Small Questions – Young Adult
It is kind of insane that we have different age groups broken up by key identifiers. Like a tiny human that can walk and talk, but kind of walks around like a drunk, is a toddler. While a newborn is human who is fresh to the world and covered in that womb smell (new baby). While a few arbitrary measures of time (days/weeks/months) later that newborn transforms into an infant. So on and so on.
So for the first 18 years of life, humans are sliced and diced into categories based on age – newborn, toddler, kindergartener, middle schooler, teenager, young adult. I probably missed some.
Now, I know that this because we experience the greatest level of growth in those first 18 years. But it kind of sucks as an adult who is young, that I can’t call myself a young adult. Instead we have to call ourselves by our age bracket: twenties, thirties, forties, fifties… ageless… elderly.
So my small question: Why don’t I get to call myself a young adult? Who makes these arbitrary rules?
Theodore, just asking the hard questions.
Read MoreX2? Fuck you! – An Analysis of Regret
After brutal day work today, I wanted to let my brain relax so I did what any adult who is young would do – turn on some Mahler and stare at an absurdly large clock on the wall (JOKES… I am actually an eighty year old German farmer living in New Zealand (I am not)). Because I am weird, I do this boredom break for fun. Traditionally, instead of enjoying the clock on the wall, I would actually be staring at the weird brown stain that goes across the ceiling in my living room, but I am visiting family today (by the way, that stain in my living room is a constant confusion and has led to wonderful discussions). In general, boredom time is a structured event where the only thing I can do, other than think, is listen to music. As such, my brain gets to jump through some interest thoughts… like: infinite regret of day dreaming about real events.
So, without further introduction, let’s dive into pure sadness! To be fair, some of these concepts are close to Bergson’s view on hope and how one shouldn’t have it– fun stuff, right! Either way, the concept is simple but it is easier with an example. So, just like at work, let’s define a scenario. [Click “Read More” to find out if I am actually a German farmer]
Read MoreHaiku – During Yoga
So I walked into the coffee shop to work on some outlines for Manuscript 9 (Crack the joke: typical writer, get on your laptop and scroll through facebook, but jokes on you! I don’t bring a laptop, I bring a notebook and pen!), ignoring the tangent, I was there around 6:45 (normal Sunday to avoid the crowds) but the entire store was converted over to a yoga studio. With a free Americano (since I had to listen to the class), and my mind distracted from outlining, I decided to write some haikus; some were influenced by my mindset and others influenced by the baristas’ insights.
Just to level set, I’ve just arrived and my head has been filed with plots and dystopian scenarios and now I am facing people doing yoga. One the primary themes of dystopia (other than hope) is the near constant representation of human beings as being sheep or following orders (in yoga, if you’ve never been, a leader gives commands and you follow them). These were the outcomes:
~On Commands~
Torrent of fears/ideas
harp, serenity, zero thoughts
chaos over order – freedom
discarded shoes – pile
find inner peace, listen to guide
stop thinking – give in
~On someone pointing out the smell~
smell of ignorance
harps sing, commands, obey the yogi
It’s human nature
Divergant Pathways and Engrained Behaviors
At some point in time, humanity made a sit down toilet. Once that invention was on the market, something amazing happened… we diverged. Now, it probably didn’t happen immediately, but over time, people decided how to wipe. So I guess, it would have been with the advent of toilet paper that the grand split happened (sit wipers versus standing wipers). You obviously think the other is gross, I’ve had this conversation enough to know that people are extremely aggressive over their wiping position.
But, the point is that in history, someone decided to eradicate the stinky residual excrement while standing up (more than likely the European based society, as you had to move from the toilet to the bidet, in Japan (where Bidet’s became heavily used in the 1900s, they were directly incorporated into the toilet not a secondary fixture you had to move to in the bathroom)). While those humans made a decision to stand up and wipe, another group of society cocked a cheek to the side and scrapped away. So maybe it was a cultural thing, Italians were already standing when they shifted from toilet to bidet and decided this was the easiest way to wipe, or perhaps, it was just an arbitrary decision someone made after taking a dookie.
The outcome is that generation after generation has been ingrained in whatever their first ancestors to use a toilet had done. If the first toilet user in your family line leaned or stood, that decision was passed down through all of your ancestry because you don’t learn wiping your ass from a central power, you learn it from your parents when they potty train you.
Read More