The right thing at the right time

Ever make lists of goals that you hope to keep? This can be in the form of New Year's resolutions, mid-year crisis (oh no! I haven't kept any of my New Year's resolutions!), turning point in various eras of one's life (end of high school/beginning of college, end of college, end of a career, the turning point of a career, retirement, etc.), and so on and so forth. Have you ever looked back at those goals (stumbling across the list years later) to realize (with horror) that nothing has changed?

That happened to me when I graduated college. I looked at a list I made when I graduate high school and realized that I didn't get better or become a better person. I had gotten worse. I had obtained some nasty habits, forgotten a lot of good ones, and in general had become a person that I wasn't proud of. Granted, I wasn't living a destructive lifestyle in the sense that I wasn't hurting anyone (myself included) but I also wasn't living an active life (physically, mentally, and emotionally). It's the kind of stasis that comes from coasting and I realized that I had wanted more from myself and I had hoped to gain much more in college. I don't mean to say that I didn't gain anything in college because I learned a lot (in obvious ways) and I definitely enjoyed the college experience. However, from a self-developmental point of view, nothing changed and I had only gotten worse.

I think somewhere along the line after that I realized that I needed to be more active about the person I wanted to be. If I want to change, I can't keep thinking "Oh, I'll do it tomorrow." because in the end, I'm putting off the person I want to become and when that happens, well, I'll simply continue to be unhappy or dissatisfied with the current me.

There's always that balance that one must have between bettering oneself and being happy with who one is because in constantly trying to improve oneself, there's almost an inherent thought that the current self is not good enough and thus needs improvement. I think I went through cycles of self-deprecation and contentment with my self for quite some time until I realized the two are not as closely connected as one thinks.

At any rate, I could get into this huge long (wordy and to be honest, boring) testimonial about how I changed my way of thinking but the point is this: I recently came across another one of my lists and realized that of the 3 things I listed, I had accomplished (more or less) two. To be (somewhat) active in changing myself, I had progressed.

Life is supposed to be an active engagement of the self with not only the world but with oneself in constantly encouraging to better oneself and the environment around oneself. It may not always happen, but with effort comes results.

Honesty in one's self-assessment

I like vague titles, but I realized, what ends up happening is the titles of my blogs end up being the same or being similar, despite being about completely different things.

But perhaps I will stick to the vagueness. We'll see.

I think that one thing I find refreshing, and endearing in a way, is when a person makes a somewhat negative self-assessment of themselves that shows self-awareness in a way that perhaps other people are less willing to acknowledge.

For example, someone who takes home work every night, thinking they'll get some work done, is fooling themselves if they never get any work done. (That someone is me). However, when facing reality, you acknowledge that you do or don't do whatever you think you won't or will do (respectively) and suddenly, life becomes more manageable.

I dunno, I suppose it's a roundabout way of saying that I kind of understand myself now, and I like it when other people do the same. And in the end, when we accept the reality that is who we are, I think it becomes easier to better oneself. "Know thyself" is apparently as old as ancient Greek (via Wikipedia, a questionable source) and perhaps it has survived with reason...

I am interesting, if only to me

But sometimes, I look at my old stuff (whether it's blog entries, old poems I've attempted, starts of stories) and sometimes, I wonder what the heck I was thinking.

Could this be the fabled foolishness of youth that one sees as one ages?!

Food of our past

We change, thinking that we do not.

When we confront that which has not changed, we are surprised because it has not met expectations. We blame that which has not changed, when it was us that had changed all along.

Displacing blame is what humans do really well, and it all started with Adam.

That aside, this is really just about food and how it tastes, but abstracting such thoughts creates a deeper sense of truth, doesn't it? There are parallels everywhere in the world.

Anyway, after living in Korea and enjoying its cuisine for three and a half years, I went back to America to find that a lot of its food really sucked. In-n-out? Too salty. Chipotle? Too salty. Any restaurant? Too salty. Sweets? Too damn sugary. Or buttery.

Where are the flavors? Butter and sugar don't make a dessert good, it hides the other flavors that are supposed to come out. Granted, butter is good. Sugar is tasty. In moderation.

However, I think what had happened is, I went to a country that used reasonable amounts of salt, oil, butter (which in my mind is separate from oil since it tastes fairly different from other oils), and sugar and suddenly, the truth of how nasty American cuisine came out.

Of course I eventually adjusted to the ridiculous amounts of sodium, fat, and sugar in everything but it made me realize that because we change, e.g. our tastes change, the very thing that used to be good may not be so anymore.

This can be with food, tastes in music, even people.

I think with people, when we grow to be adults, we don't want to go through the trouble of meeting new people and adjusting to the nuances of personalities that exist and so we deal with the people we know, despite realizing that we may not like them. In many ways, I think such complacency is tragic. But my personality is such that if I don't like something, I avoid or cut it out. This has its problems too, but at least I'm not influenced by those I dislike (that thought that "you are the average of the 6 closest people to you" kind of stuck with me).

People

I like people who have the ability to draw on a thoughtful side of me. Most people don't. But perhaps it's simply the mood I'm in and the mood of the person I'm with is in that draws out a certain kind of conversation. I suppose what we're doing and the general environment we're in probably will have something to do with it too.

A friend mentioned that a lot of what I do and a lot of what I share (whether physical or ideological) has to do with timing. (And in physical sharing, I mean food. There's nothing else that I really share physically unless I happened to buy extra household items... which is rare).

If I'm baking banana bread before we meet up, you're probably going to get a small loaf (Daiso has these great disposable paper baking pan things so I got into baking banana bread for people for a while). If I'm chewing on some line of thought when we meet up, you'll probably be privy to hear it.

In some ways, it's unfortunate that it is situational. If timing is everything, if you're not there, does that mean that you're not important enough for me to share it with you?

I don't have the ability to think that far ahead so the answer is quite obviously no. I think that I'm too busy with whatever thought I'm processing or whatever fad of cooking I'm in to plan ahead. I'm too moody (capricious, fickle, spur-of-the-moment, whatever word or euphemism you want to use) to be able to plan for such things. I go through bouts of interest. Like if you asked me to make you banana bread, I would find it exceedingly troublesome to do so. I don't feel like making banana bread; forget duty, kindness, propriety, if I'm not feeling it, I have an exponentially harder time doing it.

Things like this make me feel like a child. Aren't adults supposed to have put such things aside and shouldn't they be able to do things out of a sense of duty, or a desire to be a better friend, or even out of simple altruism?

I wonder if it's just plain laziness that such things occur. And why does desire have to do with anything? It doesn't make sense that one should want to do it. If one must do something, there should be no volition involved. I suppose the thought that I'm working on right now has the idea of making decisions and of having options. I keep coming back to it.

Foolishness

Have you ever done anything so irrevocably stupid that you had to reassess the definition of yourself?

Foolishness has become an intimate friend of mine with whom I am quick to part.
Yet he comes running back to me the moment my back is turned.
Clinging to me like the past.

I remind myself that this is the road to success, but must it be paved with such moments of doubt?

Why couldn't failure be simple?

Failure and foolishness.
Such unsavory sounds.

Poetry is beautiful

Not because of its fine-tuned phrases, though that is part of it, but because of its capacity to evoke emotion.

There is something beautiful about poetry that perfectly conveys an emotion or feeling. When I read something and sense the feeling that the poem evokes (happiness, despair, grief, bliss, etc.), I can't help to really appreciate the art behind poetry. It manages to bring out feelings that I had forgotten and I am reminded of situations associated with those feelings, for better or for worse.

I can't say I enjoy poetry (in that I wouldn't actively seek out a book of poetry for leisure) but poetry has value in ways that prose can only try to emulate.