Carpe diem blah blah blah

Don't go on squirting lemon juice in my papercuts before you hear me out. When you're done reading and you still want to inflict pain on me, please be gentle and stay away from any possible sources of stomach aches and/or canker sores [muchly appreciated].

I was trying to provoke myself to think intelligent thoughts on my way home from school on the subway today and I succeeded [please forgive me for my subtle way of saying that I am intelligent...when provoked]. My holidays officially began when I finished my last exam of the semester. Now that I have two weeks off before returning to work, I tried to think about what I should do with myself for those 20,160 minutes [at least the ones I haven't wasted on useless calculations]. Ah ha! I thought to myself, carpe diem quam minimum credula postero [well, I actually only thought carpe diem. The rest I had to look up to score points on the intelligence meter]. And not a second later, I thought, nah.

There's nothing wrong with me, well, apart from my chronic laziness. But my well-documented and never-debated disease isn't what makes me sound like a lethargic and apathetic person. Can you seriously honestly imagine what it'd be like to seize all 20,160 minutes [or 13,440 if you sleep 8hrs a day] over a two week period? I think I'd pass out from exhaustion.

I'm not about to debate with anyone what the purpose of life is. But, I don't think it literally means, as some thinks, "Don't let a minute go to waste". I don't mean to sound presumptuous, but I think some people take the carpe diem thing to an absurd extreme. There's no justification for doing glorious things every minute. Am I wasting precious moments if I don't spend it calling everyone I know to tell them I care about them? What if I refuse to travel the world? I hope these "monstrous" thoughts don't make you gasp or spit in my face in disgust [moreso the spitting than the gasping].

The important thing we have to keep in mind when trying to live our lives to the fullest is that there is hidden value in a lot of the things that we do. For every extra hour a kid is watching tv, it may be an hour he's not fighting with his siblings. For every week I don't go off on vacation in an exotic hot spot is a week I get to stay at home and spend more time with my family. Take me blogging my time away as an example. It may seem like I can spend that hour volunteering at the hospital instead. I don't want to knock volunteering [it's truly great] but what you don't see is the pride I feel and the satisfaction I get from capturing insightful ideas and expressing them in [what I hope to be] an honest and psuedo-witty manner [In all seriousness, it feels like the honesty with which I write exposes a piece of myself to you in each of these blogs. In exchange for my vulnerability, I merely ask that you jot down a comment to make me feel that my soul-bearing is not wasted. And to those who already do, thank you. =)]

Carpe diem is in the eye of the beholder. Learn to value the things that you do. Although I wholeheartedly agree that it is important to spend time wisely [please don't twist my argument to validate a couch-potato existence], it is equally vital to supress the urge to take bigger steps than you can manage.

"Life is what happens to you while you're making other plans" - John Lennon

Wake up!

Life presents you with once-in-a-lifetime opportunites now and then. It's exciting the minute you recognize them as such. What makes it even better is when you decide to go for it. It can be a win-win situation if you look at it with the right attitude. If things work out, you win. If things don't work out but you know you'll recover and be happy you took the chance, you win. Life is full of experiences sitting there waiting for us to wake up and seize them. What are you waiting for?

There's only one way to live life...the hard way

Life isn't easy, nor is it fair. We've been told this as early as our parents think we can comprehend the concept. They're on to something, aren't they. They may not know how to give props or do the thunderclap, but they sure know what they're talking about. I appreciate their knowledge more and more as I grow older. They know so much because they've been through so much.

I'm sure we all remember the time when we wanted to be adults instead of kids. We get to stay up as late as we want and no one could tell us what to do. And I'm also sure that most of us, by now, wish we can stay young forever...no stress, all fun and games.

As you experience more, the horizon of the world expands and things that mystified you make sense all of a sudden. But, as with most things, it comes with a price. The most important lessons reveal themselves only after great falls and stumbles. Our lives will sometimes be sprinkled with pleasant memories, but the harsh ones are those that build our character.

We can't choose when, where, or how we go about building our character, although we can certainly catalyze the process. Taking the first step, being the bigger person, opening up, and conquering our fears are all difficult things to do and they don't get easier even with repetition. Doing difficult things builds character. Perseverance is the application of that character.

The chapters of our lives can be divided by a timeline (20s, 30s, 40s, etc.) or memorable events (marriage, kids, retirement, etc.). But I think it's more worthwhile to divide them by turning points in our lives caused by spikes in our character charts. This is what separates us and makes us unique. The same sequence of events can happen to two people but their charts will have completely different results depending on how they choose to carry themselves. Each individual story suddenly becomes so much more climatic and interesting.

These spikes not only change our view of the world, they also change how we relate to our environment. Relationships with family, friends, and future acquaintances will invariably change. We're all like horses on a racetrack. Life is riding on our backs urging us to move to the next chapter by painfully whipping us on our arses. We take turns leading and falling behind. This is one race I'm not keen at winning because it's lonely being #1. Luckily, there is no finish line. Life will never stop teaching us lessons if we don't let it.

First world nations are full of masochists

We like to torture ourselves. I don't know why. Maybe feeling pain reminds us that we are human. Displaying our hearts on our sleeves may earn us sympathy and attention. Or perhaps we are so lucky in our lives, so sheltered from the horrors of the real world, that we can't help but search for a taste of the "pain" those World Vision people have been going on and on about.

It ranges from picking a particularly painful scab to keeping boxes of old photographs full of painful memories. Whatever it is, STOP IT! There's enough real sadness and pain that you will undoubtedly encounter later on in life that you should enjoy what little stress free times you have.

This may not be the most eloquent, appropriate, or wisest fable, but I'd like to share it with you anyway. Two physical pains that I find horrible are canker-sores and stomach aches. I'd rather have a foot cramp or burning achilles tendons. So when I'm sitting in the bathroom suffering from a bad stomach ache, it makes me sad that I don't appreciate my pain-free days. Same goes for times when I have canker-sores. But what really gets me are days when I'm sitting in the bathroom with both a stomach ache and canker-sores. Then I really miss the times when I was only afflicted with one of the two ailments.

I hope you learned something from that story. I want you to leave the blog with two things in mind. One, sometimes blog-ideas sound great in your head but turn out horrible when you churn them out. Two, blog titles can be misleading.

I lub ego boosters

Ego boosters are second only to surprise/unexpected ego boosters. Hey, I'm only human. Anyone who says they don't like hearing sincere praises is lying.

I got a surprise ego boost today, from an adult I respect very much, no less. Apparently, the things I've learned about myself were always there and apparent to her. In fact, she made me feel kinda of silly for not seeing it earlier. It was a great time. We ribbed each other, gossiped, reminisced, and poked fun at other people. We always got along before but I felt as if we became friends today.

It's weird how I get along with adults better than people my own age. Before I continue my poorly segued rambling, this does not apply to all adults. I'm horrible with parents and work supervisors. Actually, it only works with types of people I would normally get along with. Hmmm, I guess I just significantly decreased the sampling population and made it completely biased to complement my bold statement. Righto, moving on...

I feel old. My new-found maturity seems to be the theme for the past month but I can't get past it. It's truly an awesome and progressive discovery. I was thinking about my knight in shining armour and when he will whisk me off my feet. I think that this will either be at a really late stage in my life (boys take a while to mature to men) or it will be someone quite a number of years my senior. I guess it could be a soul that has gone through a bunch of crap that forced him to mature. In any case, they don't seem to be cheery choices. Nothing in life worthwhile comes easy.