A Need for Silence

I apologize for the brevity of this entry.  I do not really have much time to write it.  I hope I have enough to extoll, expound, expulge, ex-something what I’m trying to say.  They consist of three major thoughts, the last one just occurring to me. 

1) There is something about the way people do not understand the English language that bothers me to the utmost degree.  It vacillates and generally lands on opposite ends of the spectrum, when the center point is the most important and significant.  On the one hand, I hate when people use words in a way that is glaringly improper, when they use words to attempt to appear intelligent, or when they just don’t use many words very well.  Monosyllabism should be a crime. 

On the other hand, I’m an English major.  I’ve read great works, I’ve seen the ways great writers use words and you find that words are adaptive, they are amorphous to a certain degree, they have the power to color and shape the meaning of something through their use.  They are not rigid and inflexible and the point is to be able to communicate a meaning, a feeling, a thought, an emotion, a sense.  If I fail to do that, I have no problem being corrected, being demanded of to explain myself…but I do not like being constantly hounded and corrected for simply a slightly frivolous(as deemed by the listener) use of a word that I used for a very clear purpose.  There are some who get away with it for whatever varied reasons this may be.  Sometimes it’s because I know they have the best of intentions.  Meanwhile, I have very little time for it in general because I know most are attempting to assert superiority. 

People think I have a dominant personality, it’s not really true.  I’m just the replacement leader when no one wants the job.  I tire of leading.  It is not a fun role.  It is not a satisfying role.  I want to simply be able to write down my ideas and philosophies and say, here they are.  Agree.  Disagree.  Just don’t tell ME about it.  Because the truth is, I want people to think and come to decisions based on reasoning, self-analysis, and personal experience, but I would also like them to stop trying to force me to believe like them.  I am not them, and I have not had their experience, so 2 out of 3 major factors will bring me to different results.  That is life. 

2) Being wrong is not a disaster.  People make it out to be one.  And whenever you feel yourself about to say, "Oh you were wrong!" with the triumph of delivering the crushing blow to an enemy, remember that the person making a big deal out of being right and wrong is probably more likely you and not them.  Maybe both evenly. 

That being said.  I’ve been wrong about a few things.  Things I can’t discuss in detail here exactly because I don’t feel I want to, should, or care to.  I’ll tell them to you, dearest, later on Yahoo.  But the truth is, I was wrong.  I was wrong about big things too.  It’s not a good feeling to look at something in a new light, the light not like the one you were looking at it in moments, days, weeks, months, years before…and decide that you had made a horrible choice, decided very poorly, and it generally I think weakens one’s resolve when it comes to decision making.  But the only reason it is weakened is because we put such an emphasis on being right all the time.  Being strong.  Being victorious.  You were slighted?  Get REVENGE.  Get JUSTICE.  What does it really matter in the end?  It makes you happier in some ways certainly, but does it really accomplish anything when you look forward?  Not really.  I tend to view light as an open road and I think a lot of what we do just to keep ourselves appeased is meandering away from it. 

3) There is a need for silence.  Sometimes there are questions you don’t want to know the answers to.  Me, for certain.  Sometimes I think things and then I say, no.  I don’t want to know the answer.  I really really don’t.  I guess this is a part of me that is afraid the answer will make me sad or angry, that the answer will be something I don’t like…but never the less, I don’t want to know the answer.

Sometimes I don’t want to answer the question myself.  You ask something to someone and then they generally wwant to know where you stack up. Compare charts.  How does it work?  Can I be your friend?  Do you like Weezer?  Not very much?  Well hm.  Who are you going to vote for?  Hm.

I watched "The Good Girl" last night, and it was very good.  It made me think a lot about people.  I liked that, even though it had Jake Gylenhal who I can’t stand in it, and who played his typically annoying character.  Luckily, his fate was just perfect for what I wanted so yay.  I’m sure I’m more like his character than the rest in the movie, which is a little upsetting, but you know, that’s fine.  I’m trying.  I don’t believe I’m much like him anymore though I used to be a lot.  It made me think of the varying levels of expression, communication, and depth.  And how, though his character is a writer who says a great many things that Aniston’s character finds deep and intense, they are not much more intelligent than the things she thinks and feels, or her husband who seems to be stupid and empty.  He appears that way. 

In one of the conflict scenes of the movie, Jake’s character tells Aniston "I’m starting to think you don’t get me" like it was a threat.  I get so so sick of this mentality.  I’m glad to see that I think Aniston comes to the realization that nobody gets anybody completely.  And that’s a good thing.  There are parts of us that are not alike, we are none of us the perfect match for someone else in the idealistic sense.  No one is going to love all the same things, like all the same things, there are going to be rough, sharp, jagged edges and it’s just learning to deal with it, find a way to wear each other down in those spots and get used to the slight uncomfortability of it all.  There is a comfort in that.  There is a greater beauty in reality than there is in imagination and fantasy.  There is….a lot.  And a great deal just has to stay in our silences.

I like writing and talking it out, I do.  But I know that it does not make me any deeper than anyone else.  In fact, it’s just me driving myself ever further into the shallows, leaving little beneath the surface.  I’m all right with that.  I don’t care to be mysterious, I don’t want others to KNOW I’m deep.  When will the world stop being a show-and-tell day of first graders, running to the teacher to show all the things they know.  We’re taught it from the very beginning, show how great you are so that no one will not know, cuz being visibly great is all that’s important.

Sometimes I think dying unknown would be the best and most prolific thing I could do for myself.  Unfortunately, the world would just not get it.

Back to work….