What I Learned: 27 Dec - 3 Jan

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Happy New Year! Let's talk about some lessons, shall we?

  • I often find myself wishing for a reset button. Or the ability to make multiple clones of myself so that they could live out every option, take every path I was availed. Or the knowledge of all Aileen's in all the universes. I figure, it's the only way to make sure I don't make a mistake. To guarantee that I have "NO RAGRETS" by the end of my life. But this often means when I reflect on my life and the choices I have made, I focus on what could have been and yearn to return to the moment I made the choice to choose differently. Which means, I don't know how to live with, and move on from, my mistakes. I dwell on how I should have never made them in the first place. For example, when I make a mistake in an essay, I start again. I don't salvage, I burn and begin anew. But that doesn't work with life. I wish it did.

  • Religion, faith, belief are nuanced. But nuance is neither easily communicated nor easily remembered, and it is the last of these that matters. For all three can only exist, even in belief and disbelief, if they are remembered. Unfortunately, nuance is not easily remembered. Simplicity is. So when we come to church or places of worship, the sermons are simple, the nuance is implied, deeply personal and, therefore, so diverse and contradictory. This leads to confusion, for what I may take is not what you will take from a message. No matter how clear that message may be, especially when communicated en masse.
  • I am terrified of things getting worse because it's not guaranteed that things will get better, but it is guaranteed that things will get worse. It's a law of nature (i.e. entropy). Living with the knowledge that things could always be worse makes me desperate to avoid such a fate; to avoid falling into that abyss. As a result, there is this immense pressure to avoid that fate and secure that "better" for myself. Unfortunately, realising this has helped me empathise, albeit slightly, with Henry VIII which just shows what could come of watching too many Tudor documentaries and historical dramas (looking at you "The Spanish Princess.")

This is a new thing I'll be trying for January; mostly to get me into the habit of writing on here frequently but also to build a reflective spirit.

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