Someone told me long ago that to err is not only human, its the essence of being human. When you stop making mistakes, you've stopped taking risks. When you've stopped taking risks, you've stopped living. Not to say we should stumble from one black hole to another, but the advocacy appeals. Now the point is how to get out of them. It sort of spirals into things, and once that spiral down begins you begin to loosen your grip on sanity. And then suddenly the obsessiveness that once made you eccentric is now your reason to live, its overtaken you with a force you never had even for the true ambitions of your life. Evil wins faster than good? Damn right it does. Its simpler isn't it. Just move along. Flow. Obsessiveness, or passion is the river that flows between the land of insanity and eccentricity, between red hot drive to achieve and an ideal that you are better off letting go of. And it takes tears to keep that river from drying up, to stay on the right side.
Synthetic happiness. Soon after an email from a friend to Dr Gilbert cc'ed its way into my inbox, I was hooked. Trudged through the website, and simultaneously had Champagne Supernova playing in the background. Suffice to say, the mood was mellow enough to ponder over life, the universe and everything. A relatively strong anti-absolutist (a word?) and an absolute believer in 'everything is relative', this guy had it bang on the money. Premise 1: Its all in your head. Nothing is real. In Milton;s words, the mind can make a heaven of hell; or a hell of heaven. Premise 2: If you can manage your emotions as a third person, you can manipulate them any which way you need. For your thinking pleasure, ladies and gentlemen: Corollary A: Is negative feeling also synthetic? All placebo? Then what's the fuss about The Giver's Sameness? Cut down on the correct oxytoxins and we should be tuned into good old humanoids. Never have a bad thought in our lives. Corollary B: What about feeling under transition? When feeling changes towards the same subject, object or human, is that also synthetic. Do we want to feel hate, sudden ingatuation or a deep intrigue in a new subject simply because it arrived at the right time. Corollary C: When we are confused (also known as heart vs head, religion vs instinct, free will vs social conditioning etc etc), is that what our 'emotion manager' is telling us vs what we are feeling? But synthetic happiness assumes the 'what we are feeling' doesn't exist...also, if only an emotion manager exists, why does he need to manage something? That in itself would assume something exists to 'manage', right?
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are we there yet?
2:28 PM
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Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Changing my plans
12:02 PMThis age thing has me bothered. I'm feeling a bit trapped in it. And its running out much much faster than I thought. Financially, I need goals. But given my current living situation, my money isn't going to be mine to spend for a couple of years. Professionally, I have goals. Not exact ones, but I know what'll help me get there. I need 2 more years of college. But a current slump in my market means I'm forced to look within a career path that doesn't interest me because there isn't a way to switch or study right now.
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What do I really want to achieve by the time I'm 30? How many of the goals I had by the time I reached 25 - be financially independent, be in a career I like, where people respect me, put down a loan on a house and a car, have a hobby that is just mine. I'm not sure I'll get to them. I want to learn to dance, I want to learn the guitar, I want . And I am petrified of getting caught in mediocrity. Can you have it all? No. So I have to pick. The time is now. It'll be too late once I meet the right guy, find the right career. Once things fall into place, there's no space for randomness. And I will never regret spending late nights for a job when I love it, or doing things for a man I love. But till then, let me do all the things I won'rt be able to do then.So I guess the question is : What do I want i the next one year? I want to get to know myself better, free of what I'm supposed to be from the point of view of my parents, my job, my relationships, everything. My friends will never judge me so I know whatever I do, they'll stick by me..for the last 5 years, I conditioned myself as per what was going to happen in my life 5 years down the line (yes that's how sadly predicatable my life was at 19). Now, suddenly, I don;t want any of that. And now I want to know what I want to do. To put in a cliche, I want a relationship with myself. I want to know how I can survive evening after evening with just myself without being bored. I want to know how many km I can run in a day, how good I am at keeping house plants alive, how to make an amazing website that's an embodiment of everything I can be..I want to apply for jobs in New Zealand, and not be tied down by my sis. Because she's amazing, and she knows I'm there for her and I now know that as long as I'm within the same country for emergencies and local rates 2 hour long 3am calls, she will be just fine.And the second question is : What do I want by the time I'm 30? That one I'll think about. Get back to you in a few days.God, I feel so liberated. And it was all in own head.