Coworker: So, what exactly is martial law?
Me: It's when the military takes over from the normal government during some kind of crisis—you know, like a military coup.
Other coworker: Wait, I thought a coup was poetry?
Me: No, that's a haiku. (sudden impulse to speak that I should have denied) And a haiku-coup is when you take over a government using poetry...
I found this hilarious...
Reminds me of this: http://www.todaysbigthing.com/2009/01/20
I remember seeing the results of a study a while back, about empathy and understanding between the two major political parties. The study involved taking conservatives and liberals, and getting each of them to attempt to get in the other's shoes, mentally imagine themselves on the other side of the spectrum.
The results proved something that I'd picked up through casual observation of the debates: essentially, conservatives could understand why liberals choose their opinions, for the most part, just didn't agree with that line of thought. Most liberals, on the other hand, couldn't comprehend the motivations for conservatives. They simply couldn't understand why anyone would think conservatively.
Aside from giving scientific proof to a previously subjective opinion, the study was food for my thought, because though it gave the facts it did not give a reason why. It's mulled around in the back of my head for months, with my opinion varying slightly as time went by. Until I remembered this quote, and it made it all make much more sense:
"One's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." --Oliver Wendell Holmes
Liberals are open-minded, by their very definition. They accept almost everyone and everything, not just tolerating but usually condoning and welcoming too. There are few things that are off-limits to liberals; everything else is fair game, and they have a myriad of options.
Conservatives, on the other hand, exercise strict self-control. They have a set of beliefs, self-imposed, that govern and limit their choices, and also the choices they accept from others. They are aware of other choices, but choose not to allow them in their morality.
This leads to a simple proof of the above quote. Once a liberal opens his or her mind to all the possibilities of a liberal morality, they can't imagine what it's like to not think that way. They can't put their mind back into the box, no matter how good conservatives say that box is for the mind. It just won't fit, in most circumstances.
Conservatives, on the other hand, can see what it would be like to have a broader morality. It's not as hard to imagine what more moral freedom would be like, because the only reason they don't have it is a personal choice. To exercise self-control, you must know what you are controlling yourself from, and so visualizing the outcome if you didn't is not such a big step.
Which makes the term "open-minded" a little misleading. Many liberals can accept a thousand different beliefs different from theirs as being equally valid, but cannot understand the people who aren't accepting in such a manner. Whereas many conservatives, though much less condoning of other beliefs, can at least understand those who hold them. It's a broad brush, and could easily turn into a stereotype, and the original study recognized that. But it's interesting no less, and the Oliver Wendell Holmes means much more to me now.
Sometimes I just look around and hate the world. Not a unique reaction, I know, but the usual reasons don't bother me. The selfishness, the immaturity, the ignorance, the intolerance—I can deal with those. But when the entire world seems to be united in a plot to make me go against my own happiness, well, it makes it a bit unbearable.
I've struggled with the idea of my future for as long as I can remember. There have been moments when I grasped onto professions that seemed interesting, and for a time considered pursuing them further. But as the choice grew nearer, they all faded from my interest quickly. I liked the ideas, but not nearly enough to spend years of time and money on them. There was no choice that I could see offered, from anyone, that seemed like it would make me happier than I was and am now.
And the world won't accept that. I'm a poor student, not even moved out yet, and I don't even have a basic college education. According to the world, I don't deserve to be happy yet. I haven't put down the money and achieved the American Dream. I'm just another apathetic young adult who needs a push in the right direction until this stage passes. Never mind that this stage has lasted for years, never mind that I wouldn't be disappointed if I never got past it. Because my happiness doesn't matter to the world unless it fits into the institutionalized mold.
I'm happy with the mundane in life, the ordinary everyday kind of living. My dream life would be a non-descript day job, and an evening and weekend life of reading, writing, cooking, and just living life. Nothing else. As long as I could live on the wage, I wouldn't even care what job it was; I think I could handle boring, and I know I could handle frugal. Most of all, I just want to live, and I can do that just fine the way I am now.
Maybe there would be logistic issues I can't see from where I am right now. I'm willing to deal with those as they come up. But no matter what the world says, I know that I don't need a lot to be happy. And instead of doing what everyone else does, I'm not going to work for a better future. Because I honestly can't see a road to a future better than the life I'm living now.
And I hate the world telling me, through every teacher and media outlet, that I shouldn't exist.
Today was one of those days that I hope never to have deja vu about...
After missing both work Monday and school and work Tuesday (due to an illness I couldn't classify), I thought that I was back to normal on Wednesday. Missing the second day of class was nerve-wracking, but I managed to make it through. I had a bit of a cough, but felt generally healthy, and work that afternoon went exuberantly well.
Aglow with the special vigor that I only feel after recovering from sickness, I had a productive evening, and got to bed right on time. Tomorrow's forecast looked to be spiffily normal. Sadly, it was not to be. I struggled through school this morning, only to finally realize as I was walking to work that my problem was—I couldn't seem to breathe very well. Figuring it to be a result of my cough, I paid it no mind, and planned to work through it anyways. The fact that my sinuses were stabbing pain straight into my eyes and through to my brain...did affect my mood, but it wasn't so bad.
I started work a little early, trying to make up whatever I could of the hours I'd missed, and started to feel even more off-kilter as I was loading book boxes onto the hand truck. For some reason, I couldn't seem to get in a deep breath. I brought over the books a little slower than usual, but again paid it no mind. It wasn't until about an hour in that I realized just how tight my chest was getting, and just how difficult it was getting to breathe (all the while as my sinuses kept a rhythmic pattern of pain).
As long as I didn't move faster than a leisurely walk, and didn't lift more than two boxes within a couple minutes or list the books at my usual speed, I was fine. Which meant, that I really wasn't. I called Purring Piggy to ask for her advice, since I haven't suffered from asthma at all since I was very small. All I really wanted to do was quit early and take it easy, but I couldn't justify losing even more hours of work. So, Purring Piggy brought an inhaler. Which didn't help. Even worse, by this point, my headphones were half-dead.
(Let me pause to explain why this was no coincidence, but the universe deciding to pile yet another mess on top of my current life. Because I wear headphones around boxes and corners, they have a fairly limited lifespan because eventually they get caught on something and are damaged. I did find a pair of nice headphones on the side of the road, in a shallow puddle, back in the winter—and surprisingly, these lasted about 5 months before buzzing and dying a rather foretold death. In the meantime, I had purchased a replacement pair of headphones, expecting the road-side-rescue ones to be near death's door. These headphones? That I actually purchased? Lasted about a month, deciding to die today, when everything else was pretty much shot in my life. I don't think this is random circumstance.)
(Oh, another bit of proof that the universe decided to hate me? My Netflix disc went missing in the mail, and it happened to be the one that we really wanted to watch tonight. And it's the first time this has ever happened. I'm not making this up as some weird martyr delusion, I swear...)
So at the end of the day... I was still catching up from my missed day of school. I still needed to make up some hours of work. I had an intense sinus headache. I had a bout of asthma that was painful, unnerving, and slowing my work. And I couldn't even listen to anything soothing. There hasn't been a day that I can recall, in the near past, where I felt so utterly miserable; nothing even remotely cheery happened, and the best thing I can say is that at least Netflix has excellent customer service.
And now, after baring my (admittedly a bit whinging) soul to the five people who read this blog, which doesn't feel as cathartic as I hoped, I'm just going to go off to curl up. And not die.
