporting a host of other piles. Which begs the question, is the pursuit of number 1 really worth it, seeing as number 1 is all the way up there, and you’re all the way down here?
Now I’m not saying we should just settle with the status quo, no. I’m saying it’s good to have ambition, the desire to be better. but how much better? Better could be the first one in your family to go to college, or the first millionaire, or something as mundane-sounding as surviving to see your great grandchildren.
A story is told of a fisherman in some sleepy backwater in Mexico, he was asked why he just settled with being a fisherman while he could do so much more with it, like say, hiring people to fish, selling the fish, expanding, getting a bigger enterprise, making enough money to retire to some sleepy backwater where he could fish all he wanted…
The guy got to the end, not by following the marked road, but by realizing that he was happy with just settling. So either follow the road and enjoy the trip or identify an end and take the shortest way there…
Maybe that’s the secret to being happy. All that matters is whether you’re well and truly happy.
Then there’s t shirt distractions like this one, not half bad

Get thee behind me…

So all that matters is that you’re happy, as long as you’re not happy at someone else’s expense.
Don’t worry, be happy. Simple.

Blogged with the Flock Browser