Her early leaf's a-flower

Sometimes things change so fast you don’t even realize that they’re changing until you feel the stark difference of the change itself.  Life is constantly evolving.  How funny, then, that we seem to only be able to take snapshots every now and then.  Too often I find myself wondering how I ended up in the situation I’m in–how did I let things get this bad?

Don’t get me wrong, changes are not always bad.  Sometimes they’re great.  But those ones you think less about, because human nature allows us to happily accept good changes without too much thought.

The changes you’re not so fond of–now those are the troublesome blighters.  And what’s even worse is when you think that the changes are irreversible.  To think that you can lose something you’ve come to rely on, to think that you can be so powerless.  We rely on being able to control our surroundings and the accompanying actions.  We rely on having power to control the changes in our life.  But sometimes it’s not so easy.

So what do you do when you see yourself beyond a crossroads?  Beyond the point of no return?  When you can only turn around to see what once was, and don’t know how to get it back.

Who knew even friendship was so fickle.

Sometimes I amaze myself.  And I wish I meant that in a more positive way, but it’s not true.  It’s funny how you tell yourself you’re going to do something, and you continue to tell yourself this very thing for days, weeks, months, and in some pitiable cases, even years.  And all the while, that “thing” you were supposed to do just keeps getting put off and strung along.

Until you actually do it.  Until you get so sick of yourself, sequestered in a small bubble with tiny pores, that you get mad–at yourself and the project you dreamed of but never achieved.  That emotion translates into energy; pure, raw energy safe and ripe for the using, unlike Redbull, which creeps me out.  And you can finally do whatever it is that you said you would.

Dreams are so often achievable, and yet we rarely do what we say.  Why am I so lazy about nearly every aspect of my life I can think about?  What’s so sad is that there’s nothing stopping us but ourselves: we have more than the resources and talents and knowledge required, so why do we falter?

Why does our energy drain away, leaving us with the dismal reality of our unrealized, gray dreams?

And so it has begun, a new year.  Meaning that according to the calender in use, we now write 2007 instead of 2006.  To a degree I understand the hustle and bustle people make over the “holiday” of New Year’s–it’s nice to categorize January 1st as a ‘fresh start’ to your life.  It’s fun making resolutions and thinking ideals attainable.

But in the end, I must admit, I’m rather a cynic.

I heard that word three times today.  What are the chances?  And I heard them in three very different, very distinct classes.

Do you ever notice that once you learn a word you start seeing it everywhere?

When I was in high school, I thought education was simply about learning as much as you could; that is, maximizing what you could memorize from teachers and your textbook. In the end, that’s what you were tested on. How well you memorized, and, to the slightest degree, how you could apply that knowledge.

But college is proving quite the different endeavor. It’s not so much about memorizing trivial details–though that certainly lends interest into many subject matters, in my opinion–but about the broader thought process. I can’t believe how much I’m learning to think, without realizing it, and how much more there is for me to expand. Our minds are like balloons that never reach a maximum inner pressure; somehow, they just keep expanding.

And someone told me today that our education, indeed our upwards of $42000 tuition, is not for learning information, but meeting people and experiencing things only Harvard can provide. And in the end, it’s up to us to make our personal and social and even academic privileges worth the hefty price.

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.