Teach me the basics of living.
My driving instructor was faced with an interesting dilemma a few days back, and he shared it with me. If you were expecting driving tips, you'd be disappointed.
He found a pair of cool-looking shades on top of the letterbox area, and he was hovering between picking it up and not picking it up. He finally decided to take it, since someone else would take it anyway.
He also told me that in the lift, he was madly giggling at himself boyishly for being a naughty boy. (He's not that young.)
You find $10 on a table. You decide that there's little difference between you picking it up and someone else picking it up--in fact, if you do pick it up, you know that you won't be spending it on drugs, but you can't say the same for others.
In fact, you can even rationalize the addition of the money into your coffers as "extra means to contribute to society".
Would you pick the money up then?
What about someone else's wallet? Or something else impossible to identify the previous owner, so the convenient excuse of "also cannot find the previous owner, might as well take" can be exercised?
Temptation strikes when one is at his weakest. Sometimes I wonder why I don't exploit when I can, and what holds me back. It's not that I'm infallible, mind you, it's just that I'm too scared to exploit when I can. I get slightly depressed whenever I think that someone else might be exploiting what I chose not to exploit, but this doesn't make me feel like I'm a better person, or a more morally upright person than the someone exploiting whatever I chose not to exploit previously--it only makes me feel fucked up, bitter, and sore.
I miss most of my opportunities.
"Some things should be seen and stored in your mind. Taking pictures either distorts the beauty, diminishes it, or lets you forget what you saw because you can rely on the camera to do it for you."
And even if I do seize whatever opportunity presents itself, I end up screwing the experience up because I'm always counting down to the end it. With a good movie, I end up squinting at my watch for a better feel of when the movie would end, because I don't want to be too surprised when it does. I'm unable to appreciate whatever good fortune/luck I have, because I'm always anticipating the moment it ends. I'm unable to live in the moment, inhale the spirits of what defines the moment, and instead I end up counting the number of breaths I'm not inhaling.
People sometimes ask me what I'm looking for, and now I can say with conviction:
I need someone to teach me how to breathe.
-- 10/08/2011 04:53:00 PM
