Cost-Benefit Analysis

I don't understand why pavements have to be made of marble or shiny tiles that get wet within the first five seconds of tropical rain and turn into deathtraps of slippery evil for pedestrians.

My mind was wandering as I listened to music (it tends to). The world would be a somewhat kinder place if we all submitted to that naive impulse to give the benefit of the doubt to our fellow human beings. For example - who knows if that irritating frog-like lady on the subway who kept treading on your toes is actually a war widow who spends her Saturday afternoons helping young children at church? No matter - it's incredibly difficult to find the goodness in everyone - tedious and pretentious, some might say - but worth a try nonetheless, as a goal in itself.

I sometimes wonder how much of our destiny is truly ours to shape - so many different faculties could have been developed in different ways if only a mentor, teacher or friend had influenced us in alternative ways. You can look back and wonder whether or why, but hindsight isn't much of a clue to the future.
Teachers are really, really powerful people - but then perhaps I'm just giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Iz Lives

So I sat there, falling into yet another one of my states of self-pity and depression (the non-clinical sort, if one exists). Hurrah - yet another crisis of self-doubt from a 20 year-old who (by his own admission, no less) doesn't deserve to have another bout of weltschmerz. The meaning of it all - pondering, wondering, gazing at the door as my mind turned into a whirlpool of nonsense. I'm naive enough to believe in 'goodness' and yet cynical enough to dismiss the notion, optimistic enough to cherish the prospect of encountering it while the pessimist within has lost all hope of it. Schadenfreude vs Empathy. Worse still would be gluckschmerz - good heavens, I think I'm beginning to see myself for what I truly am - an evil conniving hypocrite who baldly admits his flaws in a bid to dissociate himself emotionally from the cold interior that's melting like the polar ice caps. There we go with the self-pity again. Round and round in circles - a bit like Dante...borrowed that idea from my younger brother's English essay.
What of life? What of death? What of hope? Just get on with it, make your heaven here on earth, forget glory or damnation and just do your best - I don't know the correct descriptive term for this little mantra. I somehow find that innately depressing. There we go with the depression again.
Still I sit here, those thoughts spiralling out of control as I play Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' medley - the haunting power of that voice reaches over and floats into my little reverie. I listen and am unable to cry. Those bundled up thoughts, scrunched up in the brain's backyard just stay there, stubbornly refusing to give way. The music soars and my eyes close as I rock backwards in my chair as I hear those words 'why now oh why can't I?' Little channels of envy swirl around. I'm actually so happy with the simple things - the soft toy blue elephant, the simple songs, the simple food, the simple words and yet - the world around churns these into a curd of dissatisfaction, guilt and misery. O Lord, subtract the selfishness, add the goodness, multiply the friends and divide and flaws. I might be a normal person, then.

Iz Lives

So I sat there, falling into yet another one of my states of self-pity and depression (the non-clinical sort, if one exists). Hurrah - yet another crisis of self-doubt from a 20 year-old who (by his own admission, no less) doesn't deserve to have another bout of weltschmerz. The meaning of it all - pondering, wondering, gazing at the door as my mind turned into a whirlpool of nonsense. I'm naive enough to believe in 'goodness' and yet cynical enough to dismiss the notion, optimistic enough to cherish the prospect of encountering it while the pessimist within has lost all hope of it. Schadenfreude vs Empathy. Worse still would be gluckschmerz - good heavens, I think I'm beginning to see myself for what I truly am - an evil conniving hypocrite who baldly admits his flaws in a bid to dissociate himself emotionally from the cold interior that's melting like the polar ice caps. There we go with the self-pity again. Round and round in circles - a bit like Dante...borrowed that idea from my younger brother's English essay.
What of life? What of death? What of hope? Just get on with it, make your heaven here on earth, forget glory or damnation and just do your best - I don't know the correct descriptive term for this little mantra. I somehow find that innately depressing. There we go with the depression again.
Still I sit here, those thoughts spiralling out of control as I play Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's 'Somewhere over the Rainbow' medley - the haunting power of that voice reaches over and floats into my little reverie. I listen and am unable to cry. Those bundled up thoughts, scrunched up in the brain's backyard just stay there, stubbornly refusing to give way. The music soars and my eyes close as I rock backwards in my chair as I hear those words 'why now oh why can't I?' Little channels of envy swirl around. I'm actually so happy with the simple things - the soft toy blue elephant, the simple songs, the simple food, the simple words and yet - the world around churns these into a curd of dissatisfaction, guilt and misery. O Lord, subtract the selfishness, add the goodness, multiply the friends and divide and flaws. I might be a normal person, then.

Prospects

The future is bleak. I remember muttering to the few who cared to listen (back in 1999) that the world would end in either 2000 or 2006. The millennium came and went and here we are today. A recent reminder from an old friend of the 2006 deadline made me wonder if it still matters. Who cares anymore? What on earth is the point? It might as well be over.