I haven't written a post in a while and unfortunately this will be short. I guess I haven't posted in a while because the past weeks have been a little bit hectic in a lot of ways and I have sworn not to post under duress. However, that same duress along with Thanksgiving gave me a little bit of inspiration for a post.
In Philosophy of Film we discuss a lot of bullshit, I'm sure you guys knew this from the class name but still. There are two things that have really hit me in that class. The first is a quote from Grey Gardens that goes roughly 'All things are good that never happened'. The other came from our lecture about tragedy. In it the professor detailed the idea that tragedy within film is able to happen because we allow ourselves to bond to the characters. We allow ourselves to take on their romances, heartaches and burdens. The part that stuck with me is how that applies to my relationships with people. It seems to me that just like a film becomes more tragic as someone takes on more emotional burden a relationship becomes stronger the same way. When a stranger tells me an unfortunate thing that happened to them I have empathy for them from being a fellow human being but I would quickly revert to my base emotion. When one of my very close friends does the same thing there is a good chance that it would truly get to me and I would have trouble going back to a passive emotion. This applies to both wonderful and awful circumstances of course. My point is essentially that we shouldn't take the people around us for granted because they often hold a large burden by simply caring. My friends are there to empathize with me when things are rough and show up with high fives when things are great. I don't really know where I'd be without that other than far worse off. Heres to embracing the good, and riding out the bad with all the people you care about.
p.s. I actually didn't post all week because I was listening to the new kanye album on repeat
Friday, November 26, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Good things come to those who wait
That title doesn't have much attachment to this post other than this paragraph. It's a classic idiom but my favourite use of it is probably from the song "If Rap Gets Jealous" by K'naan. His use of it refers to finally being able to leave Somali during the horrific civil war to start a career in Canada. Mine just refers to feeling like I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Over the past couple months I've had some lame stuff happen but its definitely coming to a conclusion and as naive as it might be I feel like part of it has to do with making a point to never succumb to the bad parts of life and embracing every aspect of the good. I guess what I mean is that I never stopped being happy, but over the past weeks I haven't even had the choice.
The reason I clicked new post has to do with a conversation I had wednesday night. The girl I was with brought up the thought that certain moments in life will not look like we idealize mentally. Her specific example had to do with not knowing which family members will be alive to see your wedding. Who knows if you've met your best man yet, who knows if your fiance will have a "baby-bump" at the wedding, you get the idea. In math they have what is called a deterministic process. It is a process in which there is no randomness, if you know the current state you can with full accuracy determine the future state. We all secretly imagine that life is like this, we make ourselves guilty of the thought process wherein knowing our plans right now somehow gives us a guarantee that the future will be just how we like it. Oftentimes , mostly from motivational speakers, life is described as a series of choices. Stay in school or drop out, ask that girl out or keep walking, etc. The overlying philosophy that I've been trying to knit with this blog refers exactly to that. Possibility A: Go to college/drop out and end up very happy, Possibility B:Go to college/drop out and end up unhappy. I think you see the pattern but I enjoy spelling it out. There are two sides to all of those choices that lead to other choices and it can become a giant tree that shows where your life is going. I say that we should all look at the third side of the coin(*wink*) which is choosing to love your life no matter what choices are made or what happens to you. You can't count on your Uncles and Cousins all being there when you say "I do." but you can absolutely count on yourself to make the best of it whether they are or aren't. Mathematicians and Physicists rarely get to work with deterministic systems but they make due, there is absolutely no reason that someone can't do the same with life. Enjoy your friday night everyone, or like my Dad said to me everyday he dropped me off at school, "Make a great day!"
The reason I clicked new post has to do with a conversation I had wednesday night. The girl I was with brought up the thought that certain moments in life will not look like we idealize mentally. Her specific example had to do with not knowing which family members will be alive to see your wedding. Who knows if you've met your best man yet, who knows if your fiance will have a "baby-bump" at the wedding, you get the idea. In math they have what is called a deterministic process. It is a process in which there is no randomness, if you know the current state you can with full accuracy determine the future state. We all secretly imagine that life is like this, we make ourselves guilty of the thought process wherein knowing our plans right now somehow gives us a guarantee that the future will be just how we like it. Oftentimes , mostly from motivational speakers, life is described as a series of choices. Stay in school or drop out, ask that girl out or keep walking, etc. The overlying philosophy that I've been trying to knit with this blog refers exactly to that. Possibility A: Go to college/drop out and end up very happy, Possibility B:Go to college/drop out and end up unhappy. I think you see the pattern but I enjoy spelling it out. There are two sides to all of those choices that lead to other choices and it can become a giant tree that shows where your life is going. I say that we should all look at the third side of the coin(*wink*) which is choosing to love your life no matter what choices are made or what happens to you. You can't count on your Uncles and Cousins all being there when you say "I do." but you can absolutely count on yourself to make the best of it whether they are or aren't. Mathematicians and Physicists rarely get to work with deterministic systems but they make due, there is absolutely no reason that someone can't do the same with life. Enjoy your friday night everyone, or like my Dad said to me everyday he dropped me off at school, "Make a great day!"
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
"Well, how did I get here?"
Today's post starts off with a bit of background information for my readers that haven't taken a calculus based stats course. In Statistics there two different types of functions, discrete functions and continuous functions. A discrete function is only defined for a given set of values, i.e. {1,2,3,4,5}.
A continuous function is the type of function that is traditionally dealt with in math past algebra I, a function defined over an interval i.e. (1<x<5).
The reason those two ideas are important has to do with how the flow of ones life is perceived. It is clear that realistically life can be either one depending on whether you look at it from the present tense or past tense. If you look back over the last five years things seem somewhat discrete because life appears as a series of big events with essentially "blank" spaces in-between much like a discrete distribution. However, if you look at say the past week everything flows very smoothly and appears discrete. The reason I bring this all up is that today for some reason felt like a discrete point to me. I have been living in an apartment for 5 months now. I am no longer a math major. I am happy for legitimate reasons rather than just because its my personal philosophy to never waste time being depressed. None of those things are individually a big deal but I still have those moments every once in a while where I ask "Well, how did I get here?"(be sure to click that link, great video). I ask this question because much like I mentioned earlier everything this semester seems very discrete. It feels like it was just yesterday that I ate lunch for the first time with Koleen, Morgan, and Dorothy but it's actually been about 4 months. The only legitimate explanation I can think of for this phenomenon is that this is a result of me not letting a day go by where I am not enjoying my life. Much like how some people might slip into several unmemorable months due to depression I think I may have slipped into a streak of completely fluid bliss. To be clear, I am 100% ok with this.
I was contemplating saving this for another post but I've got a solid 20 minutes until my plans for the evening start so I'll throw it in real quick. Yesterday was awesome, really awesome. I got to partake in two guilty pleasures that I assumed were lost in my childhood and best of all I got to enjoy it with my bros. The two aforementioned activities were playing around at a local "crick" and enjoying the innocent pleasures of a park. It makes me very happy to have people around me that are willing to let loose and just enjoy themselves. Hope you all have a nice evening, I'm off to start mine.
A continuous function is the type of function that is traditionally dealt with in math past algebra I, a function defined over an interval i.e. (1<x<5).
The reason those two ideas are important has to do with how the flow of ones life is perceived. It is clear that realistically life can be either one depending on whether you look at it from the present tense or past tense. If you look back over the last five years things seem somewhat discrete because life appears as a series of big events with essentially "blank" spaces in-between much like a discrete distribution. However, if you look at say the past week everything flows very smoothly and appears discrete. The reason I bring this all up is that today for some reason felt like a discrete point to me. I have been living in an apartment for 5 months now. I am no longer a math major. I am happy for legitimate reasons rather than just because its my personal philosophy to never waste time being depressed. None of those things are individually a big deal but I still have those moments every once in a while where I ask "Well, how did I get here?"(be sure to click that link, great video). I ask this question because much like I mentioned earlier everything this semester seems very discrete. It feels like it was just yesterday that I ate lunch for the first time with Koleen, Morgan, and Dorothy but it's actually been about 4 months. The only legitimate explanation I can think of for this phenomenon is that this is a result of me not letting a day go by where I am not enjoying my life. Much like how some people might slip into several unmemorable months due to depression I think I may have slipped into a streak of completely fluid bliss. To be clear, I am 100% ok with this.
I was contemplating saving this for another post but I've got a solid 20 minutes until my plans for the evening start so I'll throw it in real quick. Yesterday was awesome, really awesome. I got to partake in two guilty pleasures that I assumed were lost in my childhood and best of all I got to enjoy it with my bros. The two aforementioned activities were playing around at a local "crick" and enjoying the innocent pleasures of a park. It makes me very happy to have people around me that are willing to let loose and just enjoy themselves. Hope you all have a nice evening, I'm off to start mine.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Sup dudes
My life has been more of the same, time with friends, school and basketball. Sports have been keeping me happy recently, for some reason Derrick Rose is free from the reign of season affective disorder. Yesterday was pretty great:basketball at the rec, watched the mizzou game, watched a movie, and then hung out with someone I haven't hung out with for months...for 6 hours. I've been having to "think happy" a lot recently which is worse than merely living happy but it comes with the territory. Between friends, music, and sports I'll be ok.
song
This is definitely my shortest blog post I know, but I'm not at all in the mood to write anything thoughtful right now. To compensate here is a song I made using just garageband this summer, it's a bit sketchy but I like it.
song
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