Caffeine does things to you, I swear. Like keep you up all night in zombie-mode. Or, if you're already nocturnal, it makes you acutely aware that you're still awake in the morning.
Sigh.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Sunday, 19 July 2009
Happiness
Sarah - Nice to know. And thanks, sweetie. =)
Allan Chalmers: 'The grand essentials of happiness are - something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.'
Then I realized that the more screwed up you are, the more you think of some past tragedy as not that bad after all.
Brilliant, isn't it? You get this sudden insight of how much worse things can get and suddenly, whatever you've faced in the past seems like weeding in the garden when you're wrestling a beast now. Your perspective tips over like a glass that is finally knocked over the edge because, oh-dear-I'm-fighting-with-my-life, and nothing else quite matters except this time zone through which you're gritting your teeth and praying to God that this would be worth it.
My point is, happiness is a perspective. You can be in a right shithole, but that doesn't mean that all the other crap you've been through wasn't just as bad. To a fifty-year-old Madonna, growing old isn't something you just 'get over with' or to simply perm your hair and wear knitted overalls.
We all think that the keys to happiness involve learning, reading, watching TV, paying your bills, exercising, watching your portions, calling up a friend, ranting in a journal, blah blah - but these are all things that our current society urges us to do. When our ancestors bound their feet and corseted their waists, warred for riches and served animals for worship, you can bet it wasn't because they were in search for some epic sadness.
Here's some food for thought:
Dude #1: What if I don't want to be happy? What if I want to be miserable?
Dude #2: Be miserable, if that makes you happy!
Allan Chalmers: 'The grand essentials of happiness are - something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.'
Then I realized that the more screwed up you are, the more you think of some past tragedy as not that bad after all.
Brilliant, isn't it? You get this sudden insight of how much worse things can get and suddenly, whatever you've faced in the past seems like weeding in the garden when you're wrestling a beast now. Your perspective tips over like a glass that is finally knocked over the edge because, oh-dear-I'm-fighting-with-my-life, and nothing else quite matters except this time zone through which you're gritting your teeth and praying to God that this would be worth it.
My point is, happiness is a perspective. You can be in a right shithole, but that doesn't mean that all the other crap you've been through wasn't just as bad. To a fifty-year-old Madonna, growing old isn't something you just 'get over with' or to simply perm your hair and wear knitted overalls.
We all think that the keys to happiness involve learning, reading, watching TV, paying your bills, exercising, watching your portions, calling up a friend, ranting in a journal, blah blah - but these are all things that our current society urges us to do. When our ancestors bound their feet and corseted their waists, warred for riches and served animals for worship, you can bet it wasn't because they were in search for some epic sadness.
Here's some food for thought:
Dude #1: What if I don't want to be happy? What if I want to be miserable?
Dude #2: Be miserable, if that makes you happy!
Friday, 17 July 2009
'I' for Internet
The Internet is a world of its own. You Twitter each other, checking out FaceBook profiles and updating your status on Myspace. You blog your life like you would in a private journal, you change your MSN name to clue in on your life, you Instant-Message on practically every social network there exists.
Aren't we all just oh-so-chummy?
What the Internet does, though, is distort the real person that you might be (that is, considering you have a life out there, which might just be me imagining things or you wouldn't be reading this right now). Or rather, it tests the limits of your privacy. Like, if I whipped out pictures of a new DSLR and posted it all over FaceBook, you can bet that when we next meet, our conversation will be nothing like this:
Me: Guess-what-guess-what-guess-what?
You: What?
Me: I got a new DSLR!
You: Oh my goodness! (combined excited screech)
Instead, it'd be more like this:
Me: I got a new DSLR!
You: Oh yeah. I saw.
Me: You did?
You: Facebook.
Me: Ah. Okay. Right. (scrambles in head for next topic)
See? No feverish scream, no overwhelming excitement, no flurry of great ado, and whatever suspense you could have had was resolved the moment you breathed through the window of the Internet world.
Then again, we're stuck in this superficial net of websites and webpages so there may not be any point in trying to resist it. Unless, of course, I do it and you do it and a whole great army of people do it and suddenly we're this amazing fleet of new people renewing an old idea of socializing.
Who knows. We could be the next wave of non-computer people.
Aren't we all just oh-so-chummy?
What the Internet does, though, is distort the real person that you might be (that is, considering you have a life out there, which might just be me imagining things or you wouldn't be reading this right now). Or rather, it tests the limits of your privacy. Like, if I whipped out pictures of a new DSLR and posted it all over FaceBook, you can bet that when we next meet, our conversation will be nothing like this:
Me: Guess-what-guess-what-guess-what?
You: What?
Me: I got a new DSLR!
You: Oh my goodness! (combined excited screech)
Instead, it'd be more like this:
Me: I got a new DSLR!
You: Oh yeah. I saw.
Me: You did?
You: Facebook.
Me: Ah. Okay. Right. (scrambles in head for next topic)
See? No feverish scream, no overwhelming excitement, no flurry of great ado, and whatever suspense you could have had was resolved the moment you breathed through the window of the Internet world.
Then again, we're stuck in this superficial net of websites and webpages so there may not be any point in trying to resist it. Unless, of course, I do it and you do it and a whole great army of people do it and suddenly we're this amazing fleet of new people renewing an old idea of socializing.
Who knows. We could be the next wave of non-computer people.
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