Social Motivator: Society’s Motivation

I don’t want to sound judgmental here, but people need to chill. It’s 8:24 PM on the night of the Municipal Elections both here in Markham, and for our neighbours to the south, Toronto. Facebook basically looks like an anti-Ford hate center. Rob Ford was the candidate who won the office of Mayor for the city of Toronto, and people have shown themselves to dislike him a lot. The thing with politicians though, is that they are just people; more of us look worse than any of them than we’re willing to admit, and those of us that do act all “holier than thou” don’t bother acting on that fact. If you really think so poorly of a certain candidate, then why don’t you go run for office?

I don’t want to say that I care either way; I have my biases, but I’m going to be fair about the decision. Toronto’s voting public elected a Mayor, and his name is Rob Ford. He won by a landslide on the merits of his plans for the next few years, while he is in office. The things he’s done in the past may not have been good for his image, but despite the fact that he is a horrible person, there are people who are much worse than him, given much higher positions of government, and who have done a lot better on a much larger scale.

I hate to use this example, but Adolf Hitler, upon rising to power, did wonders for the world on an economic level. He may have had social issues, but Rob Ford certainly isn’t anywhere near him on that scale. There are a few things people need to realize about the election. First off, this is the way democracy works; the majority voted for one person, and that’s the person that represents the majority. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Do I think it means you should leave the city? No, because that’s just irrational. Secondly, society will always look at the negatives of someone at the top. It’s what we did with George W. Bush. That man may have been raised by monkeys, but considering we didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt at all, it raises the question of whether we’re doing the same thing despite realizing the economic potential we have at this point. 

I say, this is the way the people voted, and you can disagree, but anything beyond an intellectual discussion about why you think someone else should have won, is just a waste of breath.

Can I Still Be Thankful?

I’ve been through a lot over the past year and a half. I’ve had so many ups and downs, and for each of those times I’ve been thankful. There have been people who have helped me become a better person, and there have been moments that have taught me about my capabilities and my limitations.

Yesterday, I realized that even though I’ve received a lot, I do still continue to receive a lot, and have a lot to be thankful for, but I’ve often thought that there must be some end to how thankful I can be. But then again, emotional physics kind of correlate with real world physics, and despite my limited knowledge, I do know of the principle of conservation of mass and energy. In emotion and expression, it works the same way. The projectivist writer Charles Olson once wrote of the projectivist poems that whatever energy you take in, must go in in equal amounts, and basically, must be evident in poetry. In that same way, whatever you receive must be returned in equal amount, and so long as you have something to feel thankful about, you should express that gratitude.

It’s a basic principle that guides the world; it’s one of the basic ideas in physics and chemistry; whatever goes in, must come out in equal amounts. It’s like balancing a chemical equation. You can’t have an equation that reads H₂+O₂ = H₂O, you need to balance it to say 2H₂+O₂=2H₂O. It needs to balance out one way or another.

Anyways, I still have a lot to be thankful for, that I know I haven’t quite balanced out properly. I’ll start with “thank you for reading this.”

A night sky in August. The faint starlight was a rare sight.

PS. I can’t believe I actually used a chemical equation.

What Does Success Mean?

I recently heard the phrase “C Students in Life” (courtesy of Philip De Franco – video at the end) and was led to consider what it means to succeed in life. Now, De Franco describes a “C Student in Life” as someone who basically “half-asses their way to mediocrity"” and says he can’t respect someone like that. He raises an interesting point; life isn’t really worth anything, regardless of the end result, if you half ass your way through life, and end up not really earning it. This is the kind of thing that leads me to ask why people who work so hard end up living merely mediocre lives.

On the other hand, supposing you were born into, or undeservingly were given a great life, with money, people, and a myriad of happinesses, and you decided you wanted to work to earn it as an afterthought, or a thank you, by giving to charity, and helping people left and right, or opening your fortunes to the world (such as starting a software company, or, in a more abstract way, using your gift of a beautiful voice to sing and entertain people) then I can respect that.

I think in this same way, success has a lot to do with whether you’re grateful for where you are, or not, and how much you relate this gratefulness to that which you enjoy doing.

Via Philip De Franco (YouTube)

It looks like Autumn is finally starting to set in.

If You Can Hear Me…

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

He knew there was something out there. He heard it with his own ears. What it was was indistinguishable though, and despite his obviously strong will, he didn’t really want to go out there. He was out in the middle of nowhere after all.

Huff. Huff. Huff.

There it was again; he tried to go back to sleep. The sliver of moonlight in his eyes keeping him from drifting off; there was something out there, not that he’d wanted to know what it was.

“Who’s out there?!” His voice was raspy.

Huff. Huff. Huff.

The cold air and the dark outline of the trees was outlined by the stars, and against the wind blowing were the sounds of wolves and owls.

“Who’s out there?! What do you want?! Why are you here?” His voice was louder now.

He had given up on sleep at this point and just sat on his mattress, holding onto his cell phone, with its backlight on. But as he sat there, he heard noises which sounded only like pat, pat, pat.

Then he felt something.

Crash.

Having fallen over, he couldn’t tell who it was that was next to him.

“Who’s there?”

"I’m here for you.”

Has Anyone Else Noticed This?

Has anyone else noticed the fact that people at this time of year try to keep summer around as long as they can?

One of the biggest things is that people will try and make their lawns look greener than it ever was in the summer time. Oddly enough, it looks more like summer than it did in summer, in some places.

I think the true beauty of the seasons lies in the amazing colours of twilight – that’s when you can tell that it’s really autumn.

I have to say, the colours are absolutely a big part of the season for me, because it means that I get to take pictures of the world showing off. Even more than that though, I think autumn has helped me realize how much I wish it were summer still. I’ve done quite a lot of things with my friends despite it getting cold out, but I still want to do more with them.

View Full Album

My album consists of pictures from school, a trip downtown, Art Side Out, and other random things that happened in the past two months. The season’s not over yet, and Canada’s weather is completely unpredictable, but one of the things that often gets me moving and thinking about how opportune we are to be living where we do, and to get the chance to see the things that we do, no matter how small they are, is always a great time. If you’re interested, you can check out my other album, full of pictures taken of the autumn sky.

Cheers!

P.S. I’ll be blogging a lot more now, hopefully, because I think this is quite a relaxing hobby for me. If I don’t keep up, any of you are free to email and bug me to post something.

Write the Novel You Know You Have Inside You

So here I am, at around 12:30 am, and I’m searching the web for ideas for a list of things to do before I die. I came across this one. Interestingly, I’m going down this list, and checking off the things I’ve already done, like “get to know your neighbours” and “plant a tree.”

I keep going down until I get to this particular one: “Write the Novel You Know You Have Inside You.” How do I respond? By blogging. Of course, it has to be my first response because it’s what I’d prefer to do over going to sleep, realizing that I have to be up in about 6 hours.

Apart from that point, though. I thought I’d blog (after a long time) because thinking about where I want to be, and the kinds of things I want to do, made me realize that there is a lot that I know I’m capable of, but that I haven’t quite let myself do yet.

One of the biggest worries for me is what I’m going to do in the future, because despite the fact that I’m happy now, I’m not sure where I’ll be in a few short months. To some extent, I know what I want – I just haven’t pushed myself to get there, and the thought that I’m presented with now, that I already know that there is something inside me worth doing, means that now I have to live up to it.

So my question for myself, and that I often find myself asking, is “where do I begin?”

Where did many great writers begin? In the beginning. I guess for me, it’s somewhere I can start looking from.