Growing old
When I was younger, say, ten to fifteen years ago, a part of my mind was always thinking about how I might see the world ten to fifteen years hence. Always in a hurry to get to the next chapter, never really wanting to slow down enough to appreciate the goodness of the present.
Sure, I had my worries, but many of those remained almost strictly abstract. Many of yesterday's problems were frequently overblown by an immature outlook on life; I never really understood back then the real reasons that older people worry.
It was a far more selfish time of my life. Such an outlook tends to really shorten one's perspective. The world, and life, looks so much different when all you can see is just what's beyond the tip of your nose. You might see one bright yet tiny splotch of color, all the while missing the beauty of the entire painting.
And so here it is, a little kernel of wisdom that I'm lucky to remember at least once every day: We really know so little when we're not old enough. No matter how old you do get, no matter how many tomorrows and todays you are blessed with each time you get up out of bed, we have to take every single day as a renewed opportunity to better ourselves.
Youth may be wasted on the young, as the saying goes. But I think we grow older for a good, altruistic reason. We have to come to a point each day in our own lives where we have to try to do a little better today than we did yesterday. Let not our aging be wasted as well.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 10/10/2008 07:54:18 PM
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Time
Once lost, it can never be recovered.
I crave every thousandth of it out of selfishness. Perhaps because I feel that I don't have enough of it to spend on myself, for myself.
Though I am grateful for all the wonderful people I have in my life (every single one of you), sometimes I cannot help but feel that I need some time alone.
To do my own thing.
To enjoy solitude and space.
Or perhaps to do nothing at all.
I crave privacy and lonely moments, even as I fear permanent isolation.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 9/15/2008 04:29:45 AM
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Life
Life is majestically infinite.
The definition of the tragedy of being human, though, is that we are mortal. Therefore, our capacity to experience life is finite.
Our obligation, then, is to live life to the fullest.
Deny nothing that you experience. Never forget that, even during the darkest moments, the potential for light to shine is there.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 8/24/2008 03:23:40 AM
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Fortune smiles upon me
Sometimes you make your own breaks. Other times, things just happen without your own intervention. Whatever the case, you must always be thankful for all the good things that have happened in your life.
As if from the heavens, a fervent wish came true today. For a long time now I'd been a bit unhappy at my job. The root of my unhappiness lay not with the job itself or my duties; rather, it was my incompatibility with my co-workers' personalities.
It simply is hard to sustain honest relationships with people who act and think in ways that are too different to you. In order to promote some semblance of harmony in the workplace, I took it upon myself to swallow my pride and just do my job and occasionally vent and complain about what I saw as serious shortcomings on the part of my colleagues.
Thankfully, several months ago I only had to suffer through just half my workday at my "real" job. For four hours out of eight I had a very comfortable interlude, working in another office learning and doing another job within the same City department. The challenge of learning new skills proved to top up my sagging levels of motivation and gave me something, however small, to look forward to.
All throughout, I'd been planning all kinds of exit strategies, all prompted by a feeling of needing to escape my unhappiness at my "real" job. Whether it was by transfer to another department in the City, or starting anew with a totally new job, I was determined to find something else to do and not have to deal with the people I had grown to distrust and dislike.
Today, I was given the happy news that in a couple of weeks, I'll be working full-time at what had hitherto been my four hours of peace and quiet on the job. I will be transferring to the Operations Division, after working in Human Resources for the last year and a half. I am looking forward to the transition.
I can hardly wait to turn the page and start anew.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 8/06/2008 07:46:11 PM
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Illness
Some weaknesses you can compensate for; others, you just accept and try to make the best with.
A weakness that I've had all my life is my poor health. I'm not even speaking of fitness here, as that has not always been a weakness. I'm talking about my very poor resistance to illness.
I have almost died several times because of grievous illness. The first time was shortly after I was born, maybe three or four weeks after; I contracted a serious case of bronchitis that necessitated a hospital stay. For my parents, who had lost an infant to a miscarriage (he would have been my older brother, and they named him Mario), my bout with bronchitis was a very big scare indeed. Their relief that I survived it probably counts as one of their biggest collective joys.
In my teens I survived hemorrhagic fever and Hepatitis A. Both times I had very serious manifestations of the disease which, my doctors said, may have possibly killed me.
Throughout my life, I've been quite susceptible to going down with colds and flu and other "minor" ailments. I've observed that I'm more vulnerable than most people to such things. That is the penalty of living with a naturally weak immune system.
If there is one facet in my physical make-up that I wish I could change, certainly it's my immune system. It is almost like a handicap. It's a difficult burden to bear, but all I can do is try to artificially improve it through ingesting big doses of Vitamin C daily.
At least there is a remedy, albeit one that is no panacea. But it's better than nothing at all.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 7/28/2008 12:52:28 PM
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Pain
Maybe it's bravado, but I'd like to think that I'm not fearful of too many things.
I don't like pain (who does, except for the pathologically masochistic?), but I do not fear it if it is merely physical. Wounds heal, bruises go away, and scars are just proof that you've survived something that wasn't strong enough to kill you. I don't rush headlong into something that will hurt my body, but I don't avoid it simply because I fear the pain.
I am, however, afraid of emotional pain. These are the wounds that fester, the bruises that remain sensitive to the slightest touch, and the scars that rip open violently with the slightest provocation. Tears are seldom enough when seeking solace.
Few things hurt me more emotionally than the fear of loneliness. Abandonment is a type of Kryptonite to my personal Superman fantasies. Few things frighten me as the prospect of loss of contact, whether we're talking about family, friends, or loved ones.
There are some things going on in my life that have reawakened this spark of fear in me. A good friend is caught in the middle of two loyalties, and perhaps the fear is borne out of the possibility that, when his loyalty and friendship to me is measured against the achievement of a personal ambition, our friendship might come up short. If I was naturally more confident and less insecure, I could remain optimistic and not be fearful that a genuine friendship will survive even this. However, even if our friendship is undoubtedly a strong one, there is a fear on my part that ambition is stronger, more attractive, and more worthy of protection.
The truth is, I cannot begrudge my friend if this indeed was the case. If this is his response, then because I consider him to be a true friend I can accept this. I may not like it, but I can accept it.
Yet the cold hand of paranoia freezes my soul and hurts me.
The fear of loss is a torture that I alone must bear.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 7/23/2008 02:41:33 AM
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Battleground
My soul is a battleground. Strewn randomly are various defeats and victories, tragic comedies and dramatic histories of places and people and times long gone, and portents of futures yet to unfold.
Nothing is simple; everywhere are myriad shades of gray. Lessons learned, lessons yet to be learned, lessons never having a chance to be learned, experiences old, present and new... all of these swirl around me like a kaleidoscope of colors and patterns that shift far too quickly for the mind's eye to discern clearly.
Targets, noble goals, ambitions and desires... all are arrayed all around me, waiting for a time to be attacked, achieved, to be the object of strategies and tactics, all in the hopefully noble quest to be the best I can be.
For that is all I want. It is an ambition distilled into its purest and most fundamental. Though it is impossible to complete, it is a quest towards a shedding of corruption and the chase for an improbable perfection and purity in intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and love.
Yet though the journey may never be completed, the surest knowledge of this must not be a deterrent; it is a quest for the noblest hero within.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 7/18/2008 04:33:10 AM
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Motivation
I admit it. There's no getting around the fact that I have a strong tendency to become lazy.
Sometimes I get it into my mind, unconsciously of course, that I don't feel like I can finish up a project. Sometimes it's as if I lack that certain force that just pushes you along, an unnamed something that propels you and drives you and gives you the energy you need to put that period at the end of the paragraph.
Such is how I feel these days.
Perhaps it's the heat of the oncoming summer sapping my energy. I'm sure that my badly maladjusted body clock, manifested by my predilection to sleep late and wake up for work despite having far too short of the six-to-seven hours of total rest that I need, is also a factor. I know that sometimes having too much in front of me depresses my internal energy level.
Instead of giving me that boost that a challenge should, more often than not my immediate reaction is to retreat a little bit and conserve effort and energy.
I need to develop a new facet to my personality. I need to harness the aggression and energetic forcefulness that I know I can summon only, it seems, when my emotions and passions are stirred. When I feel angry, or if I feel competitive, that's when I most feel that energy I know I can have.
The trick, perhaps, is to be able to find a way to benevolently deceive my mind into willfully going into that aroused psychological state as when I am angry or feeling competitive. Alas, that is always the most challenging part for me: I have always seemed to lack that ability to properly harness and control the swirl of emotion and passion that is the wellspring of that energy I seek.
This is a cause most worthy of meditation.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 7/16/2008 03:14:47 AM
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First cup
"Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start..."
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step," once said Confucius. Thus we begin this hopefully scenic route, a trip where we don't quite know where we're going, don't quite know how we'll get there, but know for sure that the journey will be its own reward. For such is life.
Here today, but who knows about tomorrow?
We'll know when we get there.
:: Posted by txtmstrjoe AT 7/14/2008 04:28:34 AM
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Name: txtmstrjoe
Location: SoCal
I'm just a student of life who hopes to never stop learning.
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