Things I've learned about myself

Jesus Fuck, it's been a long time since I posted something here. But I need to throw something out there for only my close friends to know.

Tonight was the annual barn dance, a night full of friends, dancing, chatting, and awesome. I learned a few things about myself tonight.

1. I am not materialistic
2. I have become colder as I have gone through experiences in which something terrible happens
3. I don't know how to handle being in limbo between friends and dating, and I need a decision one way or the other

Evidence:
I am not materialistic. I invited Erika to come along on the barn dance, and since she wasn't a resident of my dorm which sponsored the activity, she had to pay $5. I just covered her and bought her ticket. She asked if I wanted $5 to compensate. I told her I didn't care, and she didn't give me the $5. This is weird, because she would usually be more persistent in paying me back. I think she was testing me to see if I would resent declining her offer.

I have grown to expect everything due to all sorts of table-turning debacles I have witnessed in my life, and this has made me colder. I spent a good 10 minutes nonstop spilling my guts out about three friends I had that did things to themselves that turned their lives around, whether for better or for worse. One joined the marines, ditched, fled home, then fled to Canada in lieu of pursuit by the U.S. government. He could have served 18 months in the brig if he was caught. He recently married a Canadian woman, with the intent of becoming a Canadian citizen. Another friend has just been declared pregnant suddenly, and is going to give the baby up for adoption. And it was someone who always seemed to me to be very tame and reserved. Third, another one of my friends traveled far to his relatives' place of residence with a complex developed in his mind that he needs to somehow turn his life around. He proposed to his girlfriend and has never told me the news, though we used to be best friends. And he has submitted paper work to the U.S. Air Force and will be called in within the next 6-8 months, having always known the tragic debacle that happened to my first friend.

Yet somehow, I wasn't appalled by any of it. I've always accepted that I'm not very good at predicting things. But when people make terribly large changes to their lives that I don't agree with, I figure that it'll be their loss in the long run. Some people don't have the capacity to learn in any other way but the hard way, and still others seem to never learn.

I talked to the girl who got pregnant on the phone, and for some reason, I didn't even ask her how the hell she managed to get herself in the situation, nor did I reprimand her for doing so. I don't think I need to tell people when they fuck up. If they do fuck up, they should realize it, and rectify their personal ideology so that they make sure never to fucking do it again. If they don't realize it, then they're fubar: Fucked up beyond all repair. If you can't realize when something goes wrong, then you're done for. This is because learning happens in three ways: Learning from mistakes, learning from observation (of things other than mistakes), and learning from being told something. The first is "the hard way," and the last two are "the easy way." Apparently, she didn't learn the easy way. So she had to learn the hard way. But if you can't even learn the hard way, then there's no way for you to learn. And if you can't learn, then you'll just keep doing damage to yourself. The girl, I'm sure, is learning the hard way. She's learned so much in life, I know. I can't wait for these 9 months to get over with, and I'm sure she can't, either, with an intensity that I can't even imagine.

Whether you're learning the easy way or the hard way, you should always make it a point to learn things about yourself. I always try to learn things about myself--that's why I record things in my blog and through my videoblogs. And I try to learn these things about myself so I can correct the things that I don't like and make sure to emphasize my strong points. My friend who fled the Marines was not proficient at learning things about himself. I know this, because this guy was intolerant of any authority above him, especially those who were relatively less intelligent. I knew him since second grade--in junior high he would cuss left and right, and get detentions left and right just for being rebellious against teachers he didn't like. One time he slammed his locker saying "Damn locker." A teacher he wasn't particularly fond of walked by and asked him what he said. He repeated the two words right back to her face. She gave him a detention, and he shrugged adamantly. My mother actually asked him to his face if he had any fucking idea what he was getting himself into. The Marines' training camps were places where absolute idiots would scream in your face orders of various kinds, and no matter what they were, you, the trainee, had to comply. This was EXACTLY the situation I knew he wouldn't be able to stand. So how could I, knowing him, have expected him to be able to stand months upon years training under the very conditions he was notorious for rebelling against? And sure enough, he deserted his training camp near San Diego on an Amtrak train back to the Chicago area, and days later he fled to Ontario.

I guess the lesson here is that you can never determine your purpose in life if you never continuously take notes and observations about your own true character. He made a failure of a decision because he failed to recognize his own rebellious and adamant tendencies. This lesson also applies to figuring out your own brain. I personally know that I am a visual, spatial, mathematical thinker. I know that I like maps, and this is tied in with the modes of thinking I just wrote. I know that my purpose in life should take advantage with my enhanced ability to think visually, spatially, and mathematically. Therefore, I have accordingly made the decision to study civil engineering. It fits me, and I know that it fits me because I have been trying to figure myself out since I was a small child. I'm lucky that I knew to figure myself out at such a young age, because so many people--adults, even--don't realize how important it is to try and figure out how their own minds work. Instead, they just try to follow popular culture, and try to develop their own personality based on the norms suggested by society. These people are the tools.

There are tools, and there are the people I define as "nerds," with the nerds being the people who are genuinely right in the world. They are enlightened, and they know that who they are on the inside isn't determined by what anyone else tells them. They embrace their true character, and they don't give a shit what effects society could potentially have on it. I know this because the nerds are the ones who have passions that are unique, and they thus have unique talents and abilities that not everyone has. And I know that these are the right kinds of people, because without them, we wouldn't have any of the conveniences we have today. All of the things that you haven't invented, created, or conceptualized in your lifetime that exist today, were created by nerds. Most likely, you don't know how to build a computer. You don't know how to design a spaceship. You don't know how to blow glass. These things were all created, invented, and conceptualized by people who are smarter than you in their respective fields: the nerds. And without them...where would we be today?

Yet for some unspeakably wrong reason, people condescend toward the nerds.
That doesn't make any sense, does it?

You know you're talking to a tool when he or she acts condescendingly toward people who have unique interests. I've learned this over the years. Everyone knows I'm that kid who likes maps. I've gotten mixed responses from people on the topic. Some tell me "that's SO COOL!" Others look at me as if to say, "why the hell would you do that?" It makes it easy for me to tell who my real friends are. Friends are people who support you, and like you for who you are. And the right people are the ones who are accepting of people with unique interests, because, as I said before, the people with unique interests are the ones who create, invent, and advance society forward, thus serving a purpose in this way. So, by sharing my strange interest with potential friends, I easily sort out the right people into the category of eventual friends; i.e. the right people are the ones who become my friends, and the inverse.

What we should all do is try to learn those things about our true character. This way, we can know which of our tendencies are negative and negate them, and we can find out our positive tendencies as well so we can take advantage of them, manifest them, and serve a positive purpose in the world. It didn't work for my friends I mentioned at first, but just know not to do what they did. Do what you can to serve a better purpose, and make the world a better place. I sure am trying.

This is my religion. I have no formal religion, and I intend never to partake in one in my lifetime. These are some of the ideas I live by. This is one of the books of the New Testamant, except in my religion. It's part of my personal Bible.