Month: February 2010

Busy. As usual. But I don’t need to write about it. Delineating my woes and weariness won’t improve my condition. Nor will it inspire my spirits or release the tension. It will exacerbate my tolerance, however, making it harder to endure.
ok I’ll stop now.

So. Brief update. Life has been busy. shoot. I said it. Its unavoidable. My mind is a flurry. My ADHD, or however you’d like to describe my desultory behaviors, has increased in severity. If one followed me for a day, they’d think I was a manic the way I switch tasks every 30 sec-5 min. Going from homework, to emails, to studying something else, to organizing this, to food, to cleaning, etc. I seriously need to get a handle on it. It all makes me dizzy… and inefficient. And I cannot afford inefficiency in my life.

Anyway.
I went to Mardi Gras. Anyone who hasn’t been there should go. its outrageous. So many parades… bars. Drinking. Debauchery. I had a threesome-ish. Borderline fivesome. Not sure how I feel about that. A few years ago I woulda felt guilty… probably wouldn’t have even went through with it. At this point in my life I have this mentality that involves working hard, making sacrifices now for rewards later, while allowing pleasurable indulgences whenever you can afford it. The catch is that these pleasures should not interfere or hinder your progress. That means, drugs are usually not a good idea. Ever, really. Unless in scintilla doses or on the rarest occasion. Partying for me is all good as long as its not habitual, or if it is, it does not violate progress. (Apart of progress is having respectable goals. High lofty and challenging. Something that requires you to dig and become something greater. Anything less is a complete disrespect for yourself)
Continue reading “Ménage à trois & Mardi Gras.”

“Boredom is the root of all evil – the despairing refusal to be oneself.”
— Søren Kierkegaard

“Idleness, we are accustomed to say, is the root of all evil. To prevent this evil, work is recommended…. Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is truly a divine life, if one is not bored….”
— Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: A Fragment of Life)

–> soul <—

You become what you think about.

If you can fathom the power of that concept, all that is left for you to do is decide who you want to become: Then the world is yours.

Read the book: “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen. I am not speaking lightly when I say that we think our life into being. If you control what you put into your head, and decide what you put out, you will be the master of your destiny, the captain of your fate. You are the sum of all your thoughts- all the influences you acknowledge, knowingly or unknowingly. We are creatures of habit, in thought and action. Take control of your thoughts and you will control your life. Weed out the bad habits, the negative thoughts that strangle the good you seek to do. Plant thoughts that will lead you to your ideal life. Use discipline dwell on your thoughts and goals and plans as often as possible. Soon your thoughts and actions will become habit, and habit will in turn lead to a renewed character and a new life with new ease. We are what we think about all day long.

Where do these thoughts come from? Read the books written by the most successful of people and glean the thoughts that they held captive in their minds. They write books and are always eager to share their secrets, and yet there are so few that listen.

I have so much to say on this topic because it changed my life. thoughts are so powerful. So quiet and fleeting, yet they hold the key to this world man has constructed. it all began with thoughts.

I wanna journal more!

Its late… i’ve been getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night.

I’m taking 20th century continental philosophy. Pretty sure my professor is a lil crazy… or genius. I haven’t figured out which one.

We’re studying ‘reversals’. Thats right. It doesn’t mean anything to anyone at first… then you begin reading excerpts from Heidegger, Sartre, Derrida, Nietzsche, Levinaas, and a lil glimmer of this ‘reversal’ makes sense. just a lil.

Why do I say he’s crazy? Well… I could type out his anecdotes about driving down rural roads… glancing at barns… seeing tiered roofs… and having epiphanies where he realizes that he is not… only that he is…. which leads to the world glowing, or illuminating, so to speak, with new depth. We are not objects, we are processes. These words do no accurately describe this phase. That is what we are studying.

alright… so that doesn’t make much sense. I know. But in class tuesday he had purple mother of pearl nail paint on. That’s right. I could barely pay attention to the lecture.

So anyway… what we’re discussing in class is this ‘reversal’ that occurs when we try approaching the essence of ‘things’. Not just by words, which are tainted by inherited meaning and this whole subject-object relationship. The question: “what is a thing?” is central to our discussion. He tried illustrating this reversal by introducing the story of Copernicus. Prior to his theory, man was the center of everything. In many ways, we still think we are. Its so natural. There is us, then there is a world which revolves around us. Makes sense to think that the planets and sun revolve around us. But Copernicus introduced the idea that we revolve around the sun. Now that was unheard of… totally out of everything in our reality of the time… it took a massive ‘reversal’, a violent overturning of hierarchal meanings, in order to come up with such a theory.

That was one example. We are exploring this ‘phase’ that occurs when the ‘reversal’ takes place… when we crawl out of our conscious and subconscious framework that we employ to make sense of the world. We are trapped by it… and only when we throw it away, and totally ‘reverse’ the nature of these things, can we explore ‘things’ and their essence or nature, if thats what you can call it. See… even when I say essence or nature I create a fabricated metaphor used to replace the real meaning of what I’m trying to convey. I cannot possible know the audiences understanding of essence or metaphor, and if I did, it would still be constrained to their experiences with the words.

We use words to describe other words. Language is inadequate at getting to the bottom of what a ‘thing’ is because it never grasps a thing. It only introduces more words with more meanings in order to clarify the ‘thing’.

Anyway… this is along the lines of what I’ve gathered so far. It took like 4 classes before I had a clue what the hell we were talking about. Mostly because when I asked what we were trying to get at, he would say ‘nothing’. And I was like… oh. He said… “what is ‘nothing’? When we say there is a ‘thing’, and there is ‘nothing’, what do mean by ‘nothing’? You cannot make progress at understanding ‘nothing’. There is no where to get to.”

anyway… that’s along the lines… I don’t speak as eloquently… or rhetorically as Dr. David Wood does… but oh well. I’ll share my commentary on these new ideas as they come to me… or as time permits.

so late. night.

My friend Leslie just received a phone call from Harvard Law School explaining that they have a spot for her. She got into Harvard Law.

That being said, she has a 3.9, speaks French fluently, studied abroad at Sciences Po in Paris, interned in Paris at the American embassy for two summers, was one of 25 finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, as well as the Marshall Scholarship, etc. Not surprising I suppose.

I wanna go to Harvard Law School… *stomps feet*

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.

John Quincy Adams:

*********

I miss writing. I watched a seminar about this Chinese guy who overcame amazing feats. Feats involving no education from 14 years of age to his young adulthood… who went on to immigrate to America, get a Phd from MIT in laser physics and a MD from Harvard. He now is a world reknown eye surgeon whos developed ground breaking sight restoring transplants… for people with no eyeballs. His list of accomplishments is incredible (Dr. Ming Wang). He spoke on time management, time dilation, and using the most of the most precious and finite commodity that any lifetime possesses: time.

I want to become more of a person. I want to grow into my potential more fully. I want to focus on my goals, let my passions and drives take over, and blaze remarkable new successes for myself. No challenge is too great. With every challenge I shed the weight of weakness and allow success to become more apart of me.

I desire this. I want to change. I am dissatisfied with my lackadaisical attitude toward my current preoccupations. I need steadfast resolve that will lift my spirit with every waking moment and transport me into a perpetual moment of progress.