Attention to Passion

What are you thinking about right now? That thought will leave your mind soon. That thought will be forever to travel through your brain to probably rarely used later in your life. This thought was provoked by a book I recently finished called It's Kind of  a Funny Story by Ned Vizzinni. Craig is depressed and has convinced himself that suicide is the only answer. That it would be better if he were dead. Instead he reconsiders and decides to check himself into a psychiatric  hospital almost reluctantly rather than suicide. Why is this? He was convinced that suicide was the way to go just a few minutes ago! Let's explore that.

First let's look at you. Yes you, the one looking at your screen right now. What do you like? What have you been interested in lately? What do you want to do? What is that thing you get excited about even thinking about it. No matter how excited you get, you can't really do it or you never have time... Now ask yourself this! What were you excited about a year ago? What about two years ago? Three? They were different than your current ambition, weren't they? It kind of shows you why not many people get to be super talented. Our minds constantly drift from one passion to another, we never have enough time to develop ourselves. We get to become very complex but rather boring people. We know a little about a lot. This means We know 1 fact from every form of science! That's not helpful. Though it's the same amount of facts you would know from one branch of science. One would make you diverse yet stupid. While the other would make you an expert.

Why do we convince ourselves what we're currently doing is it. This is our calling, I am going to do this. Yet two weeks later we find ourselves working on something else! It's difficult to focus on one topic. The more you get involved in it, the less exciting and new it is. So it becomes boring. It becomes less appealing. So before you make large investments are big decisions on something you just started looking into, be careful. You might regret it when instead of buying the 200 dollar baking book you suddenly want to learn horse riding. While at the time the book seemed like a good offer, now it's practically useless. What does this have to do with the story?

It has everything to do with the story.

Craig was depressed. Ge decided the only possible answer was suicide. He planned it out and everything. It was his commitment. Luckily his passion for death started to fade and he gained a bit of common sense. This is essentially the plot of the story. How he recovers from this passion of suicide to a passion of life.

I have many conflicting passions as well. I don't want to say what they are because by the time you read this it may have changed. The point is that we fluctuate as humans. We need to realize that, and not make rash decisions that would seem like  a mistake later. Like suicide. Or a cook book.

Share your thoughts on this in the comments!

Biased.

I am currently reading It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. This is a story about a teenager that becomes suicidal then checks himself into a psychiatric hospital. He meets a few friends and looses a few while in the hospital. He tries to get over his problems while getting better so he can go to school. While only in for seven days,This part of the book stretches out immensely, to about half the book. This makes the reading experience very detailed. Something  you don't see to this extent so often. But he had a friend from his childhood named Aaron. Aaron got into drugs, girls, and generally other teen-y things. They drifted apart very slowly as their agreements grew and they teared apart. Why? They were such big friends before! When asked who changed to destroy their friendship you might say Aaron changed. But is he what changed? Or was it some form of bias Craig created in his mind against Aaron to make himself seem innocent.

This may not be very important, but it's interesting to me. So, listen up.While Aaron changed in the real world, that didn't really matter. Like all teens, you just go with whatever the generally dominant friend does. Just do what they and everyone else think is "cool." This is how culture works. Culture is volatile and highly unpredictable. Just like friendship. But these real world changes would rarely be enough to topple a friendship. Even I thought it was Aaron who tore apart the friendship considering he was a little of a side villain in the story. Now though, since this is a TEENAGER's mind... Probably a little biased. I think it might be Craig that tore apart this relationship. Not intentionally, and maybe for the greater good. But it was not Aaron. Craig started getting jealous when Aaron was dating Nia. Craig was jealous of Aaron, and started putting lower in his mind. Distorting him until he was some sort of evil monster. Who wants to be friends with an evil monster? I don't, and Craig doesn't either.

What does this mean? This kind of distortion of bias can completely destroy our views of anyone. Even someone close to our heart. Like my brother. He's always a jerk to me. Generally being a bad person. So now, I can't not hate him. Even when he's being nice, I'm kind of a jerk to him as a kind of reflex to say I don't want to be bothered. This obviously makes him mad (with good reason.) So then he creates biased against me. So we're kind of stuck in this eternal fight where we can't see our own mistakes only each others. Biased can only be stopped with rational thinking which not too many people are doing nowadays.

What do you think about Bias? Comment below! :D

Magpie and Dog

After reading Fox by Margret Wild, I had a few things running through my mind.  Most importantly was, how much did magpie and  dog enjoy each other?  They were each others only friends as far as we can tell yet magpie left him. Magpie didn't take a lot of convincing either. This is what gets to me, how come  magpie left dog behind so easily? How much do we value friendship to leave for a  petty gain? Would we leave our best friend for a stranger who offers us something? Obviously no, but then why was this put into the book?

It took Fox Three times to fully convince Magpie, three times. Magpie seems to be rather self centered. She left a blind dog by himself just so she could feel like she was flying. As if they had never even known each other. Which Fox and Magpie never did. How much altruism do we have in our minds? Why would someone put themselves that much higher than their best friend who's been nothing but nice to us? I'm not what sure what flying outside of an airplane feels like, but whatever it is, it can't feel good enough to excuse something so cruel. While I know she heads back on the way to Dog at the end of the book, but that's missing the point. The point is rather, how much convincing would I take to leave my best friends behind?

I'm not sure really, probably nothing would. Not because they're an especially large figures in  my life, but rather whoever would try to make me so something like that would either be an enormous jerk, or a stranger. Probably both, and I would never listen to an enormous jerk, or a complete stranger. I'm not sure really. How much convincing would it take for YOU to leave YOUR best friend behind? Leave it in the comments!