emotional wring

I can't resist. I have to know. The abhorent longing blinds my mind as I trudge through the duties of the day. Just those couple of words given to me will quench that thirst and let me move on. Yet, they could hurt, and make me feel so much worse.

Can I release the emotional hold yet passionally continue to strive? Somehow I must find a balance between continuing to have hope and bracing for failure. How can I, at the least, handle the dreadful feeling of strain? It may likely cause me more pain than I need at the moment, yet strangely I would still welcome it. How much more pain could it give that the amount I am already enduring in waiting? Besides, there is such a infantesimal chance the news will be favorable, and more than ever I hope it is and have to know that it is. It must be favorable, after waiting so painfully to receive it.

But that's not how life works. I am again dissapointed. Dissapointment after dissapointment after dissapointment you would think something would finally turn for the better. But it doesn't.

No miracles for today.

achievement

When we work so hard in life to achieve something, what defines that achievement? It could be a recognition by one's peers, an award/degree given by a commitee, an excellent salary, increase in rank/position, or doing something admirable that no one has done before. Movie actors, for example, could be judged on the money they make, how well they act, how many fans they have, etc. There are many possibilities. Goals of achievement give people plenty of inspiration, and it's the way we measure ourselves against our contemporaries.

But life is unfair and jealousy is a great evil. Award commitees can be swayed by trends, false information, bribery and alternate agendas. People may not wish to accept your achievement and deny you that pleasure. Salaries have more to do with market forces than the importance of your work. You may do everything right, but no one would notice it. The story about people not being appreciated until long after their death is as old as humankind itself. Gandhi never won the Noble Peace Prize. Barbara McClintock was ridiculed for decades before she finally got appreciated.

It has seemed to me that awards are inherently unfair, opinionated, and just a matter of luck: being at the right place at the right time, or having the qualities that happen to be in style that year. Truth is, no one really knows what makes a successful person, or whether these qualities are actually good for the long run. Happiness is subjective and one's potential worth to society has more to do with the combination of qualities and not the qualities themselves. Plus, so many people are competing just to get credit for what they do, rather than actually doing work.

Excessive awards, achievements, and other resume-bound titles are just a result of a grave human obession of people who need these superficial titles to feel better about themselves. It is propogated by the same types of people who are too lazy to challenge and push themselves.

Hard work should have it's own reward, and it does. It's not as satisfying as we were promised in Disney movies, but it's the best, longest-lasting satisfaction that we can get in life. It has only to do with how much we can compete with ourselves, and strive to do things we never thought we could do.

advice

When you're in an insecure position, there will always be someone putting their two cents in. They believe you don't have what it takes and that you need to drastically change. You may have been longing to know what has been holding you back, and they finally tell you. It hurts but you long for it because it might kill that festering pain that won't go away.

They aren't neccessarily wrong, and they aren't necessarily right. What is wrong is the idea that there is only one way to win a game. Sure you may have some flaws, but no one can be perfect; and sometimes flaws are just as valuable as your skills.

So, please take advice with the proverbial grain of salt. Just because someone gives it to you without asking doesn't mean that they are right or that you should listen to them. It would be wrong for them to expect it.

Stop loving someone?

If you love someone, can you stop? Can you flush those precious emotions away and treat the person as a friend at your own will. That is, for practical reasons...Maybe that person doesn't feel the same way (anymore), or it interferes with your other goals in life. It's just when the brain needs to protect the heart.

If we think we can, it might be that we are fooling ourselves and only pushing those emotions out of site. So, as long as you continue to run in to that person those feelings could burst out at any moment. The body is at the mercy of the heart but the false feeling of control might empower us.

Maybe the mind can control the heart, or at least the heart can listen to reason. In that case, we're not as helpless as we want to believe when we fall in love. However, this control is the villain of romance, depriving us of the essential feeling of being human while devaluing any reason to live.

It might be different for everyone, but I certainly don't have the answer to this one....

polite smile

I was out today running some errands, and I noticed how we smile a lot, politely to show that we are satisfied customers. We're so happy to strangers, because being optimistic is a social necessity. If we don't smile, either they did something wrong, we're just having a bad day, or we're just jerks. But when that person you bought a sandwich from notices it, it does feel pretty good when a person cares to ask how you're doing.

Sure, I got a little caring since I paid a little money. Sometimes you can't even expect that much from a friend, even though you'd expect them to. People are just so into themselves and their own problems that they wouldn't even notice. That's pretty sad to those who believe in working together and helping each other out of the big muddy ditches that come in life.

I think most people genuinely care at one point in their lives, until someone takes advantage of them. After that, some continue the cycle by taking advantage of other people while making endless excuses. Most create this elaborate illusion where they convince themselves of being good people while suppressing their newfound selfishness. Most of the good they do is superficial or even Machiavellian. Finally, there are a few people learn how to care about others but protect themselves at the same time. And all the hope in this crazy world relies on them.

Faulty logic

So it seems like the good ones are already taken. ...

Let me do a pseudomathematical proof:

assume "everyoneIKnow" !=liars (!= means not equal)
goodOne is a subset of {guys, girls}
me = goodOne (according to everyoneIKnow)
me != taken
hence, goodOnes NOT ALWAYS taken

Therefore, there's a good one that's not yet taken.
Now how do I triangulate her whereabouts?

juicy secret

A secret: a few words with such great power. You can imagine the traumatic emotional fallout triggered just by opening your mouth. We share secrets to show our trust and seal bonds with the people we care about. We give the other person the means to hurt us later while getting the means to hurt them. In that process, we can feel better that we aren't as crazy as we might have thought and we can feel assured that this friendship/relationship cannot easily dissapear.

Someone left me a secret, and I have kept it hidden away. After fights and the trauma she caused me, I could have unleashed it, yet I didn't. We aren't friends anymore, and now I wish she had never had told me it. I have a way to hurt her, but I have no reason to. I wish I could forget it, but I can't imagine why she gave me that possibility in the first place. Maybe she knew I would never tell anyone. Well, I never have, and never will.

saying goodbye

Whenever people part ways, there is a chance that they will never meet again. It's especially scary when breaking a deep connection and suddenly return to the lonely world again. Sooner or later, the world will crash on us again, and we have to take care of our own world without help from others.

Maybe if you give that person a piece of you, than he or she will more likely try to come back to you again. Tell the person one of your darkest secrets, or an endless story in your life. Give a screenname, or phonenumber to think of you again. Everytime, you give a different reason to come back to you and hope that person will.

But there is always that chance that whether unintentionally or deliberately, that person never returns, and you've lost that piece forever. Hopefully, it was something you could afford to lose.