You know Mr. Solitude. We all do. It’s a nice guy sometimes, or a not-so-nice person too. He doesn’t change; he’s the same guy, but you don’t know him well enough. None of us do. And yet we like to say we dislike him or even, some of us, like him. Just as you can’t tell you like or dislike an stranger on a street, you can’t say you like or dislike Solitude.
And you will never be able to, as you won’t get to know Mr. Solitude well enough.
I’ve been out for a while, out of my hometown, out of the internet (or at least my appearance has been severely decreased) and while that was natural due to a big change in my life (moving out to college), what never appeared to me as “normal” was my lack of ideas for writings for the blog.
Coming here and finally get to study what I want, in the place I want… Well, let’s just say it made me happy… And I mean really happy. In the past, happy moments, although not always productive, were actually when my best ideas (and I say “best” from my perspective) came up in my mind. It didn’t happen this time. What did happen was the appearance of new ideas on other matters (ideas for apps, systems, sites, and so on, unrelated to this blog and its articles). Even then, those were few, if any.
Just these last days I was struck by this question. Why do we like stories? A question so simply formulated and so hard to answer. I’ll just try and write this article, which, in the end, is written to make you think by yourself about the question and possible answers. As everything is relative this might be subjective and my true answer might not be yours.
Because stories are, in fact, made by different people, they are subjective in that way by nature. On the other hand, we all have different likes, and different tastes when it comes to… anything. When it comes to stories, we all prefer different things.
I’m in a time of my life when my life needs more attention than I usually give to it. And while my goal has always been to be able to “control” several projects (or long-term tasks, to look at it that way), I know right now I can’t accomplish that.
A few months ago I got the news I got accepted into one of the best universities of my country (or the best, which is more likely to be), Universidad Simón Bolívar. The problem, or part of it, is that it is placed on the capital, which is a big metropolis and it’s not my hometown. So, most of my time gets used by moving my things to the city, several things to do at the university, like formalizing the inscription, a college initiation program/workshop given by the university, resolving the transport issue and so on.
It’s been a lot of things to do, plus getting used to the new environment, and it’s been hard to maintain my self-imposed schedule of posting every Tuesday. Let’s be clear: I’m not a robot. I don’t make quality content by thinking writing and posting on a week basis.
From now on, I will post at my own pace, trying to be consistent with times (remember I usually post everything around 6a.m. East time… I think) and trying to give you a heads start on my twitter account on when the new posts will go live. Yet, you always can subscribe to the mail list or RSS so that I can send you my articles directly to your inbox (if you like them, of course). So be patient, as I know several weeks with no new content is not good, I’m working already on new stuff. Pass the word and share my thoughts and yours online and offline (I want people to read and think about things! Not my things, but everything!). See you soon; very soon, I hope.
Have you ever felt you were wasting time? Not a minute or hour, but days. Think about it for a second. Have you ever, at some point in your life, felt you were not doing anything productive, meaningful, fruitful for you or anyone else? I’m not talking about good or bad things, but about something, anything at all. Right now I’m in what I call a slight pause in my life.
Let me describe this a little better: Imagine Jeno the fish. He is a little fish who lives with his family and every day has to go find some food, teach his kids to do so as well, be some time with his wife and explore a little to satisfy his own animal curiosity. Now you know Jeno, imagine one day he forgets to explore, the next he forgets to take his children out to eat, and the next he forgets both things along with spending time with his wife. It’s being a week or a month, he can’t tell for sure, but he just realized he hasn’t done many things he was supposed to. He paused.
Or at least that’s one way to look at it. What if a deja-vu (you know, that moment you feel you’re seeing or hearing or experiencing something you already have experienced, yet you haven’t), is actually you remembering something? That is, finding an old memory of such experience. Obviously, an old memory that shouldn’t be there.
So where would it come from? That’s the tricky part. It comes from the present, being a new memory treated as an old one. See what am I aiming to? Well, this thought led me to think a few things about our own mind and how memories work.
If one thing is hard in this life is to have a real connection to another human being. I’m not talking about significant others, romantically, but any kind of connection, to be real, fulfilling. Some people call that to have a “good relationship”. Having a good relationship not only means that both are comfortable with each other and that stuff, but that you both trust each other, help each other when in need and so on.
Feels like too much? I’m going to guess your best relationship is a good one, a very good one, and I will ask you to think about your best friend, significant other, or family member who’s closest to you (mix them all, as there are no distinctions here). Do you help that person when he or she needs it? Does she or he help you when you need it? Do you trust each other? Do you fight regularly? Most of the time or barely ever? If the latter, do you feel like you need the fight or the discussion? Is it an open relationship (in matters of no secrets and hidden feelings)?
