Don't tell me.

"You can't do that"

If said as a warning: that I'm crossing some line,
that I'm partaking in the creation of pain,
that there are things which should be sacred,
that the world might end.

Then I understand and will take that into account before engaging in my action.

If said as a measure of my ability: that I lack the capacity,
that I wouldn't have the heart to see it through,
that the passion doesn't simmer in my veins,
that my efforts will inevitably fade into oblivion.

Then understand that I will proceed with even more vigor and dedication, for I will not rest until the task is completed. Until success is realized.

And it will be.

Just like the last time and the time before.

Sunday Musings

Life is always such a clutter of just about everything. We dedicate so much time trying to pick and sort out things that are worthwhile to us. We spend hours reading reviews and asking friends, just so we can pick out a product that every manufacturer seems to have. We date different sorts of people in hopes that we'll discover "our type." We sit at a desk, frantically pounding our heads, trying to determine which chapters of a textbook would likely contain materials from the midterm.

This in itself isn't a major issue. Most people would just dismiss it as part of life. It's how things have been since grade school, when mom and dad started to slowly release their grip on our lives ever so slightly. But really, I'd rather not spend so much time trying to choose something, but rather spend that time enjoying or working on what I end up selecting.

Since hindsight is always perfect, I suppose it is easy for us to look back and say that it's obvious what we should've done in the past. But me being me, I'm wondering if there is something to give us a bit of foresight to this situation. You know, to speed up the process, to de-clutter, to--God forbid, do the engineer thing--optimize the situation.

But this brings me to a cross road. As far as I can tell, you can live life two ways here. In one manner, I believe that getting to know oneself would help make apparent the correct options in life. But the trip inwards is always a difficult and long one, which might possibly take up more time than if one were to do the conventional method of reasoning things out. As a result, maybe it is better to just pick and choose any option. If we assume that dedication to any option would mean success; although there will likely be some that require less dedication than others... then wouldn't this be a better model to follow? But even here there is a problem. The level of dedication required for any option is more or less what people use to quantify desirable choices. After all, we'd like to get the most return for the least amount of work; whether that return is in the form of money, fame, or personal motives.

So it seems we're running in circles here. You can analyze yourself, but that takes up resources. You can just pick something, but that risks you making a choice on something that takes up more resources.

But I suppose, you only need to analyze yourself once right? Once it has been established who you are, then you can apply that to all subsequent cross roads; saving you time that you would've spent trying to figure things out, or attempting to stick with a spontaneous choice. In the long run, perhaps that'll mean that it's worth it. Or perhaps it won't work, because people change... you'll change, and you'll need to reanalyze yourself again. In this manner, the model only becomes advantageous if the intervals between reanalysis are great enough so as to result in more time saving than lost.

So what is one to do in this case? Most likely there isn't a single solution that I can apply. If anything, everything in life is a spectrum and solutions need to be tailored individually, or simplified collections of them. Hm. Just more things to think about when I have more free time, or perhaps I'll put some of these to the test and see which one works better.

I love how my life is just one big experiment to me. It's both fascinating and frustrating to be the experimenter and subject at the same time.