a haiku

the sight of all good

a needle in my own mind

here, acupuncture

ha.

Why...

is the most right thing to do also the most hardest thing to do?

Within everyone in a sense there are two wills: the "earthly" will (if you will) that craves superficiality. and then there is the "right" will which despite what the earthly will wants, knows what is ultimately right. between these two forces is much ambiguity at times. but in other cases, the line is clear and one knows what is best to do.

it's just, sometimes that damn earthly will can seem so convincing. what an asshole that will is. i think it should just go away and crash and burn and die like a slug that has been thrown into a pot of salt.

it is the people who have the ability to side with the "right" side consistently that rise to "majestic heights." and it is precisely because doing the right thing consistently is so hard that the word "majestic" is used to describe those heights. after all, there are not many people who reach that place.

but i'd like to.

what the korean market told me yesterday

well, rather not what the korean market itself told me. but what a part of myself told another part of myself while shopping at the korean market.

my friend and i went to shop there to get food for the rest of the week. he said "just pay 20 bucks, i'll pay for the rest." upon hearing this, i was glad, since i knew we were definitely going to get over 40 bucks worth of food. towards the end of our shopping, i spotted some delightful korean popsicles i like. without much thought i said, "mmm, those would be good" to which my friend responded "well then add 'em to the cart!"

a look at the price tag told me the box of popsicles was 5 bucks. that's not small money, and to make my friend pay for that just for my own pleasure would be selfish. but then i realized in my head "waaaaitt, i'm paying 20 bucks. so i guess i'm paying for the popsicles too!" in the end, we bought the popsicles. but who paid for them? were the popsicles included in my 20 dollar contribution? or did my friend pay for it all with the rest of the fees?

you see, this is just like ethics. would you kill 1 man to save 2 others? what if the other 2 people were old? what if they were mentally retarded and old? what if that one man you were going to kill was a hobo with no life? in the end, a decision is made on the part of the individual, not always including the scenario outlined above - but in daily life. we make these moral decisions in our lives and perhaps too many people emphasize ethics too much? how we interpret decisions and events is exactly that - it's how we interpret them. maybe the scenario of deciding between that 1 man and the other two has no right or wrong answer. maybe it's all in our heads.

the important thing is - we must act. sitting there like an idiot not making any decision is the worst thing to do: yet it's the very thing so many of us do consciously and unconsciously. knowing that moving forward is always better than nothingness is the first step to achieving any type of achievement. the majority of humanity sits there with fears: fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of abandonment, fear of intimacy, fear of getting hurt, fear of outcasting, fear of effin' anything! that's why they don't try some new crap. but that's not what's important. what's important is that we "realize that there is something more important than fear." that only by taking action do we learn - and from that very same learning do we learn to make better decisions in the future.

that's the only way. just do it. and then just do some more. and then after that. just keep doing it! woohoo!

So here I am...

3am in the ROK where I am. I think I have insomnia. Let's hope I don't become a terrorist, now.

Now, why is it so easy for me to become blinded by my own selfishness? This is a huge dilemma. This has become a dilemma in the first place because all my life, I have only lived on this body I live in now. I have never ever experienced the consciousness or physical feelings of a significant other.

Yet, I know that the collective of humanity has an identity of itself and that the reader - you are in me and I am in you. 'Tis an interesting balance. Maybe in the end, we all start with our collective self and life is a life-long struggle to find our true individual selves and identities.

that easy class versus that good class

So, I am slowly beginning to get back into the mode of where I'd like to go back to school again. But this time it's a little different. Whereas before I was determined to get the best grades ever, I am now determined to do some actual learning. You see, there is a huge problem in our society that directly correlates numbers to success. This is very unfortunate indeed since a large population of those who actually contributed much to the world is deemed as "failures" in terms of academia. Well, I think I'm smarter than that.

Nothing much more to say here. Well, other than the fact that most of my learning actually comes from outside of the classroom.

Why is US higher education so expensive???

yea so...

humans trying to change humans just doesn't work. what works is humans having true passion to carry out certain acts that can then change other people. people don't change people, things and events change people - like passion and fear and hatred and etc etc etc. in other words: changing people is not the job of people, but rather a job only God can do.

in another related tip, don't spoil anybody - even if you like the other party a lot. it just makes it harder for both parties. and you will start to be taken for granted. "everything in moderation, even moderation" - Mark Twain

meditation, happiness, and a lego truck

I am bored. What should I write about today?

Recently, I've been encountering some stress. And also recently, I've been reading Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love" I vowed to read this book ever since I saw her talk on TED.com (you should go see it). In the book, she talks about meditation in India. One way to happiness, according to some Indian monks, is by coming to the realization that both happiness and sorrow are inevitable in our lives. Therefore, it is wiser to detach from these potentially very emotional experiences, accept it as it happens, and go on. Then, one does not need to be overcome with sorrow every time something sorrowful happens. Because as I said before, it's not the thing that happens that is bad, it's how people interpret the event that makes it bad. And if one achieves this respectful status, one can achieve a type of constant state of happiness/joy, knowing that life is going the way it should be.

I tried thinking like this. Long story short: it's really hard. And I think I should try meditating regularly. I used to do it a little, but I'm still very much a noob.

In other news, I have been working on this huge lego truck my brother got long ago. He waited for me to come and help him because it's an extremely complicated piece of lego-ness. I'm making this thing and many times I'm just like "who took the time to think up of this, make it, organize instructions for it, and write 4 assembly books for it???" And yes, it must have been a group effort of a lot of people. But how many simple things in life do we take for granted? That shirt you're wearing, somebody had to get the cotton, process it, dye it, design the shirt, cut the fabric, ship it everywhere, wholesale it, retail it, advertise for it, put a brand on it, etc etc etc. I mean, goodness gracious! All around us are the results of thousands if not tens of thousands of people! And this lego truck I'm building ironically is: me trying to build a truck out of the scrap pieces of lego which are the work of some ambitious people over at LEGO.

Unrelated to my previous point: it seems, a main purpose of LEGO is to provide people with the means to build their own creations. What a great idea.