Drift

I've been giving a lot of thought on how things have changed. Oddly enough, nothing is as it used to be, and I doubt that in the near future it'd still be the same. Things change. People change. And I dare say that I too change.

I was inspired to write this down after reading a friend's blog entry. It made a lot of sense. There is a certain sadness when people you were once close to seem to just drift away. In my friend's entry, she talked about people you introduced becoming closer than you are to any of them. Here, it's a bit different, but also the same. Why is it that some people get along better than others. There are people who've known each other for years, and yet barely really know one another. And there are people who've just met for a few days and they're already very close. Does it have to do with personality? I've had my fair share of these experiences. You could even say that I've had so much that it wasn't even fair anymore.

There is a certain quirk in life I've noticed, and I've tried giving it a name. I call it the "Law of Drift." Basically, people drift from one another. A group of friends may be close now, but sooner or later, one will get separated from the group. It won't happen abruptly. It'll take time. But the end result will be that one person gets left behind when the group proceeds to the next level of bonding; a driftwood separated from the collective mass of floatsam. This has happened to me. I drifted, they drifted, whatever. The end result is, we're not on the same current anymore. And that is very sad indeed.

So how do you stop from drifting? I don't think you can stop it. No matter how hard you try, people just drift. Often it isn't even by anyone's choice. You don't notice it until you open your eyes and realize that there's already a huge gap. When that happens, the hard question is, "what do you do?" Do you try to bridge that gap knowing full well that it will never completely be closed, or do you try to drift yourself closer to other people instead? But perhaps the harder question is, "why did you drift in the first place?" You won't often have a straight answer for this because it happened over a good amount of time.

In DotA, when you're in a bad lane and you keep getting nuked to helplessness, there are 2 general things you can do to make sure you don't end up worthless in the later part of the game. You can either ask for help and counter-harass the other team to clear your lane, or just switch to another lane. So which one would you choose?

The life of a driftwood is a lonely life indeed.

Collateral Damage

No matter how hard I try to fix my life, more still need fixing.

It doesn't feel quite right. I sense something is amiss. I don't know what though. Everything changes, right? I'm finding it hard to cope. The changes aren't coming fast, which is good. But there are a lot of them happening, and that's bad. I can't keep up. Nothing is familiar anymore...

How do I go about fixing my life? How do I mend the broken pieces, the shattered fragments, withered parts? How do I make sure that what I have left will still be there when I go look for it? Does it even need fixing in the first place? Or should I just let go and let time take it's toll and see what happens next?

This post isn't making much sense to me right now. What happens in the interim when thought is collected into coherent ideas? Why is it that I can't seem to write exactly what I think? At which point do my ideas change into entirely different things?

Plenty more things to fix..

Decisions

Making decisions is very difficult, at least for me. When faced with a decision, either a light or important one, I find myself hesitant in choosing a direction. I usually just let event play out by themselves with as little input from myself as possible. This is especially the case when the decision revolves around choosing among two or more things of equal or more or less equal value to me. So now I'm just wondering why I do that.

I guess letting things flow by themselves gives us the illusion that the outcome we get will not be our fault because we didn't make a stand. We can then proceed to blaming fate or destiny when things turn bad because we didn't decide anything. But inaction in itself is a decision already. When we let things work themselves out, that becomes our decision - to do nothing. There's no such thing as not deciding anything. No one is immune from consequences.

I used to be very passive before. And the illusion of not being at fault when we let events take place by themselves is surely comforting. But it still is just an illusion. Now, I'd like to think that I'm more decisive. Perhaps I am. But sometimes, the lure of illusions is just so great...

Semi-Invisible

I may not be as invisible as I once thought.

There are certain times in a person's life when the person realizes something in a flash of a moment. It usually involves a new idea or a thought that the person hasn't entertained in his or her mind yet. Whatever the case, some sort of wisdom is sure to follow. I've had my fair share of these "enlightening" moments, and one of them happened today.

I used to think that I was invisible. I really did. Figuratively of course, not literally. It may have stemmed from a lack of self confidence or something, I don't know. I can only guess. But I always thought that I had to prove myself to others just so they could accept me as a person. To make a long story short (I'll talk about this some other time), I didn't think I was memorable enough to anyone except for those I've known and spoken to for a year or so. In short, everytime a far acquaintance or someone I used to know remembers who I am, I get surprised. The longer I haven't spoken to the person or the shorter time I've known the person before, the more surprised I get. Strange.

Anyway, I was walking in school and an old acquaintance of mine from a few years back said, "Hi Mike." Mind you this person didn't know me very much, we didn't even talk much before. Maybe just a couple of simple conversations; nothing beyond 3 minutes each. I've seen the person around last year, passed by each other along hallways, and everytime, there wasn't a hint that the person remembered me. No "Hi," not even a wave or a gesture of acknowledgement. Then today, "Hi Mike." That caught me off-guard. All I could do was mutter a "Hi" in response. And then we continued on our separate ways.

Talk about a weird-point-of-view-changing-moment. I guess I'm not as invisible as I once thought.

note: this happens every now and then, but what struck me today was that this person was the last person I'd expect to do something like that. Well maybe not the last person I expected, but pretty much an infinitesimal probability.

I guess I'm not as invisible as I once thought I was. And that's a comforting thought.. Yeah, I can live with that.

Situations

People are placed in different situations everyday. All of these situations are different, and people do different things in different situations. We classify them as good or bad but in reality, there isn't a "good" or "bad" situation. As I've said before, perspective plays a key role. Perspective plays a key role in a lot of things related to us humans because we are the only ones with reason enough to have different perspectives from one another. I'm getting derailed here..
As I was saying, situations are just situations. And based on our experiences, some situations may be stressful, or funny, or desperate, or ironic, or lucky, etc. I can't stress enough the importance of our perception in assessing situations.

I've heard someone say before that nothing is unfortunate if you don't consider it unfortunate. I've heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I've heard that every cloud has a silver lining. What do all of these have in common? They all have something to do with how we perceive the world around us. Perception.

Perception and situation go hand-in-hand. How we perceive things is based on our previous experience of a similar situation, and yet we classify a situation based on our perception. That's how events change peoples' outlook on life. That's how peoples' outlook determine their actions or reactions to events. It's just a circle, and yet each time it revolves, a small part of it is changed. That's how people change: little by little. Change too much too fast and we risk deforming the circle. Blacksmithing has a similar principle. You strike while the iron is hot, but not too much or else instead of molding the metal, you break it. Or in pottery, a constant steady application of pressure molds the clay into jars. Jerky movements deform the clay.

The point is, change is slow. But it happens. And our perception changes with each situation we encounter. We may not notice it happening, but when we look back to our past, can we honestly say that we are still the same persons we were before? I doubt it. When did we change? It's not a question of when really. The more important question is why. Why did we change? Did we change in order to cope with the situations that life indifferently presents us? Did we change in order to face those situations or did we change in order to hide from them? These are questions only we can answer because we are the ones that hammered them there, one day at a time.

Humans are more malleable than we care to think. And also much more fragile. Hammer with care - we change others too.

Towards the Fire

The main difference I see between humans and animals is that we humans have reason. Animals only have instinct. But it makes me wonder about certain things sometimes. In animals, survival is based on experience. Animals learn by experiencing things. When they first encounter fire, the moment they get burned or sense it's hot, they retreat away from it. They learn that fire is dangerous. Same thing when they encounter a snake or a venomous insect - if it doesn't kill them outright. Once they get hurt, they become wary. That's how animals have survived for so long. They learn what to avoid. They don't "hope" that a snake that bit them once won't bite them again, they've learned that it will bite them.

That's the difference between us and them. We have hope.. and reason. When we get hurt, in an accident perhaps, we reason out that it was just an accident. When we get burned by fire, we know that it's dangerous, and yet we are still fascinated by it. We try to control it, and use it. We reason out it's importance. We hope it will be useful. But it goes deeper than that.

Animals shy away from what gives them pain. They don't go back thinking that it was just an accident. They don't have the faculty of reason to think that way. Maybe that's where the saying that "people never learn" comes from. Animals learn by experience, but it seems that we do not. The most basic of emotions drive the animal mind: fear, hunger, pain, survival. For us, there are a lot more, and most of them contradict one another: hope, love, apathy, happiness, etc. Most of these can override our most basic of instincts. When we're hungry and yet we see a starving friend, we share our food. Concern overriding hunger. When there's an obstacle to be passed at the last mile of a race, determination overrides exhaustion and aches. When we love someone, hope that we're loved back overrides fears and past pains.

Maybe we'll never really learn. As humans, we've used reason as our edge over animals in the survival race. The thing that drives us against basic instincts is both our advantage and our folly, because we are the only creatures that shun our basic survival instincts. We come to learn what can hurt us and maybe even kill us. We even embrace that which gives us pain. Once bitten, twice shy. But in our case, once bitten, hope it doesn't bite again.

I'll never learn.

Balance

There has to be a balance somewhere. Why do I feel as if there's no such thing as a balanced "balance" anymore? When you look at the big picture, sure, there's a balance of sorts - good things and bad things usually even out. But that's with the big picture. What about localities? That's where balance goes haywire. There doesn't seem to be a balance right now. Too many "bad" stuff to think and worry about.

But then.. what about perspective? Is that taken into consideration? If "good" and "bad" things balance things out, what about peoples' perspective? Surely that should be taken into account since nothing is unfortunate if one doesn't consider it unfortunate. That's where my confusion sets in. Where do you draw the line? Lines shouldn't be vague. In paper, a line is a line. But in reality, the line that divides two or more thoughts leave a lot of gray area to be guessed at. Theory is often much simpler that actual practice, when thought is involved. The only reason a lot of people think otherwise is because they rely a lot on one thing theories can never use for justification. Call is feeling, faith, fate, destiny, anything of similar name.. and vagueness, but the truth is, it's an easy way out. A simple "I guess that's just how it is," and life is much simpler. Just don't try to think WHY it's like that. You can't do that with theory. That's why it's so difficult to explain a lot of everyday stuff. It's so common that we don't really think about it enough to answer the WHY question.

So going back to balance, is there really such a thing? Daily events and experiences tell us that, yes, there is such a thing as balance. What about in the long run? Don't you sometimes get that sinking feeling where everything is slowly going from bad to worse? How do you explain that? Is that where perspective comes along? Perspective IS one of those things that blunts the harshness of reality. Is it all a matter of perspective? Or is it really just because you don't like thinking about the WHY?

We do a lot of things subconsciously. It's time to figure out why we do them.

Feeling Invisible

While in the process of relearning the basic truths of life, I suddenly remembered something that piqued my curiosity a long time ago. Why are some people always invisible? This may seem a general question now, and I'll try to figure out a general answer, but the basis of it was in relation to YM. So let me rephrase: Why are some people always in "Invisible" mode? To help in answering my question, it just seems logical to gather my own experiences. So I tried logging on invisibly and waited... after a brief trial, I'm only a bit closer from where I began in finding the answer. From my experience, invisibility has it's perks. One, no one bothers you much, so it's nice if you're busy. Two, you can "safely" observe who are online without being drawn into lengthy conversations, assuming you're popular with other people. Three, there's just a certain sense of power in knowing who's out there and knowing that they don't know you're there, something akin to living out a spy fiction fantasy. Anyway, these are the things I've observed for now.

Moving on to the general. There are two sides to invisibility. One is by choice, as a means to avoid detection. The other is by consequence, something that just happens. Let me explain. The first type of invisibility happens quite often. It's often called by other names like a "getaway", a break, or time for oneself. It's when we actively seek not to be seen in order to do something important, personal, or contemplative in nature. The second is much more common, but sadly, denied by a lot of people. The second is consequential. We really don't have a say in it when it happens to us. Now the focus or choice shifts to other people. What do I mean? The second invisibility is when we are ignored, ostracized, or even forgotten. This is when we're too ordinary or too common to interest others. It even borders on apathy and indifference. I'm finding it hard to explain right now because even though a lot of people have experienced such a thing, the words to describe it properly are somewhat non-existent.

So there. I don't think I've answered my question fully, but at least I've thought about it enough. So where do I stand? Well, both actually. And I guess everyone else will, is, or have experienced both at some point. It's just one of those things that happen that nobody can seem to figure out how or why it did.

Right now, I am feeling invisible.

From Scratch

I thought I had everything figured out. I should've known that it wasn't possible. No matter how sure I am that there's no more mystery left for me, out comes a thought or an idea or an event that leaves me clueless. People say that life is a constant process of learning. I guess they're right. I am learning, but sometimes the learning curve is so steep that one has to build up so many failures just to be able to use them to climb up and grasp the wisdom. Sometimes it's still just too high though...

Everytime I think I know something to be the truth, something comes along to smash it right before my eyes. And then I'm back to square one again, picking up the broken pieces and rebuilding my world from scratch. When will I learn about reality, about chance, about fate, about life? I can't even understand half of what goes on in my mind. If only I could figure it out.. then a lot of things should make sense. But then there's that old saying that the more you know, the more you know that there's much, much more that you do not know...

Hmm, maybe that's just who I am. I've always been indecisive. Maybe it stems from mental confusion, or a mechanism to prevent confusion. After all, if you don't have to decide anything, then there's no need to think about it. Haha. Yeah right.. mas marami pa ngang pag-iisip ang nangyayari pag wala kang magagawa eh.

Simple Things

I just got home from the COA formsem that lasted 4 days. I've had sleep for only a total of around 10 hours out of the 108 hours since I woke up last Saturday until right now. So, please forgive the mistakes I'm sure to make.

At first I was very much afraid to go to the formsem as a proxy for our president in ASEC. I knew that all who would be attending would be mostly presidents themselves, while I'm only a VP. I was very much intimidated. But soon after I arrived, I got to know a few of the people. And quite soon after, I felt at ease already. I wasn't as tense as before, I even laughed and joked around with people I barely knew. I remembered the simple joys of friendship which I thought I had forgotten. It does feel nice to make new friends. It's one of the simple things in life, yet I had forgotten about it. I was so caught up in the moment that one of my goals then was to meet and get to know everyone there. Ofcourse, I didn't reach my goal, but I got to know a whole new bunch of people. I got to know people from my cluster, Andrew from AIESEC and Lyra from the Assembly. I got to know people outside my cluster too like, Bernice(who reminded me somewhat of Da, because of the mannerisms and such), Jake(very disturbing behavior, haha), Jor-el(MEA), Charson(AMA), Bev(MISA), Yda(na may legendary "Killers" wink, haha), Nikki, Geo-Ann, Jaypee, Dino, Nats(sobrang passionate and mabilis magsalita, haha), Charles, Mark, Jason(LM), and a lot of other people whose names seem to have eluded me(I'm sorry guys!). I wish I could've known them more, but I should be thankful just as well for knowing them as I did. I'm so happy I made new friends.

My time there was surreal. Not only did I get to know new people, I was also surrounded by the top leaders in Ateneo. All of them(more or less) are presidents of their orgs, and I just can't help but feel a sense of awe whenever I realized that. I knew that each one of them was a dedicated individual, chosen among many, and formators of people in their own right. I was surrounded by so much drive for exellence, so much dedication, so much potential, that I can't help but feel lucky for being there.

So now that I know the presidents of a host of other orgs, their organizations now bring new meaning to me. Now they aren't just organizations anymore; now, they have faces to match - face and character of their figure-head. And so, I've decided to join a few more orgs this coming year. It might be a tall order, but I'm willing to work hard for it. After all, I can't let my new friends down, while making sure that I don't forget about my other responsibilities. Hahaha.

It's going to ba a fun year ahead, and quite possibly very stressful too. Hahaha. Bring it on!!!

Fool

It's the first day of April, and today is supposed to be April Fool's Day. Why is that? A fool is defined in the dictionary as a person having little or no common sense and wisdom. Well, everyone's been at that point at least once in his/her life, so I guess that makes us all fools. So this is my day then, and everyone else's. I've already lost count of how many times common sense has eluded me, or how many times my wisdom didn't seem so wise, or how a decision was based solely on "gut feeling" and didn't quite follow any particular logic. And I've forgotten how many times all of those resulted in disaster. And many times it wasn't only me that took the fall. How foolish.

April Fool's Day reminds me of the foolishness I've done. And maybe all the practical jokes delivered or executed today will only serve as a reminder to everyone that indeed we are a foolish race. Simpler animals rely on instinct to survive. There's no lack in common sense. And the fact that we have the capacity to decide whether or not to follow our instincts makes us vulnerable to making bad judgment calls - it makes us vulnerable to foolishness. So today is our day. Today we celebrate the follies of our species. Today we are reminded that we are all fools.

But just incase some would disagree, there's nothing I can do. All of what I've written today might just be a result of my lack of wisdom and common sense in assuming that there might be something that binds us all to each other - a commonality if I may. So if that's the case, I may have been a greater fool than I realized. Cum grano salis. Take it with a grain of salt. A fool must be right now and then by chance - a fool like me.

Happy April Fool's Day.