Looking Into the Distance

“The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don’t have it.”

– George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

I’ve always thought of myself as having very acute observational skills, despite never having any formal training the art of subtle observation. Honestly, I always thought it was a load of bull when I thought about it, because it just didn’t sound realistic when you voiced it. “I can understand people just by being around them.” It just doesn’t seem like something possible, right?

Yet, it seems that having observational skill does help play into the world itself, but the question remains to be whether or not it is effective in assessing a situation. Can you really tell how somebody is by the way they act? Can you read their subtle movements, their shift in stance, their reaction to what they hear… can you really figure something out by the simple understand of their gestures, their movements, their facial reactions? The answer to that depends on the understanding of the person itself. How well do you know this person? How about their dreams and aspirations? Their future, their present, their past? While it only helps in a little way when you know more about them, the only thing that is concrete is what you see in their movements.

So look at their movements, look at the way they talk, they way their eyes shift, their smile… anything. A person will tell you nothing, but show you the world. You just have to open your eyes and see.

Chivalry be Damned

“Justice is better than chivalry if we cannot have both.”
-Allison Stone Blackwell

In the modern world, it seems that chivalry has been shoved aside for the “image” that has been created by peers and ignorance alike. Does nobody appreciate the few that do exemplify these qualities anymore?

It seems that in the real world, the age of chivalry has been made way to the age of stupidity. Where no man understands the delicate balance between himself and the true meaning of chivalry. It may have been the stupidity finally caught up with man and now nothing goes past the mind of many other than ‘booty be good’, but isn’t this the world in which a good guy, a good person, can be accepted by those perceived by others to be a good guy, but I don’t see much.

Take a look at those that pick up the pieces for you when you fall. Compare them to those that got you into that shattered state. How do they differ? How are the similar. Are you really losing out on anything?

——– ——–

For a friend, whom despite the small time we’ve known each other, I have seen no one else go through the face of adversity more. Eh Squeaks?

Paper Boat

“A paper boat for every day I’ve realized what made me feel this way. A paper boat for every day I’ve realized that I had actually fallen for you, and a paper boat for everyday that I will wait for you…”

There was a boy and girl who had known each other for years and years; since they had met in 6th grade. They had tried going out beore, but because of their age, it had fallen through. That, however, never stopped them from being good frieds. As the years went by, they got closer and closer, and unbeknownst to the girl, the boy had always harbored a special place for her.

Soon enough, he had fallen for her again… and had planned the perfect setting for asking her to be his girlfriend again. It was never to be though, as she had been asked by someone else just a day before. He could not bring himself to tell her how he felt, believing that as long as she was happy that it would be alright. He vowed to wait for her and dedicate that promise… and with that, began making paper boats after a story that she had loved.

A paper boat for every day that he waited for her; a paper boat for everyday that he felt the way he did because she made him feel that way. He made one every day that she made him feel like anything was possible if given the chance, and made one every day as long as there was hope; as long as he believed there was still a chance. He would wait for her until he gave up hope.

… it’s a story that continued onto today, but now with a different twist. When she reads this, she can only begin to scratch the surface of how much she really meant to him, how much he cared for her, and how much he valued her. They’ve gone they’re separate ways, but to this day they’re still friends.

—– —–

I found this while I was cleaning my room. Interesting, isn’t it?

The Way the World Revolves

Rejection. That’s what makes a college great. The exclusivity of any university is judged primarily by the amount of students it rejects.
- Dean Van Horne (from the movie “Accepted”)

I wonder if that same statement holds true for the workplace, for life, or for that matter, for everything in general? Thinking back, didn’t most of us always want to become something we knew that it was all but an impossibility that we would get? Didn’t we want to go somewhere which was just beyond are reach?

You want to go to a specific place, work at a specific place, get a specific object. The way our life works is something of that nature.

——– ——– ——–

Edit 7/10/09: I kept this in the “drafts” box for so long that I don’t even remember what I was thinking about at the time.  We’ll leave this one as is until I can think of what it was supposed to be.

-Joe ^^-b

The One That Got Away

Two months in and I have to think that I’m in a great position right now… after all, how can I not be in a great position at this point?

There is, however, something on my mind that does bother me. It’s a story of sorts, because the length of time that it took for this story to evolve just made it become… a story. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me thinking it, but I can’t help but think about it right now, given the precarious situation I’m in.

So, the story starts with this girl I met way back. She was a strange person; extremely anti-social with people. I never quite understood it, because when she was around her friends she was normal, but yet when her friends introduced me it was like meeting a shy, scared, and timid person. I never quite understood why she was like that, but eventually she got used to me and began to be more open to me.

Fast forward a year, where I didn’t see her much in high school. Skip to my sophomore year, where to my surprise I find her standing in the hallway in the same school I was in. Maybe somebody was telling me something, but damn I was happy to see her there. She only knew two people at the school (literally; there’s no joking in this at all), and my friend was usually never around, so it was always just me and her. Truth be told, I liked the alone time we always had, even though we didn’t do anything but walk around the hallways or something mundane like that.

Eventually liking those times when we were alone turned into liking her. At the time I didn’t realize it, but this would turn into something that was a big part of my life. I took my stupid time (I was still a mindless idiot when it came to asking people; I called it SAHS), and even though eventually she said yes, that didn’t last long before we became just good friends again. From there is was a mindless trend of hanging around each other yet not being ‘together,’ and everybody around us always questioned why.

The rest of my time in high school was both good and bad. Good in the sense that I broke out of my ‘timid’ self and became somebody that nobody could ever forget (my laugh is infamous with my name apparently), where I knew everybody in my graduating class (there was only 152 of us, so it’s not that hard to remember us all), and all the memories that I had with my friends, my close friends, and of course with her. My memories of her, however, are a bit different than others. It’s not only the good ones, the memorable ones, but also the bad ones. I can still vaguely recall some of the many arguments we had, and regardless of what I remember, I was always wrong. I never accepted it, naturally, but looking back on it, I probably was.

Now, we’re two different people. Only seperated by a year, but it’s that same barrier that has seperated our friendship a little. Still close, I can’t help but wonder what would’ve been if I had asked her again, if maybe she said yes to the pitiful times I asked her out or when I told her that I still liked her; if she said yes to when I asked her to prom. My inability to be straightforward compounded with time was what caused this rift, and from there… I can’t help but wonder the ‘What ifs’ of it.

The times have changed now. She’s with somebody now (yet still constantly telling me that all men are idiots and need to die) and even though I don’t mind that, it’s the fact that the person she’s with I disapprove of. Maybe it’s just that lingering regret talking, but I feel that it isn’t right. What I’ve done will never amount to what he’s had to do, and in all truth that’s what will bother me.

In her eyes, I’m the one that will always argue with her, will always be the ‘mean’ person she’s come to know the most, the one that will never make any sense when explaining something but yet tries to… the list goes on. In her eyes however, I will also be the reliable one, the person she can go to for help, and if nothing else, the person who will be forced to stay up all night to keep her awake to finish homework.

As for me? I can’t complain, because I’m with somebody special, but I will always have that nagging feeling for “The One that Got Away.”

S.A.D., but a Necessary Reality

Single’s Awareness Day

It’s really just S.A.D. We as human beings actually celebrate something as crazy as “Single’s Awareness Day,” but yet we do. It’s called the human brain’s need for something. Who really knows what it’s really for, but somehow it is who we are and what we strive to become.

By we, I naturally mean the human’s want to stick in pairs. it’s kind of hard to understand, and really I’m just speculating the whole idea behind it, but why is that girls want to use the bathroom in pairs and that guys always seem to want a girl or to hang out with others? My theory is that the human mind doesn’t want to be alone, as it creates a lot of self-doubt (among other things) with one’s self in regards to pretty much everything, from friends to relationships to… well, just about anything.

Hence came in Valentine’s Day, or Single’s Awareness Day [S.A.D.]… or as I like to call it, Single’s Have It Tough [S.H.I.T.]. It doesn’t really do much other than show us the obvious.

… interesting how that works, doesn’t it?

Wait a Second Now…

“Research is what I’m doing when I don’t know what I’m doing.”
-Wernher Von Braun (1912-1977)

That begs the question on whether or not it is research. On one case, you know what you’re doing, but at the same time you’re treading in ‘unknown waters,’ attempting to test something to see if it’ll work; see if it’ll trigger something that was either supposed to happen or not supposed to happen. It kind of depends on one thing or the other, yet at the same time doesn’t require one thing to set the other off.

… I don’t know if that makes much sense, but those that do understand what I’m talking about just may understand the kind of situation I’m going throught right now. It’s a metaphor that will set off another metaphor, granted it’s going to be a MGS metaphor.

“It’s easier to not be seen when the enemy isn’t looking for you.”

Hesistation

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

I never quite understood why people (or even myself) would hesistate to do something if we really wanted to do that thing or if we were required to. I always figured that nobody wanted to directly go against the status quo, which was usually the case. I  mean, doing something that would directly contradict what is generally established as your personality, your ambitions, or really just “who you are” so to speak, would be bad. Nobody wants to be perceived differently because of something drastic, I’m sure.

The question remains, are there cases where you can be the person you truly want to be without hesistating?

When the Past Collided with the Present

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.”

– Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

It’s my belief (though she might disagree with it) that this is how our weird and estranged friendship came to be. I still remember those days where I would get onto Virtopia (now being continuously blocked by Google) just to chat with a friend that I never even met in person. She may have only been a year older than me (that’s my assumption anyway, as we never really “talked” about age, just birthday… which, if she’s reading, is July 12th), but she taught me the value of thought within’ humanity’s stupidity.

I honestly think that it’s because of her I am the person I am today. I know, it’s a big gap to say that right through the door, but it really is because of her that I always used to think of what it meant to be in this world and all my stupid theories and philosophies of life. None of them ever really made much sense, but it was always fun to hear the reactions of people when I would explain my theory that was so aptly titled “Stupidity Rules the Foundation of Our Lives and how We’re too Blind to Notice” that, needless to say, everybody pretty much ignored me.

I knew that there was something different about this friendship, but then again what part of it was normal? We never met in person; our friendship was developed through the long back-and-forth messages in AIM. We rarely ever even sent e-mails (I still have all the old e-mail addresses, though I doubt any of them work), never met through any type of social networking (lets face it, there was nothing back then), and we sent a total of 2 pictures sent between the two of us. It was always like that, and it never really bothered me that I didn’t really “see” the person I was talking to… it was just something we got used to.

We have drifted off through the years, and every once in awhile we would rekindle that old intellectual chat that was the basis of our friendship. I’d like to think that it hasn’t been lost through the years we drifted apart, and they always say that the internet makes the world a smaller place, but even then… Esther was always a very secretive person, and getting a straight answer from her was all but impossible.

… though because of that, it made the conversations more fun. ^^-b

What Started It All

“The difference between ‘involvement’ and ‘commitment’ is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was ‘involved’ – the pig was ‘committed’.”

– unknown

That can probably sum it all up really. I was always involved; never committed. There was really never a reason for me to be “committed” in anything I did, but I tried to be there in case somebody needed me. I wanted to be the guy who would just be “there” and at the same time be known as reliable. Perhaps I played into that role a bit too well, but then again, it’s not like it was “hard.” It became to the point where I was normal just tagging along as the 3rd wheel, 5th wheel, etc. It never really mattered for me, since it was second nature.

Maybe I just became too reliable, and nobody really paid much attention to the guy that was just “involved” with the idea, instead to the person who was more “committed” with the plan.

… and then it’s times like these that I realize that those “coffee chats” always have some effect on me, and I know that in the end it’s a good thing. ^^-b