Emotional

I wonder if it's true that a person gets more emotional as they get older.

I feel like such things can be justified in other ways or at least one can weigh in other factors that can be attributed to such emotional-ness.

I find myself being more emotional as an adult.

Things that didn't bother me before do now. Little things, stupid worries, actions that shouldn't contain as much meaning as I sometimes construe them to have...

All these things were things that I had taught myself to brush aside when I was younger but I feel like stronger waves keeps pushing me away from the shore and there's a pull to stay in the deep ocean of irrationality and the useless holding on to of grudges, past slights, and the like.

I mean seriously, in the end, who cares? It doesn't change, enhance, or better my life in any way, so there's no point in holding onto such things.

There wasn't any one big  happening or anything that lead to this though; it's just that little things bother me more now and that in and of itself also bothers me.

Sometimes I wonder if it's because there's more stress as an adult (something I've come to realize I still haven't gotten the knack of managing yet) and with stress, little things begin to beat against an already fragile equilibrium of the mind.

Perhaps I've simply become more high-strung. What a horrible development. This is something that must be remedied quickly because that's the last thing I want to become.

I don't like being serious. Why must adults always be so serious? To be taken seriously? Preposterous, I say! I can be both, yet people have a hard time reconciling such things. Do they not realize that humans are not linear, 2-dimensional, or even 3-dimensional beings? There's so much depth to people that they themselves sometimes don't realize they have...

I don't like having to keep track of people in terms of their personality (I suppose another way to put it is whether or not I should be suspicious of their character). Thankfully, it seems that I've been able to meet and maintain friendships where I don't have to worry about such things. I've found that I have a general almost subconscious aversion to those prone to manipulation and superficiality so I haven't had to deal with too many heartbreaks (from friendships, at least).

I don't like the details that adults have to pay attention to. I suppose this is more to do with one's presentation of oneself. How one dresses, acts, and helps (or doesn't help) others has become a reflection of character or how serious one takes oneself and/or the other party. Dress like a slob and you're being rude. Act inappropriately and suddenly you've ostracized yourself from everyone else. Not helping someone suddenly is a lost connection in networking. In a way, it kind of sounds like what high school was, but isn't high school just the testing ground for how adults now act? I remember reading something about that somewhere... (there's also a song called "High School Never Ends" by Bowling for Soup addressing just that).

It's all become so burdensome. The ideal, of course, is simply to help others for the sake of helping them. The desire stemming not from personal gain, but from a desire to do so (oh, such cliche words..).

I feel like it goes back to why Christians are considered to be such hypocrites - the idea is that in knowing one's faith and how awesome and great God is and in knowing one's salvation, actions simply follow as an outpouring of such feelings. However, because one wants to show that they too have that "outpouring" of feelings, they fake it. Thus the hypocrisy.

What I find interesting about Christianity, is that the experience, though universal (for those who are truly rooted in their faith), must be deeply personal in order for true change to occur. There is a formula for Christianity, it seems. People go through certain situations in life and suddenly are face to face with God and come to accept or reject Him. Those who accept undergo such a dramatic transformation that the very fabric of their lives are changed. (At least I feel like that's the general expectation - and of course I'm making a very large generalization).

However, those that do not undergo such a dramatic change or feeling or what have you are left in the dust and others look at them with the general feeling of "Well, what about you?" So to compensate, they fake it in front of those that they think matter and act as they please otherwise, not knowing the lack of true depth in their faith.

This development is the same in society. First, someone acts out of genuine feeling. Others find that it works and it becomes a formula - a custom, if you will. Thus, courtesies are born.

Such actions, with no truth behind it, create a culture of hypocrisy.

No one wants to show their dark side so the facade of polite courtesy but back-stabbing machinations continue.

I wonder if there's a way to break out of this cycle?

The other solution, as a friend so aptly put it, is to "fake it 'til it's real."

Gah. There are some missing gaps between ideas I feel, but for now, I feel like this will have to suffice.