Being apologetic

Sorry sorry sorry.

I say that a lot–and I’m sorry for that. Sorry Sorry.

Well the point is, even if I say sorry, its not so much that I want to really apologize as I want to deflect anger away from me. I’ve decided that being all apologetic and seemingly-meek is not really being meek, its just not really wanting people to get mad at me for what I say. In either case, either I shouldn’t have said it, or I should just be courageous enough to voice my opinion. So I’ll stop saying sorry unnecessarily from now on.

Generalize or Specialize?

So, in tune with the previous post about trying to do a lot, I’ve realized that there are really two ways one can become ’skillful’, but an interesting warning from a TOK teacher back in high school: “There are those who are generalists, who want to learn less and less about more and more, and specialists, who want to learn more and more about less and less, until the generalists know nothing about everything, and the specialists know everything about nothing”. But, barring this type of limit, what would be better? Being a jack-of-all-trades or being a master of one (Eh I know the thing is master of ‘none’, but I’m going to ruin this saying).

Coming out of high school my initial impression was, of course, specialization is the key, there’s no other reason, a person who is very well rounded cannot possibly succeed in all of the things s/he puts his mind to, it doesn’t make sense. Specialization is clearly the way, just as a sharpened steel sword beats a dull one. But then university came and you realize how much sharper other swords can be than yours, and you realize you didn’t spend enough time trying to acquire other weapons.

Ok, well, this isn’t a war, but it would certainly help if I had other weapons in my arsenal. My conclusion? Rather than ‘putting all your eggs’ in one basket, make sure you put at least two eggs in maybe 2~3 other baskets, and then pile the other 20 in your primary basket. That way, at least you can work around using your other skills, than being stuck with just this really sharp sword. Its important to do other things besides study.

Mid-life Crisis

I used to think it to be very childish for parents to try to live through their children. My mom tried that once when I was 2~5, but she kind of realized how it wouldn’t bring her that much happiness seeing her child ‘excel’. A few months ago I recall seeing a bunch of early-thirties group of friends meet up. They also brought their children along with them. Now I don’t have kids, so I don’t know the feeling of having your kids competing with your friends’ kids, but it seemed really shallow that the parents were comparing what their kids could do: “____ is going to do a piano recital next month!” “Oh really? How nice! Yeah ____ is spending time doing her ballet lessons too, along side her chinese language tutoring, its really hectic.”

Another thing that I never really understood was the mid-life crisis; why would 50-year olds want to try to relive their youth? As if there was enough time/strength/energy to do these things–it made more sense to just do the things that you, as 50-year-olds, can do, rather than try to do the senseless things teenagers do.

And then–when I hit 20, all of it made sense. I realized I wanted to do so much more, and didn’t do as much as I could have, I realized that high school was possibly the last time I would have so much free time to do a lot of the things I wanted to do (yes Mage, you can comment now lol ), and realized there’s not nearly enough time in the next few years to do it. What now? Well obviously I’m not 50 yet, so I still have time to probably try out new things, but that feeling of ‘i’ve still got time’ is pretty much how those who are 50 feel (sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as strong, it WAS how i felt before–to be honest there isn’t anything wrong with trying to relive your teenage years, just don’t go around trying to flirt with 18 year old girls or something). And then I realized how much I wanted to do (to gain expertise in all of them would require several years); and then figured out why parents wanted to live through their kids–their kids are the ones who will be able to do things they wouldn’t be able to, by doing it far earlier. It makes so much sense to live through your kids, and its not so much out of selfishness as just wanting your kids to not feel that feeling of not doing enough.

To put an optimistic spin on this all, I find that it makes each generation progress, each generation learning from the mistakes of their parents. It also really makes me appreciate my parents for not forcing me to do a lot of things they would have wished they had done in their youth.

Sight

Its pretty interesting to think about how well-balanced all the senses are–almost each one can communicate the whole spectrum of feelings. Touch is probably the most obvious in relaying physical emotion; Smell and Taste can bring up a whole range of nostalgic emotions; Hearing is the way humans talk to each other and Sight is the way we recognize each other and places that bring emotion.

I find it weird though that among all of the senses, sight and hearing are the only two that are used primarily for logical processes; all of mathematics can only be relayed using sight and hearing (well, except maybe Braille to read text), while we rarely, if ever, use our smell to know which chemicals we are using, or taste to see how cold something is, or touch to understand creatures. I mean, maybe its because sight and hearing are the most sensitive, so we can depict a larger range of data through it, but maybe if we had tried (way back when) to transfer data through touch or through taste, it might have gone otherwise…who knows.

Fuzzy Logic

I recall reading about a Star Trek Voyager episodes where there was a species that had six genders, and it got me thinking about why we only have ‘true’ or ‘false’ in mathematics; why not have more different kinds of ‘truth’ values (I have no idea how this is practical). I looked it up and there is such a thing–multi-valued logic, Look through it, its kind of interesting. I don’t know what to make out of it though. I love the part about MTL logic though, because it relates to SUPREMUMS and INFIMUMS, and so you might have something like the SUPREMUM OF TRUTH. Awesome. (Actually I have no idea what they mean. haha sorry)

Proposal

I remember learning in first-year physics about a phenomenon called Tital Locking, where celestial objects would, because of imperfections/imbalances in how their mass is distributed, ‘tidally lock’ to the object they’re orbiting around, that is, they will always face the object that they are revolving around; this is the reason why the moon is always facing the Earth. The interesting thing is that the Earth will one day always face the Sun (I don’t know if the Sun or Earth will last that long), because both the Earth and the Sun have imperfections in their mass distributions. My first thought would be, how cool it would be if the moon was always facing the Earth, which was always facing the Sun, so that we could have things like endless solar eclipses (which would probably kill the Earth’s ecosystem, if any by then), or endless lunar eclipses (which would…not do anything?). But I just realized that this isn’t really possible (I think) because the period of the Moon’s orbit is shorter than the period of the Earth’s.

However, here is an even cooler idea. Rather than evacuating the Earth long before this happens (because one side will be absolutely frozen, the other completely charred), I propose that we live straddling on the intermediate boundary between eternal day and eternal night (since the Earth is always facing the Sun, this boundary would exist). This would mean we would have an area of eternal sunrise/set, which would be absolutely beautiful. We would have tech by then to ensure that we still have some sort of atmosphere I think, and, handwaving over any other details, we could potentially have the most beautiful planetary scene in all of the solar system. Imagine having a whole city where there is always sunset, imagine what it would be like going to school there. I just watched an animé movie where they had one scene where they had a piano playing with the sunset in the background and different pictures of the school, it was gorgeous. I propose to build a school with giant libraries with high ceilings and many rooms with large windows so everyone can enjoy the sunset!

Choices

A question:

Would you rather live a life of extremes or a life of comfortable averages? That is, in the life of extremes, daytime is a wonderful experience, (like today), where the sky is wonderfully clear and you can see the mountains and perhaps even go to those mountains and wonder at the beauty of the earth; you get to enjoy the company of fun friends and life is generally productive and worth-while. However, nighttime is a horrifying experience, where every horror and nightmare imaginable manifests itself ten-fold in your house and in your dreams.

A life of averages is one in which everything is predictable, and while things may not be exciting, at least things are safe and comfortable. There are moments of happiness, and perhaps moments of sadness, but nothing too exciting.

I’m not complaining about either, I’m just wondering what people think. For me, I think I’m happy and comfortable in general, of course there are things that I want, but I already am very lucky and blessed compared with what most people have to go through everyday.

If I were to choose, I think I’d go with extremes. Hopefully this doesn’t jinx anything…

Sunrise

Its almost a surreal feeling, being gone from the Philippines for so long. I remember graduating from high school, and saying goodbye to friends and teachers; but it seems all but a dream. As you’re going through day-to-day it doesn’t seem like your memories are slipping away, but after three years you realize that you haven’t met up with any of the people you met up with on a daily basis for almost four years, and you haven’t even talked to them on MSN recently.

For example, I remember clearly wanting to compete with a good friend of mine, and always seeing ‘who was better’, but now I don’t even care anymore. I used to think I’d talk with my friends on msn daily so that I wouldn’t lose touch, but all the more I find that people have moved away from msn, and the only way we do keep in touch is through facebook with the occasional “Happy birthday”. Oh I wish that I had invested more time during university just making an effort to continue to talk to those friends. Maybe I’ll do so from now on.

On another note, perhaps this is what our lives would look like after we die, nothing more than just a dream.

Faster than Honda Service

Today my car couldn’t start up because I forgot to turn off the headlights for about 2 hours. In the time that I was trying to get Honda Plus Roadside services to get help for me, my friends were able to jumpstart the car. This is what is great about friends–they are much faster, and do not need to make sure you’re really you.

Question to ponder

Recently I’ve had two friends tell me two different things concerning love. One suggests that true love does not exist, that in reality, all humans are very pragmatic and that love is a means for people to further themselves, rather than their partner. On one hand, this is a realistic interpretation of love, because humans really will do everything to further themselves. On the other hand, there are some cases where it is difficult to say that the lover was being pragmatic, because they would put themselves completely in harm’s way for their partner (although this could be said as a means to further their own glory, rather than actually wanting to help their partner).

The other friend suggests that true love does exist, but is exceedingly rare. In many cases, true love doesn’t exist because, like above, people aren’t in it for the love, they are in it to have sex/pleasure, and just liking the idea that they are in love, rather than really caring.

This is the first time I’ve looked at two realistic interpretations of ‘true love’ and have never been more depressed-I do not know which one is more depressing, thinking that true love doesn’t exist, or that it does, and that I cannot possibly expect to achieve it. I tend to take a more middle-road. True love doesn’t exist in pristine form, and in any case where the true love seemingly exists, it is broken.

/post-teenage angst