Don't stop building

Earlier I wrote about a grand puzzle that most people fail to, or neglect to build, rather focusing on their own smaller puzzle, which includes only themselves and those they care about. However, I didn’t account for the event of pieces gone missing. What if parts of the puzzle would be to perish? What if we lose someone? Will the void in our puzzle be filled by other pieces or will it remain forever?

I see no way for anyone to fill in the very same pieces I find my friends filling in. The gratitude and affection I feel towards them is beyond comparison to anything or anyone else, and if I would be so damned as to lose any of them, I would never, and I mean never be able to fill that void.

When I meet new people, they come with new pieces for my puzzle. Those pieces are neither stacked on top of the others nor are they put in their place, they are placed around the edges, not meaning they are in any way less appreciated, only that they will for ever have their unique place, and thus expanding the entire puzzle.

The more important the persons role is in my life, the more pieces they bring, and the bigger their part of the puzzle is. The ones who take up most of my puzzle have pieces representing everything I know about them; their ability to make me smile just by thinking about them (I'm even smiling as I'm writing this), their ability to make me laugh just by giving a certain look or the tiniest comment (or by going way, way, way, waaay too far with a joke, which often results in only the two of us laughing like hell and the rest thinking "what the fuck?").

Other big parts would represent how I feel safe and at home no matter where we're at and what we're doing, just because I know exactly who it is that's sitting next to me, and that you know exactly who I am as well. Or how I know I can rely on you no matter what I do, and no matter what happens to me, because you would walk through fire (yes, walk, not run, that's how tough you are) and fight anyone, even though they're flying like butterflies and stinging like bees, just to save me.

I come to think that having someone so important in your life is quite dangerous in a way. That if the person would be to disappear from your life and seemingly destroy your puzzle, you'd have no way of rebuilding it. But I can't fight the feeling, or even the fact that having a grand puzzle for as long as you possibly can and maybe one day losing parts, if not all of it, still beats never having one at all. And if I so were to get some voids in it, then I hope I'll manage to build the puzzle larger, so that the voids will seem smaller and less significant than they were at their origin. Yet the voids will always be there, because no one, and I mean no one will be able to fill in your pieces.

Change of perspective

Do I waste away the day when I sleep late, or do I waste away the night when I don't?

Staying sharp

This guy has figured it out.
Making sure the play is his to win even before he starts playing.
But of course this fellow has a bit more to him than just playing them cards right, so enough about him.

We can't all be superheroes, but we can at least get better at playing them cards of ours; what to say and do when and where is key.

I'm often taken aback by the way people act without thought. Not to think before one acts is basically equivalent of acting like an animal.


René Descartes; "Cogito ergo sum" or "I think, therefore I am"


Not to think is simply unthinkable. Surely many would quite ironically think of this as an attack on spontaneity, but even a spontaneous act is performed with some reasoning as foundation, however brief it is.

An action performed without any thought or reflection is to me like gambling. You don't know what exactly you're throwing out there and you have no idea what you're gonna get back.
I don't like gambling. I like control. I like playing with a set of rules and boundaries, so that I can understand and predict others' actions and vice versa. The more I think before I act, the fewer surprises all around. We would never get to know one another if we constantly acted without thinking, because there would be nothing left to separate you from the next guy.


"Your actions define you as a person" - This is true, only if you think before you act.

"Your actions define you as an animal" - This is true, only if you don't.


Personally I want to be as much like Gambit as possible. Fictively I'd love to be like him in every way, but realistically I would at least want that ability of his; to be able to play my best cards at all given times and still have an ace up my sleeve.

Distinctions - The whatnow behind the internal joke

Internal jokes are often thought of as evil jokes meant to exclude others. The ones who feel this the most are those who are not a part of the group the internal joke is laughed at in the first place. They feel they're being shown where the door is and getting hints and looks as to how it's supposed to be opened and how one is supposed to leave the room, or in this instance, the conversation.

I don't think internal jokes are evil at all. I generally think it's exciting to watch as others laugh at something seemingly meaningless or even nonexistent, and I find this exciting because it means they're seeing something I'm not. And I want to see it too.

You see, we all have our different distinctions, it's how we differ from one another and it's how we tell our friends and acquaintances apart. Now, what's interesting is how friends tend to develop certain distinctions in harmony, and thus joke about them, yes, you got it, this is what an internal joke is, a joke based on something small and most often odd that two or more friends have in common, there, I even explained it further.

I find that internal jokes are a very basic part of ones personality, and that one is dependent on it, and other things of course, to be happy and to.. glow.. yes, to glow. We all like glowing, don't we? It's equivalent to being very very happy, basically. I don't see why someone would rather throw a blanket over a glowing bunch of people instead of simply enjoying their good mood and thus good company. You do know good mood is contagious, right?

Graffiti

Graffiti markings in public space offers the allure of a mystery. To the viewer, they are painted by anonymous writers for reasons unknown, and their messages are often obscure. They appear and disappear without warning. They do not usually promote commerce, lay down the law or give instructions, and in this way they differ markedly from the functional signs we do know how to read. In the case of subway-style graffiti in particular, the message can be deeply encoded in elaborate "wildstyle" lettering that disguises and deconstructs the forms of the letters themselves. But cryptic messages can be conveyed even by more easily read tags or pieces, such as a series of letters and numbers, a word fragment or a misspelt word that could be a noun, verb and adjective all at once. Graffiti is a contemporary form of hieroglyphs, mysterious messages left on the material fabric of our culture. Becoming urban archaeologists, we attempt to unravel their meanings as we go about our business.

Quote from "Uncommissioned art, an A-Z of Australian graffiti" by Christine Dew

I must say..
Damn.

Lose yourself

I've often heard people say things along the lines of "don't lose yourself, man", "you don't have to change just to fit in when you meet new people, that's just being fake", "be yourself" and so on. I have myself watched and judged others as being inconsistent in their persona, finding it quite irritating to be unable to read and predict their behavioral patterns. Lately I've reconsidered the source of my annoyance and figured the fault lied not in my friends, but in myself and my own damned need for control and ability to withhold a solid overview of each and every situation. I doubt I'll be able to let go of these needs, but I have finally realized that everyone does change, all the time. Sometimes it's involuntary as in changing to fit others' needs even if you don't like acting in that particular way, but most of the times people like to act differently amongst different people, because it provokes different reactions and responses which are desirable.

It's not exactly rocket science, but I find it easy to forget that we all have hundreds of different roles in our lives, and that we all enjoy most of them. The reason why I fail to notice them, and thus forget, is because most of the roles are practically identical. I have, obviously, recently rediscovered the phenomenon as I have myself recently been thrown into a new environment with lots of new faces and new personalities to relate to and thus I have of course adapted to fit in as best as I can. The thing to grasp here is that the change was welcome. I really enjoy discovering new sides of myself and the way I'm able to vary my persona, without drifting totally afar from my personal idea of me.

Even that very idea I have of myself is changing. At least somewhat. Bit by bit, almost all of the time. I guess I finally realized one can't get caught up in himself and the way he's supposed to be. We're not static, we do change. And by allowing myself to change, without saying there's anything wrong with the old me, I'm simply embracing the new me, for now.

We all change, most often for the better

Even manholes are happy in the sun!

Yes, it really is called a manhole