Monday, November 17, 2008

what sort of person?

So I haven't been falling asleep very well for the past week, last night was no different. So after going to bed at 10:30 I was puttering around at midnight. So I decided to give a crack at one of my grad school essay questions that I've sort of been looking at with raised eyebrow "how would you describe yourself as a human being?" I didn't really get to the second part of the question about what you like best and worst about yourself and it definitely is ramblely and off topic, but you take what you can get in the middle of the night.

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I frequently find myself wishing that I could help fix other people's inter-personal problems. Just help them by going to the person who does not understand and shake them and say "what's your problem!". Barring that I feel that if I could only sit down and talk with them everything would get sorted out. Not that I could necessarily change their minds, but they would at least see the reason in my, and by extension, the person I'm helping's position. Inversely this would also help me understand their position which had preciously seemed so unreasonable to me.

This sums up a great part of who I am as a person: I seek understanding. I seek understanding for myself of others and understanding of myself for others. I am not particularly interested in agreement, this sometimes happens along the way, but it more frequently does not. I'm not in the business of changing minds, and I'm not interested in arguing, just interested in understanding the world.

I think that the most frequent mistake that is made with perception and understanding, is that we think that we are no longer affected by the forces we understand. That is simply not true. Just because we see the forces at work on ourselves, does not mean that the force in no longer acting upon us, it just means that we're aware of it.

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so yes. brief rambleings of a not sleeping Embly.

I think I'm going to talk about Opera as hyperbole for one of my essays, I'll let you know how that goes.

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