I don’t ever think there will be a time when I’ll be one of those folk reclining in a chic coffee shop sipping on a latte and typing away on their laptops. Add the iPod, the tie dyed bandana and ton of buttons pinned on your bag with socially relevant messages, you’ve got yourself your worst nightmare — the hopeless liberal-yuppie who thinks he is. For those very afraid, I’d like to inform you I am not getting there anytime soon.
But only because I don’t drink coffee.
Getting down to business, I’ve come to realize a bunch of things over these past relatively silent few weeks. The bulk of this concept I articulated the other day, telling you why there aren’t any (particularly worthwhile) updates. I just don’t see the “greater end” they achieve anymore. But there are subtle and far greater undertones which ring through my, and everyone else’s, existence. Let me put it this way, there are roughly two ways one can go through life. (I say “roughly two” because I’ve identified other possibilities, but they really aren’t high enough probability to consider and just add unneeded complexity to the argument. Think of this as a close-enough approximation.)
– One can either “live it”
– or “just exist”.
I don’t even have to explain what I mean by these two, as I’m sure you realize what I’m talking about. That’s basically it. Since there is no real reason to stay in just one of those states during the course of your life, you can, and do, switch based on circumstance. If things are going really well (or really horrid), and you let it get to you, you’re “really living”. As in feeling, experiencing, having a great time (or struggling with depression). If things aren’t particularly going anywhere, and you’re just “going through the motions”, your daily existence has become just that, an existence. You’re not particularly bothered, hurt, happy, inspired, … anything. You wake, you do your thing, you sleep. You’re potentially growing intellectually or emotionally, but for the most part, you’re just in some sort of hibernation. Not particularly changing, other than the greying and/or loss of hair.
For most of my life, I’ve actively chosen the more passive “existence route”, since that’s just so much easier in my opinion. There aren’t any surprises, there is no big moments of happiness, sadness, glory, embarassment, … nothing. You’re alive, and that’s about it. Which is sort of the state I reverted to recently, and that reflects in every aspect of my life. It’s most noticeable to you in terms of lack of (quality) posts or pictures, but it is clearly apparent in a lot of other ways to different sorts of people. But, as always, life isn’t content leaving me this way, no it isn’t. It takes effort to shut off all the stimuli outside (good and bad) and go on to do whatever it is you do “not affected”. I had done a pretty good job turning off most things and being un-unhappy or un-happy (not unhappy) and going about doing whatever it is I do. But stuff keeps coming back to remind you it is so easy to get swept into the other state.
Follow me through this one, it is so complicated I need to try hard to be affected, so I’d be all mad, and you’d see this post — If you were dumped by someone, for someone else (call them someone2) and you hate someone2, but have removed their existence from your reality, so it doesn’t matter, only to realize you’re giving a talk soon in place2, the place where someone2 resides, just ends up reminding you someone2 exists. It is not a fun schema.
The worst part in all of this is, I don’t see interpersonal relationships as an end in themselves now. I’ve begun to see them as stimuli to feel alive, both happy or hurt (preferably happy, of course) so I can channel those emotions into other areas.
Like articles and material I know is funny. Self depricating, but hilarious nonetheless. And that’s just wrong.