And so I present, Recordings, part 1.
7/11/17
I just went on a rampage, reading almost every blog post I wrote freshman year. I was amazed by how good of a writer I was, and by who I was, by the kind of person I was, by how much light and spunk and verve I had. By the vocabulary I used, by what I gave, by the friendships I experienced... I was thinking about what was different between then and now, what I had then that I don't have now, what I did then that I don't do now. A couple things came to mind. First, I'm a lot more plugged in now than I was then. I wear headphones--I never wore headphones before! I just didn't do it, unless I was listening to music while studying maybe. But now I plug them into my phone and listen to podcasts, and music, and audiobooks. The second thing is, I used to talk to everybody. I made friends everywhere I went. I don't really do that anymore. I'm more hesitant. I'm much more comfortable not talking to strangers.
I don't know what this means. Some of it might be nostalgia: maybe I receive as much fulfillment out of my friendships now as I did then? Maybe I'm a way better person, and my life is way better, and I've developed a new normal?
I miss that guy though--I miss that kid. I miss all the good parts of him.
***
7/27/17
Fireworks are a great metaphor for the end of my childhood. When I was a kid, I loved them, and that was all there was too it. But now that I'm an adult I've realized it's such a complicated story. I've meet people like [a girl I knew who was burned in a fireworks accident], who are traumatized by experiences with fireworks, and have to either leave places where fireworks are going to be shown, or take sleeping pills so they can stand to be in a place where fireworks are. And I've heard about people like the foreign exchange student from Yemen, who said that when he heard that sound, it usually meant that one of his friends had died, and it's a great blessing for us that we feel excitement and not terror when we hear that sound. I guess I've also learned to think about veterans who have PTSD, and whenever they hear that sound it brings back awful memories from things they saw and did. So I'm not able to enjoy fireworks in the same uninhibited way I was before. I've grown up and realized that things are complicated. And that just feels like the process of growing up in a nutshell to me.
***
8/25/17
I have become much more of a fashionable person lately, because I've noticed that what you wear has an effect on you, and it has an effect on the way people perceive you. I think I'm forgetting a key ingredient though. I was thinking about this as I watched some girls at a barbecue tonight for the chemistry department, and the way that they acted. They were wearing just unremarkable clothing, but it was the way that they acted, the assumptions that they made, that made them powerful, that made them players--not players like in a dating sense, just a social sense.
I thought about the way I dressed freshman year. Freshman year I still wore super baggy jeans and free T-shirts, and had very little style at all. I think I have way more style now than I did then. But I also remember freshman year as being one of the most confident times of my life, and I think that's a valuable lesson. I think that the way that I feel, and the way that I think of myself and present myself, is even more important than the clothes I wear. Clothes are an ingredient, but they are not the only ingredient, or even the most important ingredient.
***
10/2/17
Have you ever felt the delicious rush as air flows through your lungs? Have you ever felt the heady joy of your heart pumping blood into every extremity of your body? Have you ever felt the thrill as, in trillions of cells, a million million mitochondria rip apart food and turn it into pure energy inside your body? Have you felt the crackle of electricity through your brain in every neuron? Have you felt the sheer unbridled joy of being alive?
[I believe I recorded this one after a particularly spectacular classical concert].
***
10/31/17
I'e had it with sarcasm; here's why. Sarcasm is, in reality, expressing that things that people do aren't 'ok,' that things other people do are 'weird.' I just, I hate that word, 'weird.' What does 'weird' mean? It means 'not like me and in a bad way.' It's like, for 90% of the things that we do as humans, we have no rulebook. We came to this life, and no one told us how we're supposed to clothe ourselves, or what stuff we're supposed to like, and we're just all trying to figure it out. And for 90% of the things we do we don't have anything to tell us what is 'right' or what is 'wrong' except for what our peers think, and what our peers say is 'right' and 'wrong.' The thing is, they don't have rulebooks either! They're just making it up, too. There are somethings where we are told what is right and wrong, and it's good to keep those straight--like killing people. It's okay to be unhappy with people who kill other people. That's completely alright. In other things, I think we as humans are getting things mostly right. Eating healthy food is better than eating unhealthy food. But in a lot of things, it's just like, with every fashion, with every fad, there's no reason for those things to be that way other than that a couple people decided they should be. And then, if somebody doesn't conform to that, we say that they're 'weird.' This idea of 'people not conforming are weird,' that's where sarcasm or a biting sense of humor come from. And it's this idea that like, "you are violating the social code right now. There's this code of what we all say you should be like, and you're not doing it." And I think we should all just give each other a break! I think we should stop moralizing so many choices that are amoral. It really doesn't matter in a lot of ways if my life is different from yours. In some ways our lives should be the same: we should both not kill people, we should both work hard at what we do, we should both give of what we have to other people. But, you know, if I want to watch Star Wars and musicals and you want to watch sports, that's not a moral decision. That's not something either one of us should feel bad about.
Our culture has started to realize that the way we view humor and expectations about each other is wrong, but it's responding to it in the wrong way. It's responding with an "I don't give a crap" attitude. The problem with that attitude is that it's still angry and aggressive, it still says "wrong," it just says "what you say about me is wrong" instead of a more charitable, kind, understanding attitude of "we've all got this wrong and what I say about you needs to stop being judgmental." So, we don't need more "I don't give a crap, the whole world is wrong about me" attitudes. We need more kind, gentle, understanding attitudes.
***
11/13/17
[The You in this one is me; this was directed at myself].
Your life is pretty great, and there are a lot of people who don't have lives that are as good as yours. Sometimes when you think about that you try to be less happy with your life, or force yourself to be unhappy, because you feel bad that your life is so good. That's the incorrect response. The correct response is to continue to love your life, and to allow yourself to enjoy every part of it, and also to do everything you can to help others who are less fortunate, to donate your time and money for them. Stop making yourself feel bad for having a great life.
