Please remember that you are choosing to read my opinions.

I don't know if it happens to anyone else but sometimes I feel like I've lost part of myself. It's not something permanently lost, of course. Normally I wouldn't notice, but when I think back I remember myself differently. I find it eventually, sometimes gradually, but the scary part of it all is the realization that you've missplaced something about yourself that you liked and that its going to take a while to find or replace it. What's worse is when other people notice it first. Right now, I know that I'm missing something because I don't have the will to write anything interesting to a lot of people. Then again, I think it is this sort of stuff that people like. Unfortunitly you can only dissect yourself, others, and life in general so much before you become mundane and redundant. And that's what I feel like when I feel like I'm missing something. when I feel like I'm lacking my spark. I feel mundane.

Sometimes it takes so long to regain what I am missing, I think its gone forever. Of course people are always changing, but there is an essence to most people, something that you just know about them that makes them familiar and predictable. Some people think they are spontaneous, but I think that makes them all the more predictable. You expect a certain degree of spontaneous behavior. When you think of someone, you have a concept of that person in your mind. Perhaps you think of them as reliable, caring, funny, and you have something of an image of what they are.

I've noticed something about these concepts. We have a tendency to hold on to them too long. perhaps someone does something that completely goes against what we think about them, and it really doesn't effect the concept as much as it should, especially if these are friends or loved ones. It's not that the concept goes completely unchanged. Sometimes it plants a a new seedling of a concept about the person, but our misconceptions about people tend to linger, and thats usually a bad thing. I heard a nice quote the other day from Maya Angelou that relates to this rather well.

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time."

I thought this was an amazing piece of advice. I immediately thought of a dozen times I wish I had heard that, and a dozen more time sthat I wish I could have told it to someone else. Lets say hypothetically that you are in an abusive relationship with someone you consider your significant other. This person obviously wasn't abusive from the very beginning of the relationship, so you build a concept of them as anything but abusive. Perhaps you think of them as fun, happy, nice, etc. Then one day they come home and go off on you. They yell, scream, perhaps degrade you or hit you. This goes completely against what you think of the person, so it's easy to take an apology. Now, anyone outside the relationship will tell you that you should get out of that relationship, but do they know who he is? Probably better than you do in reality, you have all the misconceptions. But of course it's hard.

It's great advice though. it applies to so many situations and makes a lot of sense to me. There isn't many times in life that someone is going to do something to you that is completely out of the realm of who they are. If they show you that they are capable of being a creep once, it is probably just a character trait. it's like when people are unfaithful in their relationships. If someone cheats on you, contrary to what they may say about it, it happened, and whoever they claim to be didn't step in to stop it. Perhaps they aren't the person you think they are.

I don't know what my concept looks like to other people, but it's probably pretty accurate. I've always gotten accused of intelligence I wasn't guilty of having. That is to say, people think I'm more intellient than I  feel. I used to think that I wasn't more intelligent than many people. I performed average in school, after all. Recently I realized that people are mostly stupid or ignorant and that intelligence is a gem among stones. Unfortunitly it's more like a gem that is only valuable to collectors.

Don't take that the wrong way, though. I don't go around now feeling like I'm some how better than. For the most part I take people for who they are. If I know someone is really nice, but they aren't interested in being intelligent (the only reason I think people seem stupid) then so be it. It doesn't change the fact they are a good person, right? I therefore don't expect things out of the person that I'm not going to get. If someone is a tightwad, I don't expect the guy to loan me a dollar, do I? Of course not. So, I guess I try to keep my concepts of people flexible and my expectations realistic. It comes from the little experience of dealing with people that I have.

Ok, that was fun, but... now I'm just going to stop. Next time I'll write about solving the health care problems in the united states. haha.