Just honest thoughts laid bare.
Now that's more like it.
Happy Halloween!
12:46 AM
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Nothing revolutionary
One thing that I've been noticing a lot around campus recently. I mean it's always been this way. It' s just that it's been really especially apparent of late.
So much arrogance. I don't necessarily mean that in a bad sense. It's just that everyone is so aware of themselves, what they are capable of, and really push for excellence in everything they do.
This is a wonderful thing- to finally find your purpose and being old enough to go about doing it too!- this is the age where you just feel that you are capable of doing anything. It's very beautiful.
And yet this self-obsession and self-pride- it worries me no end.
All so sure of ourselves. What does it all even mean, in the long haul? It's something everyone knows, and yet continue to ignore, and will continue to ignore. It's not a fun idea. It surely is so much easier to love the ideals: self-creation, self-worth, self-identity, self-discovery.
Self, self, self.
God never set out to win a popularity contest.
One thing that I've been noticing a lot around campus recently. I mean it's always been this way. It' s just that it's been really especially apparent of late.
So much arrogance. I don't necessarily mean that in a bad sense. It's just that everyone is so aware of themselves, what they are capable of, and really push for excellence in everything they do.
This is a wonderful thing- to finally find your purpose and being old enough to go about doing it too!- this is the age where you just feel that you are capable of doing anything. It's very beautiful.
And yet this self-obsession and self-pride- it worries me no end.
All so sure of ourselves. What does it all even mean, in the long haul? It's something everyone knows, and yet continue to ignore, and will continue to ignore. It's not a fun idea. It surely is so much easier to love the ideals: self-creation, self-worth, self-identity, self-discovery.
Self, self, self.
God never set out to win a popularity contest.
8:56 PM
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Take these hands/Teach them what to carry
Take these hands/Don't make a fist
Take this mouth/So quick to criticize
Take this mouth/Give it a kiss
*
I'm not exaggerating to say that. This music changed the shape of the room. It changed the shape of the world outside the room; the way you looked out the window and what you were looking at.
(on John Lennon)
*
I'm not a whinging liberal. I'm no hippie with flowers in my hair.
*
...we've got to follow through on our ideals or we betray something at the heart of who we are. Outside these gates, and even within them, the culture of idealism is under siege, beset by materialism and narcissism and all the other "isms" of indifference.
*
It's a very real illness, depression. I understand chemical imbalance and all that. But I do think its prevalence has a lot to do with a lack of perspective on your life and a lack of empathy of what's going on in other lives...they're pickled in themselves. ... We must be careful not to stew in our own juices.
10:17 PM
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You know when you've been so blessed? I think if I ever, ever complain again, I should just be shot.
Anyhow, a birthday that was nothing short of perfect. (: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
Anyhow, a birthday that was nothing short of perfect. (: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.
The Instant Replay
You can't spend your whole life making moments and saving them up for later, can you? You'd go mad. You have to just be in the moment and not be thinking about it. The cabbage, or the banana, that's the moment as it's going on. Meaningful experiences with record players and socioeconomic discrepancy -- well, that's incipient madness.
- Sirius, The Shoebox Project
Yes, embrace the moment, don't think when you're in it.
But memories can be so important. It's not just saving up for a rainy day. In fact, they're essential to keep us nice and sensible. It is an insult to memory to forget some perfect details. An insult to the planet to forget any single beautiful anything.
On the other hand, if it's way past their expiry date, memories most certainly can become a disease. I think we all know this innately.
1:56 AM
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Because my talent is borrowing
Inspired by one of my favourite bloggers, Jason, what's a blog if it isn't honest?
I have been meaning to do a proper post for ages, UPDATE PROPERLY on what I've been up to etc, but I also seem to have contracted brainfreeze of the worst kind.
And I'm supposed to be doing my TWC stuff now, but I've basically been staring at the computer screen for the past several hours and doing anything BUT.
I have become too obsessively perfectionist over the past few months, and though it has been good to my grades somewhat, it can't be possible to be in control all the time.
...You have to be able to LIVE with some measure of mess. And I think that's a problem you and I have? We can't live with mess. We are figuratively obsessively organized.
- An email from Ning at the beginning of the term
(I love how Shoeboxy it sounds.)
(and Ning, you are getting so eloquent it is starting to scare me.)
(and Ning, you are getting so eloquent it is starting to scare me.)
*
I hate how I can't ever be honest without sounding trivial.
I know that grades aren't everything. And yet I know very well am not smart enough to just study a bit and get away with it. If I want to get anywhere, I have to go the whole hog. No exceptions. And I have never been very bitter about it.
"Why-" Lyra began, and found her voice weak and trembling- why can't I read the alethiometer anymore? Why can't I even do that? That was the one thing I could do really well, and it's just not there anymore- it just vanished as if it had never come..."
"You read it by grace," said Xaphania, looking at her, "and you can regain it by work."
"How long will that take?"
"A lifetime."
"That long..."
"But your reading will be even better then, after a lifetime of thought and effort, because it will come from conscious understanding. Grace attained like that is deeper and fuller than grace that comes freely, and furthermore, once you've gained it, it will never leave you."
- Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
(I have the tremendous honour of sharing a birthday with him as well! (: )
*
I love life. There's so much beauty in it that I can scarcely breathe. I love how it always takes you by surprise. I love how interesting people can be if you just looked a little harder. I love how it's all up to you to make it happen. I keep trying to pick the world up in my fingers, and failing, but I keep doing it anyway. I want, I want, I want.
And this is all very dangerous.
The natural man... feels he has the answer to all of life's problems... Life is simply a matter of applying this answer to the various problems as they arise. And since the answer that all men originally take forgranted is never the answer of Christianity, Christianity knows that this false faith we originate with must first fail us before we stand any chance of accepting Christianity's answer... But far too often the Church cheapens its answer by making it aggressively available for strong men before they are even aware that they need it.
- Robert L Short, The Parables of Peanuts
*
What to do if there's something that you love doing, but you know that you will never excel at? How do I even know what I can change, and what I can't?
One step at a time, I always say to myself. And again, I wonder if I am ever doing enough.
*
I just realized that all that drabble made no discernable sense.
My gosh when will I ever learn to think in a more organized fashion.
11:31 PM
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Ning's bday present for me arrives a week early...
And look what it is! :D
11:33 PM
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