And so, as I sit here in my room, on the eve of my final Final, I ponder what has gotten me here. What extra-personal forces have driven me to where I am today, where I've busted my ass to get, and where I bust my ass to keep myself running in place. I know that sounds rather cynical, but bear with the late-night outlook for a moment.
As I ponder the function of micorrhizae, the origins of our ancestry, extremophilic bacteria and the revolutionary Krebs Cycle, I find myself thinking about the people in my life. No, I'm not implying that I know people who help plants grow, or who can survive in otherwise unlivable conditions (though, I know many people who live in dorm rooms), but rather, I focus on the affect these people have had upon me. Their thoughts, affections, insults, impulses and what have you.
Consider how much original thought we can actually attribute to ourselves. Most all that we (I suppose I should speak for myself on this one) use in communication is things that are familiar to us. In biology, this means using a classification system and nomenclature that is widely accepted by the community which uses it. In our personal lives, this means communicating familiar ideas. As arbitrary as that seems of an observation, I feel like I forget that sometimes.
Anyway, I find that I cannot attribute any one thought, feeling or impulse I've ever had to complete and total originality. Any joke is some form of a cultural reference (though, my execution tends to be poor). My political views are vastly influenced by the sociopolitical stimuli that I receive. My affections are poorly hashed together words to describe indescribable feelings to those around me. It frustrates me, that what I think and say are merely reflections of the world around me. I digress.
The point here, I suppose, is that I feel like at some level, I'm not the only one that feels this way. And if that's the case, there are other individuals standing behind those reflections who feel like I do (in some form). I like to think of this as hopeful. Over the years, I've become increasingly grateful to those that have impacted my life, and I am genuinely indebted to all of them. Good or bad memories, the people I've met, those people I've become distant from, people that I've become closer to - they have shaped me into who I am.
And I couldn't thank them enough for it.
~Eric
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The only thought I had about this was specifically the part where you speak of reflections of the world around you. Is that such a bad thing? If that is how everyone experiences it, doesn't that just mean that we are all connected? To the best of my knowledge, humans only exist on Earth. Therefore, we are all connected and it doesn't seem so far fetched to think that at some level we are just naturally all the same without a mechanism to change that relationship. But why not accept that and embrace that fact? (if it is one). This is either my intellectual side talking or the side that just saw Avatar and has greatly changed its perspective on the world. In either case, you have been a true friend and no matter if my feelings towards you and the world are mere reflections or personal original thoughts, I keep them as my own and I'm all the more grateful for them. Thank you, Eric, for existing in my world. (And I mean that in a completely sentimental non-Avatar theatrical sense, haha)
ReplyDelete~Brandon B.