Outside Your Bubble

Despite the cruel, violent and paranoid world often portrayed by the media, I feel as is still plenty of hope left for humanity if one is only willing to look. Just today, another woman in my building who has previously parked in my parking spot when she wasn't supposed to came over to apologize and give me quite a pricey gift. While an apology was nice, she really went the extra mile and it made me appreciate that sometimes people really can just be kind to others. Whether or not people are kind just because they want to feel good about themselves is perhaps a more philosophical topic for another time and another blog.

The point of this short blog was simply to say that I feel there are still good people out there willing to help out. Whether is the person who gets you a wad of tissues when you spill coffee all over your desk in a lecture or the person who gives you a (seemingly) random gift, there is still good in the world despite what the news might indicate. As a more general critique, I feel as if the news tends to downplay these simple acts of human kindness and people helping others to devote more times to stories of violence and hatred. In turn, this scares people and only breeds distrust and skepticism. While the media should report the truth, it should be as untainted as possible.

One could argument that it would be trivial for the media to focus on such seemingly small acts. Which is a sad point in itself  in that perhaps I think it is rare for someone to even do something kind to another random person. Have we become so isolated in our circle of friends/family that we can't reach out and be kind to one another? If people refuse to connect with one another for reasons other than social/material gain, how can we ever expect to understand each other and move ahead as a race? 

The Changing Face of Education

I was talking with a friend recently about how university education isn’t as prestigious as it once was and how the times have changed. When my parents went to university, it seemed as it if a university had the connotation that it was reversed for those types of people who were truly “intellectual” and wanted to pursue academics. However, for those type of people who wanted to simply learn a trade or go into the workspace, college was a better choice. College didn’t have the kind of “bad” stigma that it does today – where one assumes that only “stupid” or “dumb” kids graduating from university go to college.

            To be honest, I think the system is better this way. There seemed to be a clearer divide between where to go depending on what you wanted to do. Nowadays, it seems like university have blurred that line worst than using the Photoshop tool on it.  Most teenagers I know just go to university, in basically ANY program, because it’s what it is expected of them. However, I, and it seems many other people I’ve talked to (okay I’m only really talking about discussing this with Heinz here), seem to think that university education isn’t even needed. What does it matter? Unless you are doing academic research, most skills for a specific job can be learned in a few months or at most a year. In fact, I believe that learning things like chemistry, physics and math are only really "practical" if your job ends up involving research in those fields or else, while it is interesting, why does it really matter? Heinz agreed that the only jobs that really need schooling are those who are professionals – like doctors or lawyers and need to learn a SET of skills. Yes, yes, I know I am generalizing but I think overall most of what learns in university isn’t even used in the “real world”. Even this engineer I had to interview for an assignment once mentioned that he only used about 5-10% of what he learned in university once he started working.

            I think it’d be a step forward in society if educational institutions had more clearer boundaries so people go decide where they’d want to go. But, I think the face of the university education will change in my lifetime. Or, at least, I hope it does. Recently, Harvard and MIT have been offering free online courses to anyone who cares to take them. While this obviously isn’t as accredited today as actually attending a university, maybe this is where our society is heading. Maybe, our society could head towards self-directed learning after high school through online courses that anyone could take and then…apply for jobs? I don’t know – I guess I haven’t completely thought it out. But I think our current educational structure has to, and will, change.

Relationships and Age

It’s been a while since I went to a typical dinner party with my family. Now that I’m back home for the long weekend, I ended up going to my first one in a long time. It wasn’t much different than how I remember – the food was good, but the conversation was pretty mundane. As per usual, the topics the “adults” always seemed to talk about seemed superficial and never seemed to interest me. But then I started thinking – it wasn’t just about the “topics” that didn’t interest me but rather the whole cordial tone of the conversation. It was hard to imagine that these were what I would say were my parents “so called” best friends and yet their conversations seemed so much…less shallow than how I felt when I converse with my friends. Is this the fate I would be ultimately doomed to as well?

            Now, of course, there are several reasonable explanations for this. For one, I’m not my parents and maybe they really do enjoy this type of talking. Secondly, maybe I’m just biased because the topics they do talk about in general don’t interest me. But I  think it’s rather depressing that adults seem to talk about things that are less “deep” and focus on the bigger picture – almost everything they talk about it just centered on their lives or jobs or how their kids are doing etc. Why does it seem like as we get older we lose our ability to talk about things bigger than ourselves? Why do we never have those conservations where we talk about what we want to be when we grow up or in a few years? Is it because we’ve already got there? Is there nothing left?

            I hate to imagine myself in 10 or 15 years as the kind of person who can’t just sit down with a friend and talk about, REALLY talk about, how I feel about my life and society and the universe. I feel as the years go by these invisible walls separating the deepest part of us from others slowly are built up. We seem less reluctant to share who we really are, because who we really are has been buried under layers of societal indoctrination. Is the only ray of light the possibility of having a significant other whom we can share these things with? Or has everything sacred been stripped away by the machine that is modern society?

Coloring within the lines

I first wanted to start off by lamenting how fast summer is going by. It is almost the middle of June now and I haven't done completely nearly as much of my "summer goals" as I initially had hoped I would. My days seem to be busy and filled with obligations. While there is room for fun here and there, I find it mostly in unplanned things - going out for ice cream, playing tennis with friends, or just gaming. However, I do think there is a certain satisfaction from crossing out a book from your "to read" list or finally cracking open that textbook for that course you said you'd study for - in a way, accomplishing planned tasks can be more rewarding than just "spontaneous" fun. Though, like so many others things in life, there should be a balance between the two.

I wonder if I even care about these lamenting posts when I go back and read them in the future. The posts I seem like re-reading the most are the ones about specific moments in my life. Since, I try to capture that as best and genuinely as I can. Just the other day, I was reading one about high school and geeze...was I ever indecisive and insecure or what?

The real topic I wanted to address in this blog was about coloring within the lines. This is a metaphor that just floated in my head about society one day when I was...probably walking to work or something. It is perhaps a metaphor I hope a decent number of people can relate to - coloring books seem to be a pretty common past-time in childhood after all. Anyway, in a coloring book you are basically  presented with a predefined shape whose outline is pre-printed and you proceed to color it however you please. There is a lot of versatility with color, however, and not everything makes sense. Just last weekend, I remember seeing my little cousin color in pink leaves, for example.

The point is, society, religion, family are all reminiscent of those lines that are already there for us in the coloring book. They dictate the guidelines that we follow. There are two major problems when using color books.

1.) You color outside the lines. This is equivalent to just  blatantly disregarding any rules set forth by society. The picture ultimately makes no sense and well...you just picked the wrong page of the book to start coloring on, I guess. But that can't be helped. No more than being born into a poverty stricken, geographically isolated family can be.

2.) You color the picture in a way that is unconventional and doesn't make sense. The picture is still there, and you can still recognize what it is. But you've added your own unique flair to it. Some say its unconventional, others say it makes no sense at all. This is how I feel most of us live. We don't stray outside the lines of society but color in the picture according to "loose" guidelines. Some of us are more brazen than others. Some of us restrict ourselves to merely different hues - a navy blue when a sky blue is required. Some of us throw caution out the window and color the leaves pink and the sky purple. The question is - how do we strike a balance between individuality and an expected coloring scheme?

The question is - how will you color the page you've turned to?

I've answered this question many times before to myself. I don't want to just follow the lines even if I have the artistic ability to do so. Similarly, I don't want to do have a career that will secure me a "safe" life in society - even if I had the potential to do so. If everyone who could do more settled for what was safe, the human race would never evolve. And it is sad, because some people do settle for what is safe and secure even though they could do more than that. And I'm not just talking about jobs, I'm talking about thinking and ideas. Be open-minded. Look to explore new ideas. And above all,  try to do something more than worry your moment on the stage away with whether or not you are coloring within the lines.

Ordinary

I know I haven't been blogging in a while. In fact, I feel rather guilty about it. Lately, I've been playing D3, going to work, exercising, reading and doing some thinking. But I realize I do miss blogging. Now that my honeymoon phase with D3 is over (totally stole that phrase from someone lol...), hopefully my life can get back to a (somewhat) normal routine.

Anyway, today was one of those days I really liked. The kind of day where I sleep in, do some quiet reading, go for a walk, play some video games and just...chill. I like these kind of days because they don't have any plan. Nothing /needs/ to be done and I have some free time to myself to do whatever I want. Of course, it's a slippery slope which can lead me to descend into boredom and apathy. So, while days like these are a welcome break once in a while, they can definetly turn poisonous quickly.

Anyway, I was also reading this post about things you should do when you are 20. I agreed with most of the points, some I didn't care about, but there was one in particular that kind of irked me - a point  suggestion about how we should all be traveling and seeing new places. Honestly, I feel like a great deal of people think its "cool" or "important" to travel and see (or maybe experience, in special circumstances) different cultures and places on earth. Now, I wouldn't say I'm the adventurous type though I do hope to take a few trips this summer - just to have fun and not so much for exploration sake. But I just feel in society people are so concerned about physical, tangible, and material things. Not even just possessions but just with regard to wanting to travel or "get away" to see new locations.

I feel that people are overlooking the fact that first of all, natural beauty can be found almost anywhere. You don't need to go to some exotic location. Just going for a simple walk at night or in the evening, just observing all the things in the environment around you that you never cared to notice can really be beautiful sometimes. The same goes for people - people are complex and have depth to them. Maybe that roommate who's all quiet and ne, ver talks is actually one of the most philosophical guys you've ever met and has some great ideas to share. Also, while one could argue that going to a foreign location and seeing new cultures is quite the experience...I don't think it means much if you don't truly have an open mind to new ideas and concepts. There is no point just sitting on the sidelines and watching - if you are going then you might as well embrace and immerse yourself in a different culture, which I don't believe happens as much as it should. Lastly, in my opinion, there are "bigger" ideas out their to be embraced - religion, philosophy and love just to name a few. Though, perhaps traveling would allow one to have new experiences and better tackle these "bigger" issues.

Ultimately, I think what people really need is to learn more about ideas, and knowledge. To do more reading and thinking, before they act. Why does it seem like the great majority of society is always in such a hurry to escape their lives and run away to some other place? There is happiness to be found everywhere - especially in the mind and at home. Maybe, we don't have to look as far as we think we do.

Memory Drawer

In my room at home, I have a drawer where I keep almost everything that’s special or relevant to me. You could say it’s like my original blog. Since, probably, Grade 8, I’ve keep special notes/cards/movie tickets/anything that I’ve received from people. This drawer is special in that it ONLY contains “social” memories not like…tests I did well on (or failed?), though I do try to keep those too. Anyway, I like to think that it helps summarize my middle/high school years in one drawer. It does a good job of it too, I might add. Of course, it’s disorganized/clutter to no end, but…I sort of like it that way because then you’ll never know what you are going to find but you know that everything is there, just like how memories usually are.

            Recently, I was trying to find a letter a friend gave me for Christmas. I didn’t end up finding it yet but I plan to check again tonight. I found a lot of other stuff though. Including a bag containing my bountenair from Prom. It’s not as pretty now as it was then. In fact, it’s mostly all black, frayed, decayed, wilted and pitiful looking. I could go into a bunch of analogies about beauty fading and all that but…I’ll leave it to your fine imagination.

            Anyway, I thought it was really cool because it was almost like the visual complement to this blog. The sad part is, I haven’t really added much to it since I’ve gone to university. I don’t think I’ve shared that many special memories with anyone here yet…or at least, anything where I’ve had a physical remainder of it to save.

            And I worry sometimes, if these four years of university will just end up being a big “blank” in my memories years from now when I think back to the people I met and who I was at that time…

Update:

            So I found that note from a friend I was finally searching for amongst all these other thoughts in that drawer.  It made me feel really sad - sadder than I had ever felt in a while. It reminded me of the relationships I had in the past and how much they meant. It reminded me of the value of friendship and closeness with others, which is something I think I really needed to remember amidst academia, accumulation of material possessions and the other entire things one can get ensnared by in life if they are not careful. She may never read this, she may never even know who she is, but thank you. And I will try to follow your advice as best as I can. Always.

Lawful

"The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be." - Phillip Marlowe


I've noticed lately I've been blogging about my life too much. I want to take some blog posts to step back and look at some broader issues in the (first?) world today. I think this is a good idea for two reasons. For one, I seem to care more about my thoughts than wishy-washy feelings and two, I think it is probably more interesting to other people and if this blog can get even one person thinking, I've done my job.

I was talking to a close friend yesterday about a topic I distinctly remembering blogging about before - the law/justice system. We both agreed that the role lawyers played in the course of justice was definitely unfair. In that, a "good/component" lawyer could mean the difference between a person going to jail/being committed of a crime when in reality the outcome should be intrinsic to the deed that the accused committed. However, in many cases, it /seems/ like it could be quite subjective.

I don't want to make big claims here, because in reality, I don't have any statistics or knowledge about how big of a difference having a "good" lawyer makes in terms of perhaps, someone going to prison for life, or what not. I do know, however, that having a sibling in law school who I am very close with has taught me that the law/court system is more than just fancy speeches and big revelations like we are so often led to believe in today's television courtroom dramas. However, just the fact that the outcome of justice depends on something other than the actual event seems enough for this issue to warrant concern.

But that brings me to my next point. A while ago I blogged about this issue, I suggested, drawing inspiration from a sci-fi novel I had read once, that what if we simply built a super-computer AI/software entity who could "judge" us? By this I mean, it would observe our actions and evaluate our actions impartially on a certain scale (lets say 1-10) and then decide the outcome based on the score. It could take into accounts all the parameters of the situation (self-defense etc) probably more "fairly" than humans or a jury ever could (of course we'd program it...somehow). Would this theoretically be a better option?

In my last blog, 3 suggested people would not like this. Because deep down, perhaps humans realize they only liked to be judged by others because they are just as flawed as they are. In a way, machines are perfect. They have the ability to obey rules all the time - even if an algorithm has a sort of "random" factor intrinsic to it...that factor is still /known/ to be there. Also, I used the idea of a machine but I could have just as easily used the idea of an omniscient god, which perhaps, more people would be comfortable with. I have no idea why however, as personally, I don't see how we could ever connect with such a Being - is "love" or any human emotion so powerful that it could bind those who know nothing and those who know everything?

Err...Anyway, I'm sort of digressing. But my point is, that this seems to just be another catch-22 about humanity. We want the law to be as just as possible but yet it also has to conform to our innate randomness/feelings/wishy-washy part of being human or else it just seems so removed and unnatural. As such, we are simply stuck as a society. As the quote at the beginning of the post suggests is the mechanism of the law more important than what really happens or what those laws really are? Is it perhaps right to say that we want to be metallic, soulless robots, but at the same time we also want to feel and remember who we are. How can we move on from this?

Turbulence

I've been gone on quite a long hiatus for blogger the past few weeks. I think this might have been the longest I've gone without writing a blog for a very long time. But nonetheless, here I am.

There's been a lot of ups and downs in my life since my last post. However, I sometimes wonder if these ups and downs look like nothing but turbulence in the grand scheme of things. I imagine if I could plot my happiness on the vertical axis with time on the horizontal how my life would look on a plot. Would it simply be a straight horizontal line from a distance, but when you zoom in there are a multitude of variations? Or would there be some events which truly stand out - is my life one continuous function or just the sum of tiny piecewise events? Can we accurately compare happiness in one moment with that which we felt in another? In my opinion, I think humans are pretty terrible at that.

To be more specific the ups and downs in my life have mainly been the usual stuff. For example, not receiving some awards/jobs I think I deserved or receiving marks higher than I expected. I realized in some ways that I am pretty selfish in that I would rather feel better if no one got something that I wanted rather than a peer receiving it. But, like so many things in life, I've gotten over it (I hope!) and I am trying to learn from it and become a better person. OK, maybe I just typed that line so it sounds like I believe I care about changing more than I actually do. But it is something I should work on and I definitely don't want to go through life being secretly bitter at others over trivial things.

I think lately its been difficult not to compare myself with others in many regards. In terms of where I want to be in the future, where I am now (jobs, school etc), and who I was before. Again, I have come to realize there is a very fine line between individuality and maintaining relationships to satisfy the need for social interaction that we all have. On a vaguely related note, I've also thought about, for the umpteenth time, how I just can't possible study/do everything interesting in life. One needs to make decisions at one point or another and hope they end up on a path which is makes them happy.

It seems like just yesterday I was talking to Heinz about how one day I feel like I'll just blink and be 60 or something. I don't think I'd mind too much. In the simplest sense, I just want to go through my life being reasonably content - it doesn't matter if I'm married, have lots of friends, have a well-paying job or not. I just want to go through life knowing that I'm content with who I am and what I'm doing/where I'm going. While it'd be great to have a positive impact on others and accomplish something which I internally can be proud of, I'm not sure if that will realistically happen.

The last thing I just briefly wanted to mention is about high school. Recently on facebook someone posted a video from our graduation. It made me feel pretty nostalgic but I realized I couldn't really remember what it/felt/ like to be in high school anymore. It was like...I couldn't even think of what it'd be like to go back or think like how I use to think back then. Perhaps this is true for all memories...eventually, after some point, our sensations about an event seem to dull and we are only left with memories here and there which puncture our thoughts once in a while. For example, I can't even imagine what it would be like to go back to that kind of high school environment again. It's like a friend who I met in first year said how you can only miss something for so long before it just becomes a good/bad memory. I think I really do understand the significance of that statement now.

Oh, one last thing I wanted to mention. I guess lately I've been more wary about when others are being "phony" or when they really mean things or not. In fact, sometimes I feel like even /I/ know when I'm sounding phony, but all I can really tell someone to reassure them is that I genuinely mean what I say. Perhaps, like Holden in Catcher in the Rye, our need to separate the world into black and white kind of views such as when Holden assumes that all adults are phony stems from a need to just model the people of the world in a simpler way. If we didn't make initial judgments on others based on information we could quickly gather about them then how would one sift through all the plethora of people they interact with on a daily basis and decide who they should pursue trying to get to know or what not? I guess, in the end, we all need to start somewhere - perhaps arbitrarily but it makes more sense to be based off our beliefs?