So, first of all, a shout out to Nick, who would have featured much more prominently if I had actually remembered to bring my camera when I went to sushi with him yesterday. Your stalking is greatly appreciated, even though it cuts the number of stories I can tell you in half. Oh well. We'll just have to go for sushi again so that I can get a picture.
The rest of the bolg is philosophy. As always, in purple so you can't take it too seriously.
So I met with Chih-I (Jerry), my Taiwanese PAL partner from last quarter today, and we started to talk about empathy. I defined empathy for him as "when I feel something, you feel something". We then got into a long discussion of times when we had felt empathy with other people. About an hour into the discussion I remarked that I would love to know what people think. "Why?" he replied, "that is the worst thing you can know. Peoples minds change all of the time". He went on to explain that knowing the thought of another person is almost worthless in comparison to knowing your own thoughts. After all, there is so little in the world that one can actually control. We cannot change the weather. We cannot become a rock. We cannot even control our heart beat. Sometimes, we cannot even muster the strength to get out of bed in the morning. But we can affect our 'self'. We can try to become what we want to be, and if we do this the rest of it will fall as it is meant to. Things happen, and the most you can do is be strong when things do happen. Sometimes, the happenings of things can even work to make you stronger. Fighting the happenings of things will probably make you weaker.
I had no response. I had no response because the majority of what he said I held to be true at one time. I realized that I had forgotten it. In my time at college I have been trying to develop human relationships. This is not a bad thing. But in the process I have severely neglected my own development as a person. I have become a better person socially, but have not improved much as a person because I have not thought about 'self' for a while.
There is more, but I don't want to share it. Don't worry, I am happy, balanced and not in any danger of suffering a nervous breakdown. I just like to think.
Left with nothing I could say I responded by telling Jerry he was very wise.
"I'm older than you," he said.
5 comments:
Hi Trenton,
I finally made it onto the blog....this truly is a happy day :P !
See you soon
Nick
I go around saying stuff like that for four years, and I don't get any mention, and some Taiwanese guy says it and all of the sudden, it's instant Zen wisdom! Sheesh.
Just kidding. I'm happy for ya.
David, the diference is a second language learner can only use language that I understand. This is a case of
"the less you know, the more you know".
Thanks for reading, guys.
where are the pictures?
When I can take a picture of philosophical insight I will not be posting it on this blog until I get my Nobel prize.
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