Jumbled Thoughts

Welcome to a fresh outpouring of ideas from the bowels of my soul. Watch as the thorny messy jumble of ideas tangled up messily inside my head manifest themselves in a semi-structured form in a flowing procession of words.

My mind is racing. My thoughts are cloudy and dissonant, not beautiful. I threw up yesterday. Vomited into a bucket at 2 in the morning. It wasn't the vomiting that hurt so much as the intense cramping in my stomach that occurred in the moments leading up to the vomiting, accompanied by sweat, pins and needles, and the putrid smell of bile in my belches. This, I would say, is not a very beautiful side of life.

What is going on inside my mind? An evil concoction of fear, guilt, and panic is ravaging my thoughts and seeping through every pore of my body.

It is sad that almost nothing is guaranteed in life. When people become depressed, their ability to perceive beauty is diminished. They cannot even such ordinarily beautiful things like a good song, book, piece of art, or poem.

People cannot act without repercussion.

Things are ugly. I feel as though I have been bathing in a vat of horse filth and cannot escape, despite the discomfort. I feel no intense or sharp pain. But there is a dull sense of discomfort, like worms moving around under my skin. The most revolting or disgusting fate imaginable.

This, of course, is a dramatization. But isn't everything a dramatization? Here's an example.

Five people sitting around a circular table. Each of these people is an identical copy of the other, maybe a twin or a clone. But they are not the same; each is independent of the other. Each person feigns a higher level of maturity, pretending to be nonchalant and taken aback by nothing. If you tell such a person, "I have a Noble Prize," that statement would elicit about the same response as if one had said "I ate a chicken sandwich for lunch."

In this scenario, each individual is dramatizing his/her maturity. But each person is skeptical of the other and not willing to admit they are impressed or surprised, out of fear that, through this admission, they would lose their status.

Part of my blanket is not covering one leg. This is ugliness. This is asymmetry. This is discordance. I might even be as pessimistic as to say that it may be better to be enshrouded in darkness forever than to forever bear this fearful anticipation. I would rather fly for 10 seconds than drown for 10 years. But it's not drowning, to be precise. I have been taught how to swim and I know how to get out.

I long so badly to experience the deep emotion and spiritual arousal evinced by deeply penetrating literature like Anna Karenina and East of Eden. These books capture more than their authors could have intended. Confined within each is the everlasting, emotionally-stirring essence imparted by the creator. Just like a fart in a bottle. How poetic. Its significance transcends anything human.

Some of the things that Carl Jung said are crazy. I would be scared if they were true. For example, four months before his mother's death, he was paid a visit in his dreams by his father, who wished to consult him about his psychology, as if to prepare for something. Four months later, his mother died. When writing this book, Jung attributed this dream to his subconscious signaling him about his mother's impending demise. In other words, his subconscious either knew about or predicted the death of his mother.

I hope we reach a point where we can undertake rigorous scientific experimentation to either confirm or invalidate these theories. But, in fairness, our mind is powerful and capable of cohesively compacting our thoughts and feelings and presenting them to us in the same manner as the world does. Here's a question. Why does our mind make us feel surprised or afraid in our dreams when presenting us with a scenario? After all, it is the one who is presenting us with such situations. Are we not aware that we ourselves are generating these scenarios and feelings?

I killed three or four flies in the bathroom today. What would God be like from the perspective of these flies? These ugly little things have a lifespan of three days. What purpose could their lives possibly have, other than to transmit pestilence and to be as annoying as possible for as long as they live? But then, I guess you could ask the same question about humans. Maybe flies believe in fate. Everything happens for a reason.

To all the friends of the flies that I killed today, there must have been a reason that those flies died. But to me, the death of those flies was insignificant. Trivial. Inconsequential. Meaningless, just as I think their existence. They might have lived, just as they might have died. It all doesn't really matter.

But to a human being, the death of another human is an emotionally significant event, potentially life-altering. Metaphysically, is it fair for us to ascribe meaning to these events, just because they affect us strongly?

Early last week, a man threatened violence at UCLA, leading to his arrest that night or the next day. That night, when I slept, I dreamt that I was in his place and was being accused of what I had done. What's interesting is that I didn't dream of actually committing the crime. I just experienced the sheer panic and feeling of impending doom that I would likely feel in such a situation, if I were accused and found guilty. The sort of panic felt by the narrator in Edgar Allen Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. Nobody can outsmart their conscience.

What a blessing it is to be sane. Since I am sane, I know that since ghosts are not real, I have no need to be afraid. But if I were insane, that would not be the case. It would not matter that ghosts do not exist, if my mind reproduces them in my mind, leading to the same mental and emotional reactions.

I know you are reading this. I can imagine what you must look like as you read this. Why are you so curious to hear what I have to say? Why can't I go back into the past to experience my time with you once again, knowing what I know now? You, who have evoked such strong emotion within my soul. Why do you keep coming in my dreams? Why do I feel as though the meaning of my life is inextricably tangled with yours?

"That was a tough exam. I hear the average for this professor's exams is 50%. But I had fun and that's what matters." - said no student ever

Beautiful things are only beautiful if they retain their beauty through all emotions and at all moments of one's life. Beautiful things are permanent, not transient.

If one harbors an attitude of superiority towards not merely oneself but one's group identity, is that person considered arrogant?

Is it fair to say that the reasoning simple arguments can be understood easily? (Assuming simply has an objective meaning)