Waking Life

"Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It's not dead it's just that it's been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I'm trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it's ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting."

Conrad

"They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals, whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd: to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and of its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one's kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one's thoughts, of one's sensations--to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike."

--"An Outpost of Progress", Joseph Conrad

"You gotta hear this one song. It'll change your life, I swear."

There are few songs one can say that about. However, Fleet Foxes, my "Best New Band of 2008", has one song I cannot get out of my head. They are kind of Simon Garfunkel meets Jesus.

The video isn't groundbreaking, but the song is beauteous.

Listen to "He Doesn't Know Why" and appreciate.

New Years Musings

I don't make New Years resolutions. Not my type of thing. But I do, however, want to share a few tidbits that I've come to appreciate over the course of a year.

We are masters of our own destiny.
You can call it existentialism, you can call it "God helps those who help themselves," or you can call it common sense. The fact is, I don't believe in sitting around waiting for change. Change what you can and gain perspective on the things that can't be changed. "Yes We Can," is so much more constructive than, "It's everyone else's fault."

People aren't perfect, but they're also not disposable.
Nothing like the holidays and family to remind you of that.

Personal preference and universal truth are NOT the same thing.
I believe the older we get, the more we realize this (hopefully.) Few things are universally true. A foray into ethics or law makes that glaringly apparent. For example, there are the Hillary Clintons of the world. Then there are also the Joan Brandwyns of the world (in Mona Lisa Smile):

Joan Brandwyn: Do you think I'll wake up one morning and regret not being a lawyer?
Katherine Watson: Yes, I'm afraid that you will.
Joan Brandwyn: Not as much as I regret not having a family, not being there to raise them. I know exactly what I'm doing and it doesn't make me any less smart.
Joan Brandwyn: This must seem terrible to you.
Katherine Watson: I didn't say that.
Joan Brandwyn: Sure you did. You always do. You stand in class and tell us to look beyond the image, but you don't. To you a housewife is someone who sold her soul for a center hall colonial. She has no depth, no intellect, no interests. You're the one who said I could do anything I wanted. This is what I want.

Lastly, I've really come to appreciate the importance of balance in life. Work-play, boyfriend-friends, conservative-liberal, self-others, sympathy-objectivity, etc. Life is like a Hegelian dialectic, isn't it? :o)