Her early leaf’s a-flower

It stinks.  When you feel like all the good luck you’ve been having suddenly dissipates into nothingness and everyhing bad that could go wrong does, plus some.

And it puts you into a mood where frustration kicks in.  And there’s nothing more pitiful than being frustrated, because the emotion is so useless.  All it does is expend energy and make you feel crappy.

But then it allows you to be saved by the sweet people you are miraculously able to call friends.  Those cherished folk who see the anguish in your face and see the trickles from your eyes and know how to put your mood back to sorts.

People are amazing.  Technology, when you can’t understand it, is devastating.  And everyday we become more reliant on machines.

What motivates us? What makes us follow our thoughts through with certain actions? And what makes us stray from the ideals we dream to the base workings of our hands and bodies?

Why is it that people can dream, longingly gazing at the heavens, but usually can never act accurately upon those intentions? And who am I to judge?

I guess this is a thought that has long been lingering in my ever dusty mind. And today I felt like sweeping, hoping to clear up my confusion. Which is ironic in and of itself, because I often find that while sweeping moves granules around, it is not nearly as effective in actually clearing anything up. Somehow the dust, or at least the remnants of that dust, remain etched into my attic-mind.

I wish I could be a better person. I can think about how to be a better person, come up with plans and ideas and even actions which are not so difficult in theory. But it becomes more than increasingly difficult to implement those ideas into something useful. I can never seem to achieve anything I desire. I always fall amazingly short of any minimal goal I set for myself.

Inherently we are fallible, because we are mere mortals. Humans. That’s why we can dream up great ideals, great philosophies, and fail to implement them. But where is the hope in that? Why keep trying if we can never keep up; if we can never improve upon our many shortcomings–at least in this respect?  Though we may be able to come closer to our ideals, there must be some limiting factor–some asymptote which we can never pass.  And sometimes the more we try to be better people, the more we fail at doing so.
Why do I feel like, so often, we’re running and running and running only to keep standing in place?

Why is it so easy to let our problems carry us away? Let them become the biggest, worst situations in the world? When, for the most part, they are often so trivial?

So often I let myself get swept up into a flood of self pity and frustration, fuming about midterms or problem sets or friends who are twenty minutes later to dinner meetings. How little, how easily forgettable are these trivialities? How is it that I can let myself get upset by the smallest, stupidest things, when close friends of mine are forced to live with issues whose importance far transcend my own?

Just the other day, while talking to two friends of mine, I learned so much about them that I had never even considered asking before. They’ve been living with such bigger life problems that, thank God, I’ve never had to deal with before. And they’re so thankful for the simple things I take for granted. In comparison to so many I feel like such a brat–why is it that I fail to resound gratitude for some of the simplest, most reliable things in my life?

What is it about human nature that makes us feel that our problems, our emotions, our pain is so much greater than that of those around us?  There was an experiment conducted where people were connected to each other and were able to send each other shocks. There were different levels of shock administerable, and each person was told to “retaliate” shock the other person with the SAME force as they were subject to themselves. What should happen is that both participants should send equal shocks to each other.  But what actually happens is that each person gives the other a slightly more forceful shock, believing their shock was actually bigger than it was, until the total shock escalates into something more painful. Somethign brutal.

When we should be grateful, we seem to want other people to feel our pain. More than our pain, in fact. We seem to want others to suffer.

My third biggest fear–going bald.

My second biggest fear–breaking a ‘moment of silence’ by coughing or sneezing or erupting into giggles.

My biggest fear–being fake.  And having no one be able to tell.

The concept of growing up used to seem so black and white to me. I thought one day I’d just miraculously be a “grown up”, in much the same way as the children’s cartoon Rugrats depicts growth as a function of height. But now “growing up” are just two words I attribute to this giant process, a metamorphosis beyond explanation.

I’m almost embarrassed to say that I thought myself grown up. Or at least closer to that side of the spectrum. But today, as someone was telling me a story, the shock of what he was saying drowned me in a pool of slimy, wet water. And then I felt a spark. The realization of what he told me completely shocked me–I had never, and would never have, considered what he was presenting as an explanation for certain other events that shall remain nameless. And even now I fear I’m floating on a cloud of disbelief, unsure of my surroundings or where the current is steering me.

But so it is. And here I am, trying to cope. Because inside, no matter how I try, I’m still a scared seven year old girl. Scared that the big, bad world will consumer her whole, with no one the wiser.  Invisible.

Here I was, just sitting and typing along, catching up on the emails that somehow end up in my inbox, when I took a look outside. To see the courtyard erupting in darkness. It’s not yet 5 and everything’s being slowly covered with shade.

I miss when I was younger, when darkness signified that the rest of my day only involved eating and cuddling with my parents and entertaining myself, only to fall asleep in the end. Now I still have meetings and an event to go to, along with homework I’ve been putting off for a sinfully long time.

Sooner or later sleep will come, but by then the artificial lights will have crept in, scaring the darkness away.

I’ve always had a fear of expressing myself. Of trying to get others to comprehend the mess in my head. And though I’m sure this is not by any means a unique feeling, it’s often put me into desperate situations when I was afraid I’d never be able to communicate at all.

The more ways we find to communicate, the more I think we’re losing something about the simple, spoken word.