I hate change.
Especially pennies.
Change is supposedly a good thing. Songs tell us it will “do us good”. I beg to differ. Change startles me, and I strive to maintain a static life, or some static variable to ensure that when all is lost, I can find my bearings. The world shows us that nothing is static, no piece of concrete, no leaf on a tree, no blade of grass, and certainly not nature’s tendency to be cyclic. It’s somewhat predictable but it’s impossible to be 100% accurate. There’s always a deviation even from the results of careful obserbation ( def: a combination of self indulgent and selfish, yet detailed and scientific observation). Try to predict when the cicadas will come out. Every 7 years? Every 2? Try every summer since I can remember, but intellectuals will try to tell you otherwise. They’ve spent their grant money, used their microscopes, collected data, and they know! But… they don’t… and somehow they end up wrong. Because they didn’t care? Were they careless, or did the world not note their wanton need to control and understand. Two types of scientist exist in this world. Only two, they can be specialized, but they can all be grouped in one of two groups. A) wants to know everything and will go into it as deep as they can to prove their theories and ideas on the world, and B) who want to look into everything, as deeply as they can, but to marvel at its nature, its perfect state of static chaos. We hope our lives could only be the same, but no amount of calculating can get us to a point where we can count on one thing or person at any given point in time for more than a certain given amount of time, to be determined when that time comes.
Confused about where I’m going or what the hell I just said? Keep reading.*
I wasn’t too bad with math until recently when I began to let my grades diminish on their own accord for reasons beyond my own comprehension. Nevertheless, I wasn’t too bad with math. My trouble area, always revolved around factors. Not just factors of numbers, mind you, prime, not prime, etc, but the factors affecting the outcome of an equation. Take any mathematical principal, and I can look at an example, and conjure up my own idea of how it works, and apply it. But take more than one of said principals and combine them, adding a step and a couple operations and I have no clue what is being asked of me.
Until recently school has really been no more to me than a challenge, not challenging as it were, just… a challenge. I worked to avoid doing things the easy way, changing it up to suit my purposes. Making the numbers and formulas and concepts amuse me, not with their intricacies, no, with their ability to be openly interpreted. Why go by some theorem proposed by a dead mathematician when I can come up with my own and adjust it should I stand corrected. No, they were fools to me, trying to find something static in this world, and not realizing that nothing remains so. There is no concrete formula, numbers are abstract and malleable. For petes sake, if these numbers of yours are so definite, then explain why they trip over their own toes! You can make 1 = 0 in a matter of steps with rudimentary algebra. (http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/humor/onezero2.html) Therefore, I make up my own world. My own formulas, my own ideas. Not because I have to. Because I want to. I feel a tad more in control, a bit closer to sanity. Not because I need that control, but because I need the world to remind me that I matter in the grand scheme of things. To give my life some meaning, I need to assert that I can do something right, by my own standards if not by those set around me. I sit and muse about changes I can make in peoples life, not because I need to be remembered, but because I want people to feel like they’ve been given that power, to manipulate and heal. To tend to their lives the way they wanted to. I want to be a doctor so that people can have that chance, a chance to change, and what kinda of people except for those who might be terminally ill, actually change their lives significantly when given the chance. Has your recent cold/flu made you think about how your life is short and you should make it meaningful in the time left? No. I thought not.
No… No, it’s more fun to hypothesize why man’s search for meaning ends with a bomb on a group of innocent people. And more entertaining to see that fighting in other countries is begetting fighting on our soil. A Pakistani man walks into a synagogue. He opens fire on the Jewish people praying. He kills 5. He calmly picks up his phone and calls the police, and asks them to come get him. We as a people are ever so productive. Spending our lives climbing ladders only to slam our heads into a glass ceiling perched atop the ladder. Once we reach that, then we start kicking people off the ladder, because, hey, if I cant go further, why should anyone else? You want numbers? Go find me an accountant who’s reached the peak of his/her career. A man or woman who knows there is no future for them, just the work they have ahead and the possibility of lay offs with todays economy. Now tell them that the economy that threatens their job is that way because of some Indian who does his work for 30 times less. Now watch that same man or woman lash out at people he or she doesn’t even know. They begin a crusade for the republican party. To bring work back to our country, to ensure their family’s welfare, to uphold he American way… to destroy the people who threaten that way. Find that same accountant before they hear about the Indian who will take their job. Find them and show them some numbers, any number, a positive integer, preferably above 30. Highlight it, and tell them that this number represents the number of people who will be killed if they decide to “free” the country where his job is soon to be outsourced to. Tell them that there are families, children, faces, names, and lives, tied to that number. That because they’re too inefficient, these people will remain jobless and possibly killed in our pursuit to ensure your freedoms. Watch how quickly the same person crusades for equal rights, works harder to ensure their job and prosperity in countries they will probably never visit. That same person has been changed, for better or worse, that’s an objective argument. But they’ve been changed; just by the way information was presented to them. The spin on their plight, and that of others, changed their outlook, their reactions, their future and the futures of others.
We try to argue it but every change in our life, affects others. The variables and factors lie only in our ability to identify who, or better yet, if we even care at all.
If our media, our government, our world, passes the blame to the disenfranchised and impoverished people of other countries, rather than taking the problems of their own country into their own hands, then I don’t completely blame that accountant for encouraging the war. I don’t blame ignorance brought about by lack of knowledge. I hold those who knowingly make a decision to be ignorant, at fault.
Changes reflect who we are and what we’re about. And the smallest ones can change a world. That’s not to say that everything is done with a reason, or everything can be traced back to some event somewhere in a galaxy far far away that resulted in you tearing a hole in your underwear which somehow led to your affinity for Jackson Pollock paintings. No, you can’t relate everything, and you cant search for change. Finding the factors leading to a problem (again, a problem can be viewed objectively as an acceptable situation by some) is harder as you watch things unfold, and hindsight is 20/20, but your foresight and ideology can change things to come.
So in review, the fact that I’ve started flossing again with that minty green piano wire of pain, will likely play a negligible role in our war in the middle east. The fact that I adopt a child and my significant other plays advocate to female abuse in the middle east might. The fact that I changed my conditioner might make my hair a little less manageable yet more frizz free, but it wont stop African blood diamonds from being sold. Take change as it comes, accept it, I still have to learn how to, but don’t let it control you, don’t change to accommodate change. Just switch things up a bit to make this world a little bit brighter for someone else and possibly livable for others.
*Sorry if this entry confused you or made no sense… I swear I was going somewhere with this in my head.
Change is supposedly a good thing. Songs tell us it will “do us good”. I beg to differ. Change startles me, and I strive to maintain a static life, or some static variable to ensure that when all is lost, I can find my bearings. The world shows us that nothing is static, no piece of concrete, no leaf on a tree, no blade of grass, and certainly not nature’s tendency to be cyclic. It’s somewhat predictable but it’s impossible to be 100% accurate. There’s always a deviation even from the results of careful obserbation ( def: a combination of self indulgent and selfish, yet detailed and scientific observation). Try to predict when the cicadas will come out. Every 7 years? Every 2? Try every summer since I can remember, but intellectuals will try to tell you otherwise. They’ve spent their grant money, used their microscopes, collected data, and they know! But… they don’t… and somehow they end up wrong. Because they didn’t care? Were they careless, or did the world not note their wanton need to control and understand. Two types of scientist exist in this world. Only two, they can be specialized, but they can all be grouped in one of two groups. A) wants to know everything and will go into it as deep as they can to prove their theories and ideas on the world, and B) who want to look into everything, as deeply as they can, but to marvel at its nature, its perfect state of static chaos. We hope our lives could only be the same, but no amount of calculating can get us to a point where we can count on one thing or person at any given point in time for more than a certain given amount of time, to be determined when that time comes.
Confused about where I’m going or what the hell I just said? Keep reading.*
I wasn’t too bad with math until recently when I began to let my grades diminish on their own accord for reasons beyond my own comprehension. Nevertheless, I wasn’t too bad with math. My trouble area, always revolved around factors. Not just factors of numbers, mind you, prime, not prime, etc, but the factors affecting the outcome of an equation. Take any mathematical principal, and I can look at an example, and conjure up my own idea of how it works, and apply it. But take more than one of said principals and combine them, adding a step and a couple operations and I have no clue what is being asked of me.
Until recently school has really been no more to me than a challenge, not challenging as it were, just… a challenge. I worked to avoid doing things the easy way, changing it up to suit my purposes. Making the numbers and formulas and concepts amuse me, not with their intricacies, no, with their ability to be openly interpreted. Why go by some theorem proposed by a dead mathematician when I can come up with my own and adjust it should I stand corrected. No, they were fools to me, trying to find something static in this world, and not realizing that nothing remains so. There is no concrete formula, numbers are abstract and malleable. For petes sake, if these numbers of yours are so definite, then explain why they trip over their own toes! You can make 1 = 0 in a matter of steps with rudimentary algebra. (http://www.pen.k12.va.us/Div/Winchester/jhhs/math/humor/onezero2.html) Therefore, I make up my own world. My own formulas, my own ideas. Not because I have to. Because I want to. I feel a tad more in control, a bit closer to sanity. Not because I need that control, but because I need the world to remind me that I matter in the grand scheme of things. To give my life some meaning, I need to assert that I can do something right, by my own standards if not by those set around me. I sit and muse about changes I can make in peoples life, not because I need to be remembered, but because I want people to feel like they’ve been given that power, to manipulate and heal. To tend to their lives the way they wanted to. I want to be a doctor so that people can have that chance, a chance to change, and what kinda of people except for those who might be terminally ill, actually change their lives significantly when given the chance. Has your recent cold/flu made you think about how your life is short and you should make it meaningful in the time left? No. I thought not.
No… No, it’s more fun to hypothesize why man’s search for meaning ends with a bomb on a group of innocent people. And more entertaining to see that fighting in other countries is begetting fighting on our soil. A Pakistani man walks into a synagogue. He opens fire on the Jewish people praying. He kills 5. He calmly picks up his phone and calls the police, and asks them to come get him. We as a people are ever so productive. Spending our lives climbing ladders only to slam our heads into a glass ceiling perched atop the ladder. Once we reach that, then we start kicking people off the ladder, because, hey, if I cant go further, why should anyone else? You want numbers? Go find me an accountant who’s reached the peak of his/her career. A man or woman who knows there is no future for them, just the work they have ahead and the possibility of lay offs with todays economy. Now tell them that the economy that threatens their job is that way because of some Indian who does his work for 30 times less. Now watch that same man or woman lash out at people he or she doesn’t even know. They begin a crusade for the republican party. To bring work back to our country, to ensure their family’s welfare, to uphold he American way… to destroy the people who threaten that way. Find that same accountant before they hear about the Indian who will take their job. Find them and show them some numbers, any number, a positive integer, preferably above 30. Highlight it, and tell them that this number represents the number of people who will be killed if they decide to “free” the country where his job is soon to be outsourced to. Tell them that there are families, children, faces, names, and lives, tied to that number. That because they’re too inefficient, these people will remain jobless and possibly killed in our pursuit to ensure your freedoms. Watch how quickly the same person crusades for equal rights, works harder to ensure their job and prosperity in countries they will probably never visit. That same person has been changed, for better or worse, that’s an objective argument. But they’ve been changed; just by the way information was presented to them. The spin on their plight, and that of others, changed their outlook, their reactions, their future and the futures of others.
We try to argue it but every change in our life, affects others. The variables and factors lie only in our ability to identify who, or better yet, if we even care at all.
If our media, our government, our world, passes the blame to the disenfranchised and impoverished people of other countries, rather than taking the problems of their own country into their own hands, then I don’t completely blame that accountant for encouraging the war. I don’t blame ignorance brought about by lack of knowledge. I hold those who knowingly make a decision to be ignorant, at fault.
Changes reflect who we are and what we’re about. And the smallest ones can change a world. That’s not to say that everything is done with a reason, or everything can be traced back to some event somewhere in a galaxy far far away that resulted in you tearing a hole in your underwear which somehow led to your affinity for Jackson Pollock paintings. No, you can’t relate everything, and you cant search for change. Finding the factors leading to a problem (again, a problem can be viewed objectively as an acceptable situation by some) is harder as you watch things unfold, and hindsight is 20/20, but your foresight and ideology can change things to come.
So in review, the fact that I’ve started flossing again with that minty green piano wire of pain, will likely play a negligible role in our war in the middle east. The fact that I adopt a child and my significant other plays advocate to female abuse in the middle east might. The fact that I changed my conditioner might make my hair a little less manageable yet more frizz free, but it wont stop African blood diamonds from being sold. Take change as it comes, accept it, I still have to learn how to, but don’t let it control you, don’t change to accommodate change. Just switch things up a bit to make this world a little bit brighter for someone else and possibly livable for others.
*Sorry if this entry confused you or made no sense… I swear I was going somewhere with this in my head.