Home Is Where The Heart Is

Sunday, February 22, 2004

Life is so full of variables... things you thought would endure don't, and people whom you relied on sometimes just... disappear.

I guess that's how the human race survives, basically. We transform, change and adapt in response to stimuli from the environment. The interchangability of our physical selves has always been our strongest asset. Train your muscles hard enough, and they break down and repair themselves, growing new layers of muscle to protect from any similar stress in future. Yet the human mind, when settled in a particular pattern, is incredibly resistant to change. How many of us, leading a comfortable life, would want any part of to change? It's just simply not... human to think so.

Of course, everyone would like their best friends to always their best friends. We would all like our first loves to be our last, and only ones. Yet this pipe dream of a human race is all too fragile and prone to shattering, like the myriad shards of a broken windowpane. It is greatest irony is that nature itself demands this change of us. Evolution, they call it. Those who vegetate, whether physically or mentally, are swept away in the winds of change. Circumstances dictate that we must go with the flow, as is commonly joked about.

And so it goes. Friendships die, relationships are broken off. Partners betray one another, family take to each others' throats like rabid wolves. In the midst of it all, we try our hardest to maintain one's sanity. Some would ask, why would a just God allow such suffering and evil? I once heard this counter-argument, and I now present it before you: why would a just God create this world in the first place?

You may wonder what's the point to all of this rambling. Well, I myself long for the days of yore, where things happend, for keeps. That might have been true a decade or so ago. But now I sometimes wonder about the sanity of the world around me, and that of my own.

Runnin' away, you can't pretend...
10:21 PM

Tuesday, February 10, 2004

It's that time of year again...

Time for all singles to start moaning/acting like they don't give a f***/spray-painting florists' shops... but I'll leave that be. The issue's been beaten to death with a blunted stick, and I ain't gonna stir it up again, not with a ten-foot rod. What got me thinking was some of the side issues that came to me while this train of thought skimmed the surface of my mind...

What is the meaning of having a girlfriend/boyfriend anyway? Lots of people act like it's the end all, be all thing in life, a gauge of how successful you are in life. I know, 'cause I used to think the same way. Anyway, for those out there who are attached, is your partner someone you'd seriously considering marrying? Conventional wisdom would dictate that it is, because, as the logic goes, you'd be wasting your time and his/hers if you lacked faith in your relationship to begin with.

I guess this is all due to the myth of Fate, perpetrated by the relentlessly exploitative media. It's a romantic's pipe dream, the idea that we are meant to be with that special someone, who will fit us seamlessly, and vice versa. That would be a nice theory, if it was actually borne out. In a time and age where even the sanctity of marriage is questionable, let alone relationships, this school of thought just doesn't hold water anymore.

I once posed this question to a friend of mine. His response : I might or might not marry my girlfriend, but I'm in this for the companionship. That's darn spot-on, I say. People engage in relationships for someone to call their own, as much as for any feelings of giddy romance. Neither is really more significant than the other, but we tend to gloss over the need for human companionship just because it isn't as romantic as we've been led to believe.

Point of all this? I'll sum it all up in a phrase I once heard from an internet joke: People are always looking for the perfect partner in life. In the meantime they get married. Heh. When deciding if someone would make a good stead, don't look so far ahead that you fail to see the immediate reality of the situation. If the person you like just makes you feel good, don't waste time agonizing about all the little, drab particulars - they can all come later. As they say, people DO change, sometimes in ways you could never imagine.

Runnin' away, you can't pretend...
10:32 PM