2016.03.02 Introspective Pause

One of the more annoying impediments about being a human is our fundamental cognitive requirement to blithely absorb assumptions into our thoughts and feelings without the ability to necessarily consider them. We think and feel that things are a certain way, and they might be - but only from a certain point of view.

Let me just comment that Obi-Wan's bit of dialogue regarding that excuse has never impressed me. "So it was true, from a certain point of view." Unsaid was: "But from most others, it was completely untrue and a blatant lie."

I'm thinking about this from my own life, but I admit to projecting it on others as well.

For example: I love my job.

My job is rather stressful, and my particular position actually manages to be somewhat more stressful than most of my peers doing the same job because I choke on my ego too much. Plus I'm actively trying to get a different job that would be even more stressful, purely out of ambition and curiosity. And yet I still love it. While many around me, with less stress, manage to find vastly lower emotional reward. No, worse - the things I see as challenges I can feel good about overcoming they begrudge having to face at all.

It's not like I'm a particularly positive person, with a bubbly optimism I use to float with effervescence above my problems. Maybe it's respect. I respect the work I do, and focus on the meaning it has for me. Yeah, that's probably the root of it. I'm amused by my own narcissism. Go me.

For example: politics in the United States of America this election cycle.

On an intellectual level, I can comprehend that a significant proportion of the primary-voting Republican public look at Donald Drumpf (#makedonalddrumpfagain) and see something they like. I mean, at least he doesn't eat boogers on live TV. It is an intellectual understanding of their arrayed sense of betrayal by the GOP and admiration for his swagger. And, as a required component to have it finish making sense, I understand that each and every Drumpf supporter must be an idiot.

Or just terrible people. Because I doubt Chris Christie is a total idiot.

It would be funny, except it's stopped being funny. Seriously, this is a country that elected George W. Bush to a second term after invading Iraq.

For example: houses.

We live in a great house. I really like our house. Yet, somehow, it has managed to transform from dream home into borderline insufficient. Not because the house has changed in any major way, but rather because our lives filled it up and look to need something more soon. It's funny how that happens.

For example: cars.

[bursts into tears]
Never mind.