Thoughts of a Third

With respect to the former, the question is, how can you say/think that you want something if you're not willing tog o through the necessary journey? What's so great about those books is the fact that underneath the cool games and space battle stuff, there's a psychological aspect to them that most of us can relate to and feel for, even moreso considering the main characters are children.

Pensive...when am I not though? I figured I'd use this blog thingy, seeing as how I'm bored at work, pensive, and unable to post thanks to my spur-of-the-moment decision to hold off on 30,000 for as long as I can. Plus, I know that nobody is going to read this stuff anyway...but if someone is reading this right now, you may or may not have begun to wonder why I chose to begin with those two quotes. Eh, at this current point in time I just feel like they best describe my thought pattern. Or, the soreness of my body has led me to make obscure references to two works (one moreso than the other) of science fiction. I don't even like science. AP Physics made me its bitch and ever since then I've chosen not to touch science with a 10 foot pole.

Anyway, I was visiting two of my friends in CT this past weekend and as I was being dropped off at the train station on Sunday, I was telling her how cool I thought some of her friends were. One of them (during my futile attempts to wakeboard successfully) commented on how she thought I was a nice person and seems like "the kind of person who can make the world a better place"...while I was face down in the water being stung by Jellyfish.

Don't get me wrong, comments like those are appreciated, but when I think about it that's a lofty expectation. Besides, how am I supposed to make it a better place if I don't even know what I'm going to be doing with my life 2 years from now? Sometimes I fail to see where such comments come from...I can be a pretty snarky person, for lack of a more intimidating word, and it's not like I've done many things that go above and beyond what any normal person could do. Then again, I guess it's about choosing...I mean, all things equal, I could've chosen to not apply myself at life. It's just been a matter of getting through the challenge in front of me, not necessarily to conquer something but because...well, there was nothing else to do. What else is there to do BUT study for that test? Or practice for that basketball game? Or have a crush on that girl? It's like, becoming strong was a side-effect for someone like Goku...he wasn't doing it because he "lolz wanted moar power", it happened because there just so happened to be continuing situations in which he was protecting the peeps close to him. He always had an immediate goal.

Back in the day, things were linear for the most part. Now, not so much. And quite frankly, maybe I don't wan't to find the rainbow, and maybe I don't want to do something uber ambitious like re-plant a forest. Perhaps I just want to go right to the part where someone much wiser than I am can tell me what my specialty is, and from there I can go right to the hard, "adult" stuff. But that's no fun. Firstly because there's fun to be had doing all the things that aren't necessary to living a successful life, and secondly because if you took the quick route you'd be ill-prepared to handle the hard stuff. When you're unsure about something...well that's open to interpretation I guess, but I'd like to think of it as weighing the options, struggling to figure out where you want to go before you can see the light beyond the tunnel. I promise that this wasn't all random rambling, there's an analogy in there if you think about it for a minute or two. I like to cater to my (potential) audience.

What bothers me about the first quote isn't that there's a struggle required to attain that level of understanding that few can even comprehend, but that Bean almost assumes that it guarantees it. Thanks to TV, films, music, etc., it's easy to think that when someone struggles with something that there is a payoff in some tangible or intangible way, but it somewhat blurs us to the fact that sometimes people just suffer and suffer and continue to suffer without redemption. Granted, you can multiply mgh as many times as you want, it doesn't mean anything if you don't help the process along yourself...but it does make you think. There are few things that are guaranteed, and it's the people that live by their principles in spite of the probability of failure that I consider the ones who can "make the world a better place". That's about the only thing I can worry about, concerning myself with doing things the way I'd like them to be done, keeping in mind the kind of person I want to be when I'm older. Easier said than done though, I can be a bit critical of myself sometimes.

But what about faith, and all that jazz? That's what you're talking about, right SML? Well yeah, kinda. However I'm trying to keep it outside of religion terms, cause that's a whole 'nother story, yo. Anyway, I may have digressed from what I originally planned on touching upon...or maybe I didn't. You can only be so cryptic when you're keeping an eye on not actually divulging too much about what caused you to start thinking in the first place.