Creepy Guys and Pepper Spray--From the Other Side

Today I was almost pepper-sprayed by some girl I don't know. Okay, here's what happened. Around seven o'clock, I was walking to my car from math class. It was already dark outside. Whenever I'm walking in the dark anywhere, I make sure people--especially women--know I'm there. It's not that I want to be creepy; in fact, it's the opposite reason. I don't want to seem like I'm hiding anything--which, by the way, I'm not. Maybe this is the wrong thing to do; I don't know. But it just seems to me that most women are scared of walking alone at night--as anyone should--because they're afraid of someone popping out of some shadows or running and grabbing them from behind. So what I normally do if I see someone walking ahead of me is to walk slower to maintain a buffer of comfort; I also scrape my shoes against the asphalt to alert them to my presence. Sometimes I cough really loud, or maybe if I'm anticipating seeing someone I start whistling. I pretty much do anything short of yelling, "Hey, I'm right here!" to let them know someone is nearby. Anyway, so I was walking through the parking lot--which is uphill--and I'm tired and hungry and want to go home, when, from out of nowhere, I see a girl to my right walking toward me at a perpendicular angle. There's only a few seconds between when I first see her and when she sees me. She looks up at me; I look back at her: complete eye-contact (was this wrong?). Suddenly, she pulls out her keys and holds them at shoulder-level as he continues walking past me--faster now. I notice she's holding something on her key chain--that's probably pepper spray, I think. It looked like a can of pepper spray. Without saying anything, we pass each other. She gets into her car as I get into mine, and in a few seconds, she's gone.

Immediately, I felt tremendous, pounding anger. Seriously. I felt so..victimized? I felt accused of murder or assault, when in fact I had done nothing wrong. Is it wrong to feel this way? I know she was only doing what needed to be done (I mean, c'mon: alone in a semi-dark parking lot with a weird bearded guy approaching you), but it still hurt my feelings to see that look of anger and defense and terror in that girl's face. I understand her motives; I understand that under different but very similar circumstances she could have been injured. I get it. But it still hurts. I know who and what I am, and I'm not that kind of person.

(Maybe I should buy a referee's whistle.)

so long

So,

-On Thursday we finally had the intervention. Instead of waiting around, we (five guys, including myself) went to Mr. For-whom-the-intervention-is-for's (FWTIIF) house. It was around eight o'clock at night. We said we'd be outside his house at eight, but he wasn't home, and didn't show up until 8:10. So we sat in my car, going over the game-plan. Then, Mr. FWTIIF showed up. I felt very bad because he seemed happy to see everyone together, and he started making jokes and talking about life, as is his custom. No one wanted to do it; that much I gathered while we walked up his driveway. But I knew it had to be done, regardless if anyone backed me up. My friends are incredibly timid, and sometimes I feel the dire need to step-up and fill the role of leader, if only to find our path. /// So we get inside, and say hello to his family as we go into his room. Mr. FWTIIF is cheery and seems excited because we told him we'd be talking about Dungeons and Dragons, and from what our friend who has a class with him told us, he's come up with a brilliant idea on how to write-off a character in the game. He has no idea why we're really there. /// Everyone finds a seat in his small bedroom, wary of not sitting too close to him. I'm fed up with waiting and stalling and I just want everything out and open and over with, so I push past everyone and plop down on his bed. The friend who has the class with him, the only other person who is not timid like everyone else, sits down next to me, and immediately we begin. /// My non-timid friend speaks first. We start off by asking him to listen and not say anything while we speak. He agrees too quickly for my taste, so I repeat the request, slower and with more emphasis. He's even quicker the second time, and trusting to the intention behind his words, my non-timid friend and I begin the speech the group has written. /// We talk, and talk, and talk. We discuss the punctuality problem and how it shows a lack of respect for the group; we go over preparedness to run the story and the number of hours wasted by his time reading the story during gameplay; we go over the issues regarding map-making; we skim over table manners and complain over the total lack of focus of every session. Finally, we end the entire speech by giving him the ultimatum that is the reason we've come here, but also the reason everyone is tense: we demand that he either shape-up to our expectations, or step-down as our Dungeon Master. It some ways, it feels as though we are asking him to stop being our friend. /// Although initially jitteringly nervous, throughout the entire intervention I feel calm and peaceful. My voice sounds even, and my hands are relaxed. Mr. FWTIIF, true to his word, stays silent while we say our peace. But as soon as we are done and our talking drops into silence, he springs. /// In essence, he agrees with everything we said. He's memorized our three major points, and for every one, adds some clarification or sideways rebuttal. I could tell within the first fifteen seconds he felt attacked when we spoke, but now that he's having his own say and we are silent, he's letting all emotion pour out from him. He seems hot, sweating; his movement, even while sitting, is hotly animated--fingers, hands, forward leaning. There's nothing to do but listen fairly. But I know one thing: there's no escaping from this problem now that we've opened a wound in him. /// The group murmurs and agrees here and there, but mostly it is Mr. FWTIIF who speaks. Those bastards, my friends--now that we've handled the speech, they are more apt to speak. Can I blame them for now feeling more comfortable? There is definitely less tension now that our grievances are exposed. Where before were knots in all our stomachs, there is the release of a bowel movement, and now we have to wait and see how big and how much trouble it will cause us. /// Mr. FWTIIF is quick to go over all our points. In the end, it comes down to a decision he has to make, and he knows this. He tries bargaining: "Can someone have oversight over me?" In other words, can someone else be responsible with me if I fall on my ass? Quickly and firmly I tell him no; this is his decision and his responsibility alone. All failure or praise belongs to him at this point. He ponders this a while. If it were me, I'd want more time to think about it. I'd want to weigh the feasibility of changing my patterned ways versus the likelihood of continual disappointment; I'd want to know if there was any other way; to be honest, I'd want to know how big of a screw-up I've been, and if there's anything I can do about it. But Mr. FWTIIF doesn't want more time. He thinks out loud right in front of us. /// He wants to continue being our DM, and like anyone, he wants to believe he'll change his ways to do so. But at the same time, he knows something. He knows he's made promises before and broken them; he knows the kind of flaky person he is, and knows what will happen if our expectations are not met--whether it be the next time we play, or six months down the line. He knows we're at the end of our patience; to come to his house, as a group, and show him the faults we've witnessed, studied, and experienced, is to truly and definitively show what frustrations we've put up with, and with what cold hearts we will cut him off with. He tells us he knows all this, and still he thinks. /// Then, he tells us. It comes faster and is much more anti-climatic than I imagined, like anything in life we imagine vaguely and with fear. But, now I can say, finally, we know. "I don't think I can do it," he says. He will no longer be our DM. /// I ask him if he's sure, and with timidness but also with a hint of certainty, he tells us again. "No, I don't think I can do it." Everyone exhales. This is the news we've wanted, but to hear it out loud from the only person who can say it, is to bruise the arm we've been flexing for so long. Should one be happy or sad? Or, perhaps, disappointed? /// While everyone is busy defining their feelings, something unexpected happens. Now that the fighting tension is gone and the blood pumps away from our faces, we sit back, relax, and suddenly we begin smiling. Everyone is tired; everyone is mentally drained. No one wants hurt feelings, so let's not hurt feelings, we seem to agree. To smile is to feel relief for the first time in days, at least for me. I'm haunted no more; I'm anxious no more. What I dreaded I have seen; what misery I held I now release from my heart and feel the peace of the storm after. In the end, no one is hurt more than a scratch and a bruise. We laugh; our past selves seem afraid for increasingly fewer and fewer reasons. Grins spread all around, and when everything is said and done, only an hour has past. An hour gone in a few moments.

epilogue: we drove to get something to eat at Carl's Jr. There, we needed to decide on a new DM (Mr. FWTIIF would still join us as a player). No one jumped at the opportunity; no one wanted it. The people who did want to do it seemed motivated only by the fact that no one else wanted to do it. It was awkward and desperate. I had enough of the timidness for one night. You know how I told you sometimes I feel like the only one able to step-up and become the leader? Right then, I felt like the group needed a leader, and I saw my friends as helpless. So I stepped-up, and said I wanted to be Dungeon Master. When asked how much I wanted to do it, I replied, "Completely." If no one would want (or admit) to desiring the job, then I would. We then had a vote. There was an easy agreement. In a second the voting finished, and I had become Dungeon Master.

Just an update

Yesterday, my friends and I were going to have an intervention for our other friend. It's not about drugs or alcohol; it's about his punctuality when we play Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, I don't know if I've said this before, but I play Dungeons and Dragons. (I think I must have at some point.)

If you know about Dungeons and Dragons, then you already know what a DM is and his/her role in the game. If you don't know, then imagine the DM as being the referee and narrator of the story, and everyone else is a character in the story. Anyway, so our other friend, the one for whom we were having the intervention, was our DM whenever we would play, but unfortunately, he is one of the flakiest people I have ever met. Possibly the flakiest.

In the end, nothing happened. The guy didn't show up at the appointed time. After an hour of waiting, everyone agreed to call it a night. I don't know if it's the end or the beginning of things.


On Sunday, I went whale watching with my immediate family and my aunt's family. We went down to Newport, a really wealthy beach city. The boat couldn't have been going faster than twenty-five or thirty miles per hour, but it was still so windy and icy out on the ocean. The sun was out between the clouds only for a few minutes in the two and a half hours we were on the boat. At one point, it rained for fifteen minutes.

The ocean is so big, so entirely, uninterruptedly big. All I could think about was how the Pilgrims and early settlers from Europe could travel across the ocean in huge wooden boats, and that even only after an hour, I started to feel sea sick. We saw two gray whales, a mother and her newborn. We followed them for an hour. There was this one boat that got too close to the mother and newborn and scared them into changing course, so our captain sped up to them and blocked them from moving any closer to the whales. Then that boat sped off toward the beach, and everyone on our boat cheered. There was also a rainbow over the ocean after it had stopped raining.

Students Who Want Everything Easy

I'm deciding what classes to take Spring semester. In the course of searching, I've realized I will probably fail to transfer out of my community college this year, unless the class I need is offered but not listed in the catalog. It's a game of wait and see. I register next week. I don't want to spend another year left behind. I really, really don't.

On the other hand, I'd rather fail a million classes a millions times each than become consumed with transferring to a "reputable" university. The reason I say this is because during the figuring of my classes tonight, I would often use Rate My Professor to determine who's class I should take. You have to listen to every reviewer with one eye open and one eye closed, if you know what I mean, and aggregate the common complaints and compare them to the common praises. Anyway, as I was reading the low reviews of a possible Economics professor, I noticed a lot of them offered the same advice: "DONT TAKE THIS GUY ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO GET AN A. IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR GPA AND WANT TO TRANSFER TO A GOOD UNIVERSITY LIKE UCLA OR BERKELEY, DON'T TAKE HIM THERE ARE EASIER PROFESSORS". There were more of these than I thought there would be, around a dozen or so. It made me think, then it made me angry. Is that all you care about? Your freaking grade and precious GPA are more important than learning the material and being challenged? The more I thought about it and the more similar reviews I read, the angrier I became. You got your first C in this class? Who cares? Stop blaming everything and everyone but yourself. It's really, really annoying. The one word that immediately describes how I feel is disgust. There's nothing wrong with caring about school and your grades, and even your GPA; but when you start complaining something is too hard for you, that it should be easier for you, that, somehow, you're entitled to get an A even if you never learned a freaking thing, then that's when an anger bubble arises inside me.

Strange

I remember in second or third grade hanging around the old playground equipment during recess with some other kids.One of my classmates started shaking the loose metal poles, and out of the joints came dark brown water. "Look, chocolate milk," he said. I believed him.

I remember in fifth grade sitting with a girl in the field of my school during Back to School night. We talked about this other girl who liked me. Some time later, it got dark. I remember my mom asking where I'd been.

I remember being at a middle school dance inside our cafeteria. Right next to it was an outdoor eating area with concrete benches and tables. I tried so hard to be part of this group of guys. I remember I'd follow them inside, they'd talk or something, and then they'd go back outside. It was stupid. It felt so degrading having to follow them around. They didn't even talk to me that much. We didn't really have anything in common. Also, I remember that I didn't know any of the popular songs they were playing, but the guys around me did, so I swore to myself that I'd listen to the radio and memorize the lyrics and stuff. I gave up after a week or so.

I remember playing tag in my middle school after school. I forget why we were there, but a bunch of kids were hanging out and we decided to play tag. I wore a lot of that AXE crap--I sprayed it on everything--so I remember sweating and smelling sweet but in a gross way. Then these girls started saying how so-and-so girl and I would look cute as a couple. Well, so-and-so girl was there with us, and everybody pretty much pressured her into doing something. She took me aside and explained to me that she didn't think of me that way. I don't recall being mad or upset; it felt too surreal. I might be incorrectly remembering this, but I believe someone told me later that so-and-so girl didn't think I was cute.

I remember in freshman year of high school, sitting on the wrestling mats on the stage of our gymnasium during badminton practice. I was holding a composition notebook and pretending to sketch. I cannot draw--at all. I thought I was being aloof and mysterious. Some girl came up to me and asked me what I was doing. I pretended to be annoyed and shy. Actually, I was annoyed and shy. I told her I wasn't doing anything, so she left me alone.

Last one is a funny one: I played saxophone in middle school. Band was my fourth period, right before lunch. My third period was on the other side of the school. My band friend had a class near my third period. I can't even fathom the events that began this, but we used to race across the school to see who got to the band room first. I recall that we'd walk on opposite sides of the classrooms. (The classrooms were in rows, three joined classrooms per row, around ten or so rows in total. My school was open-air.) Usually we'd fast walk, but sometimes, if it was close enough, we'd sprint. He had the instrument advantage because he played the flute and I had to lug around my saxophone. But I had the weight advantage because I've been thin all my life. It was fun. Eventually, though, we stopped racing because one morning we were running down the hall, and either he ran into someone, or I hit someone with my saxophone case, which caused them to fall over. It was an accident that wouldn't have happened if we weren't running, so we stopped racing. The most fascinating thing about this was that neither of us really acknowledged that we were competing; it sort of came about and ended non-verbally.

Last, last one: In sophomore year of high school, I had math class right after lunch with this girl I really liked. She was friends with one of my friends, so we were sort of friends, sort of not. For this reason, we'd hang-out during lunch, and remained talking with people until the one minute bell rang, and we'd rush off to class. Well, one time we were really late. Since I was still a school boy back then, I really, really did not want to be late. We're half-jogging, half-running to our class. We're outside the classroom, when the girl I really like trips and falls, and all the loose papers in her notebook come flying out. I stand in the entryway, watching. The final bell rings, and I panic. I don't help her up. Instead, I go inside, put my stuff down, and return to the doorway. Not knowing what else to do, I tell this girl to hurry up or else she'll get a detention. Her face is bright red. She slinks inside. To this day, I still wish I'd helped her up.

What is Soul?

My initial answer to the question "Do people have souls?" is no. But then I started thinking that I wasn't being very open-minded, and what one person defines as soul can be an entirely different thing or form or state of being than another person. So my questions to you are "What is a soul?" and "What does it mean to have a soul?". You may think Soul can only be one thing, and everyone else is wrong, but try to bear with me. There's a lot to be learned from different opinions.

You have to consider there is no clear and unified definition of soul. Try Googling soul and see the innumerable hits it generations; even the Wikipedia page alone is rife with differing opinions on the subject. Here is the summary definition that is given at the top of the Wikipedia entry:

A soul – in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions – is the incorporeal essence of a person, living thing or object.... Soul can function as a synonym for spirit, mind or self;[3] scientific works, in particular often consider soul as a synonym for mind.

But then if soul is incorporeal, how can it be measured? And if it can't be measured, then how can you determine if it is large or small? Can it fit inside a person, or can it not fit inside a person? Is it neither large or small? Then, in a way, it is all-encompassing or no-thing; it is, or it is not. So how can every human have an individual soul? If anything, Soul is Soul, and everything lives in it. Or there is no Soul, as far as the above definition describes it (unless you are calling mind or brain Soul, which some may consider different things, but that's neither here nor there).

Doesn't it seem to you that definitions are inherently meaningless because they are human creations? Names, especially, are intrinsically meaningless because they are pure human creations--humans create languages, languages are filled with names. Languages are flawed, imperfect. But what is perfection? I think an apt definition of perfection is flawlessness, or something without flaws. But what are flaws? Pimples, cancers, plagues, crooked noses, yellow teeth: these are all flaws, wouldn't you say? But how do we know they are flaws? Because humans call them flaws. Who says pimples are flaws? Well, biologically, pimples may be seen as signs of poor health (let's just say culture has no influence in this). This is practical: a human with a pimple is a flawed human. But our biology is simply chemicals and electricity, isn't it? So couldn't we, theoretically, alter the brain to think pimples are not flaws?

But let's go way beyond all this and think of flaws and perfection another way. Let's say, for instance, nothing alive existed in the universe: no plants, no animals, no cells, and especially no humans. There is no consciousness or awareness. Would flaws exist then? Even God, who is perfect, would not recognize flaws because He would need a language to define existence, and as I pointed out earlier, language is flawed. But not God's language, you might say. How can there exist flaws if only God exists?

(I have a question relating to this: if God is perfect, then shouldn't everything he created be perfect? No, you may say, because Satan made everything imperfect. But God created Satan--God created everything, as is my understanding of Christianity. Couldn't you say God even created flaws--if flaws actually exist--because he created everything? So if God created everything, including time and space and matter, then that means everything is perfect. If this is the case, I think we should seriously re-evaluate the world. As J.D. Salinger would say, the Fat Lady is everyone, or God is everything, or Jesus Christ is inside everything, or Buddha-hood is within us all, or we are all Vishnu and Shiva and Dharma. Flaws are not within humans because we are products of a perfect God, or perfect consciousness, so we are therefore perfect. But when we think in terms of perfect versus flawed, we lose sense of this. Nothing and everything is perfect.)

Without human consciousness, there are no flaws, there is no beauty, everything just is. This, I think, is Buddha-consciousness, and it's damn near impossible to achieve it. So you begin to see how much humans depend on definitions and names, in a practical perspective, yet how meaningless they really are.

Why care? Why do anything?

Look, I'm being honest here. I will not reach Buddha-consciousness in my lifetime. That's fact. I need to play the game of life so that I won't starve to death and my family will have a house to live in. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to live as harmoniously and as happily as I can, just because I can, so that I will be happy living on Earth among humans. It's not perfect, but it's the only path open to me. Do what good you are capable of doing, and let go of the rest.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this strange and unstructured draft of opinions and confusion.

(Please excuse any typos--I'm a little too tired to check for any.)