Something to chew on and possibly spit out.

I know... I know... Everybody thinks they are special, unique and different from everybody else, and in fact they are all right. A few believe no one truly understands them and they also may be right. But this entry just happens to be all about me. And today I feel like talking about what I believe makes me so different. But first of all I would like to clarify a few things. When I say that I am different, I do not mean that I am special and certainly not that I am better or worse than anybody else. I simply believe that me and many other people in this world, due to many factors that I will elucidate further on, ended up growing to be well... a different type of people. For the sake of this entry I will call these people I am trying to describe as "aberrants". Aberrants and the extent of their differences from other people depend on two factors. One is external and the other is internal. First let’s talk about the external factors. Cultural influences on people can sometimes be very subtle. Most of the time it is hard to point out to people what these are, because everybody believes that what they do and how they think is normal or even "the right way" just because everybody around them does it too. Geography has a way of creating its own dynamic through the converging of the majorities' thoughts and actions while excluding that of minority. One finds himself obliged to either conform or be marginalized as someone having aberrant habits and ideas. People who grew up in many different cultures, embraced many different philosophical and religious influences simply have no choice but to either repress or abandon certain cultural habits they picked up in their lifetime, or live with the fact that they may be viewed as odd by their new neighbors. Well at least in America they do. Now I'm not saying that everyone in America is insensitive to people's cultural or ideological differences; After all I am an American (Born and kind of raised). But you gotta admit; too many Americans find it difficult to appreciate a genuine import from another country. Why else do we have to Americanize everything we borrow from other cultures before we can consume them? Foreign merchants are so aware of this that they attempt to Americanize many of their cultural products in order for it to appeal to us. Of course there is the exception of art; which is valued for its exotic and cultural qualities. Anyhow sticking to the subject at hand, my intention here is to shed to light on the fact that as much as the contrary is advertised, we are less apt to accept differences than we like to admit. And by using imports from other countries as an example I hope I have not reduced this tendency of ours to merely applying to that specific case. My concern is that we also approach ideological differences, and worse matters of taste with this attitude. I guess our fragile psyches do not like our fallacy of omniscience to be shaken by the possibility that someone else may be actually doing things “the better way”. Because when we view things as either right or wrong, black or white, we end up worrying whether the alternative is actually better. But isn’t possible that we all are right?

Not quite sure where i was going with this post but I’m posting it anyway.

The New Beginning

This blog was untitled “How I Plan To Save The World” because it was initially intended as a memoir about how I planned to shape my life, through my endeavors and career moves , in an attempt to positively affect the world. But I’ve come to a period of my life where a lot of reevaluating and reconstructing has taken place. Some self-doubt emanating from my past failure to advance closer to my goals has tempered the zeal with which i used to approach my future. I need to start working on riding myself of doubt because lack of confidence and a pessimistic approach to ones aspiration could mean death to any kind of lofty goals i may entertain within myself.

I am not the type to enjoy sharing my life story, especially the intamacy of my own private thoughts with strangers yet alone friends or relatives. However I find within myself an urge to express my thoughts and feelings. So I guess this is my attempt to do so. I could easily find a way of twisting and stretching the idea of the website to come to be a biography of my life. In gist I would say something like; In order for me to be able to change the world I need to begin with changing myself. It wouldn’t be far from the truth, in fact. But my reason for deciding to focus on an autobiographical type of journal is simply that I feel like it is a healthy and practical thing to do. We all know about psychologists’ reasons for recommending the keeping of a diary: to keep your thoughts organized, to actually know what you are thinking about, and to fulfill your human need to express yourself. But what are the practical reasons that I believe something will also be gained in the process? Well firstly there is the opportunity to practice writing, to experiment with different styles, to experiment with the use of newly learnt vocabulary, basically to improve one’s mastery of the English language. However what I really find as a motivating reason to write is that in the future, me or my future children may be able to look back at my life story and at the things I was thinking about at the moment and maybe learn something from it. Since I find it hard to take on a challenging task when my intentions are not altruistic; I have decided that this journal will, in my own mind, be something that anyone can read, enjoy and maybe gain some insight in another individual’s thoughts, wishes, worries, fears, aspirations and beliefs. I noticed you don’t always get a chance to receive a true reflection of what a person thinks and feels in general though a blog, but when you do just you cant stop reading. Many times you even see yourself in that person, you own their thoughts or a least you empathise. The reason for this is that, we might all come from different paths in life but essentially we are made of the same stuff, body and mind. So I guess this is a new beginning for my blog, where I concentrate on delivering, in its most pristine form, my most initimate thoughts about my life and the world that I live in.