Some of us can keep a tight lip on secrets, and I am not one of those people. If something dramatic happens in my life, I always want a second opinion on it. It doesn’t feel good to gossip, but it feels needed sometimes. When the cat is out of the bag, things get curious.

It’s hard to tell someone they have an ego without someone calling you out for it. Their egotistical actions plus your complaining equal being an egoist yourself? It doesn’t make too much sense to me logically, but you can feel the tension and stress from mentioning another person’s name behind their back. It’s like they are going to hear you and attack you at times for it, or that the world is going to crumble under your feet. Plus, you literally have someone else’s name in your mouth ready to say something bad and you know what they say: “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anthing at all.”

Sometimes we gotta defend our honor. You make excuses or reasons for why whatever they said about you wasn’t true, but then from their POV they could pass a lie detector. You call someone out and then they cross-complain with their own gripes. Someone points out an error in your procedure, and then you double-down on it and ignore any criticism. Trust that I have seen it all before, but don’t because I don’t want to be held accountable for what I don’t know. The egotistical arrogance for just wanting to be right all the time.

If you admit you’re wrong, is that enough?

If I was hurt by their actions, can I talk down on their reputation?

If I just don’t like them for some reason or another, is it okay to tarnish their mood because they ruin mine daily?

These are the kinds of questions you ask a clergyman in confession or something, but just remember that justifying yourself doesn’t make you right. We don’t determine what is right and wrong, but we can choose to follow one path or the other. We can’t always predict who is going to get hurt from what we do, but we can do something important.

We can empathize and at least see their POV. We are lucky if they provide it to us honestly, securely, and calmly. Sometimes they leave us with silence and we have to garner all that ourselves. Sometimes we hurt somebody in physically/mentally in a way that scars them for life. It can even be an accident, but sometimes we know we wanted to hurt them. It is usually because they hurt you. Some of us are weak and get hurt easily, but we should recognize that and be honest about it. Some of us should be honest and say they are too numb to feel things, so they need to be told and reminded in a logical way. We can’t blast the light on a show so that everyone is as bright as the sun, but we can shine a spotlight. The way we see the light is up to our eyes to see, our body to take us there, and our mind to make it make sense. If you are missing the point of view, find how to get there. If you are blinded by the light, don’t look directly at it or get burnt. If you are unsure what you are seeing, think if you have seen anything like it before. If all else fails, close your eyes and take a step forward.

Hate to intellectualize some sex tropes, but maybe I will even romanticize them. Womanizers are the man’s version of a maneater. Post over. Just kidding, I haven’t beat the point to a pulp yet. I’d like to imagine there is something serene about these tropes we are missing, like something to admire about them, because oftentimes we fill a trope we don’t know the nuances to.

The womanizer is a type of man who is able to pursue multiple feminine sources and come out on top. They are better off in the matchmaking world than most of the other tropes, but the genuine, authentic types don’t take kindly to flattery. Those gentlemen who compliment a good woman are wasted in the bars and brothels. A good man is no womanizer, but that doesn’t stop men from the endless chase. The womanizer symbolizes the persistence of the man towards the woman.

A maneater is like an unstoppable force and it carries more weight than the modern girlboss. She wants to have men wrapped around her finger, and these kinds of women can be loyal too. The only problem is that they are always loyal to themselves first, as they should be. See, they develop a lot of social value around their traits and charisma. She knows what she wants and she knows ways to get it. When a man doesn’t play her game, she gets bored and finds new players. It really is those players that get caught.

So what can be learned in modern society and whether these tropes fit morally, effectively, and replicably? Well, there is something to be said about the effects they have on the rest of us. These tropes get down and dirty while most of us stay high and dry. Sometimes it takes a little elbow grease, and these two get things done, or at least get someone to do it for them. They win in efficacy, albeit it seems like the victims just get caught in a web they could have easily escaped from if the web didn’t look so tempting. And in terms of repeating their mistakes, should we? I leave that up to you to decide.

Perhaps it is the wisdom from age speaking, but I think starting over your life with all that you know now is such a good way to express who you are. If we took away all the scaffolding, cleaned up the paintjob, and really made it sparkle it could be worth anything. When you passed a fancy house and said “wow,” or “this is for rich people,” you are only proving that hard work pays off.

When it comes to good books, movies, games, etc., it is like we wouldn’t mind refreshing our memory to start over once again. Imagine how nice it would feel to experience a smooth texture for the first time. I would be obsessed, personally.

I wonder why we don’t have greek engraved marble pillars anymore. I wonder why the streets aren’t paved with cobblestone. I see houses being built and they look compact instead of large and flourishing. Well, our whole society changed and apparently these are the features we can produce these days. It’s not like everything is a downgrade, because it could have nice plumbing, beautiful interiors, etc., but we might get turned off from the color light bulb they use. Can’t judge a book by its cover, and definitely shouldn’t just assume every house made in 2025 is doodoo garbage.

Quite frankly, it is childish to think we couldn’t do it all over again. Where would the fear come from, a lack of resources, network, etc.? I could see it if it was like you started making music at age 7 and your mom passed when you were 12, but you got things going before she passed in a way that couldn’t be replicated after. Makes sense, but does that mean the person who produced the music at age 7 just disappeared? Where was the curiosity, and did it just vanish because you had nobody to force you to do it, or no fear of failing?

I think we all had those dreams where it showed us our vulnerability. We are allowed that, and apparently our brain does want to feel those fearful emotions. I even enact chase scenes where I am scared to death, but I still wake up and escape. Well, that’s our escape from death in life. It is being one step ahead. It is seeing the traps before they’re sprung. Take it easy on yourself when starting new projects and let yourself feel the dread of dropping a new single or the fear of rejection from a career or person. Starting all over is like how the lettuce plant became broccoli or something, and that’s what evolution is all about.

I feel like night owls in humanity meet other night owls and do fine, but early birds and night owls can not mix without sleep disruptions. Who knows if it could be more survivable?

People who love to be right will force the situation around them being right more than framing the rightness about the situation. Then they blame you for calling them out as if it wasn’t a part of their plan. Their plan was to never be wrong. They failed. To acknowledge it is to let it exist, and they can be right in their Boolean logic so long as they remove the “false” from the false records.

People who want to be in control will force their ruling orders, even when there is nothing to govern. You can tell when they defend something adamantly, that it is something they feel a sphere of influence within. The controllers don’t want to share what they profit from, and often their life is involved in secrecy. They become hoarders of everything and nothing at all.

People who revolt may revolt beyond their means and ends. They will tear themselves apart in order to tear down what they despise most. It takes a certain kind of vengeance within these people to act, but once they do they lose their self-control. Revolution is more than a protest, it is the claim over the future, and oftentimes it becomes tyrannical- a hasty cheat in the system in order to “benefit” their delusions.

It’s in all people to just exist and be. Are we the harbingers of ideologies and people? I can only define my claim of such to be what is rightfully mine. If I were to have kids, I have some claim, but not all. The universe gave me the child, and so to the universe I would be most thankful and owe gratitude. It turns out that life’s blessing is that we may never have to endure the pain that brought us into this world unless we decide to- no, that is just not true.

It would be so nice and kind should life work out perfectly for all of us, but the truth is in the details. What suffering we create in our heads has none to compare with the true suffering: the counter copy of true euphoria. If we all got to choose our circumstances, we may not all choose the paths we have lived, and instead opt for the routes we manifested in our heads.

We believe that there was a possible chance we could have acted differently. That perhaps, we did have free will to think and behave. We have but the present to claim and nothing else. We owe nothing to our memories, only those that are worth remembering today. We don’t always choose what matters to us each day, because what matters changes quicker than the days can pass.

When making big life changes, I tend to stagnate. There’s always some side mission I have to get to before finishing the main one. It’s not that I am not making any progress in my life, but it’s not where I need it to be. I go on tangents easy. I go perpendicular from the point. It ties into that superficiality that seems to consume me. I want to be understood, but I am afraid of the acknowledgment, like when you have something to say to someone but are afraid of the consequences.

It seems like it would help to know others are going through problems as well, but it only helps when they solve the problems I am currently going through. If I already solved those problems, I don’t really need alternate solutions. They are nice “what-if’s”, but that’s part of my problem: giving those questions space. Some questions should not be entertained.

Anyways, it feels like we are each on a raft and sometimes it feels better to trade it for a boat. I wonder is it ever worth it to trade a boat for a raft. I mean, they had to on the Titanic didn’t they? It’s a good last resort, so it is good to have both. Being stuck alone in the vast ocean is a death wish, so any way to stay visible is an aid. I might be getting too distant from the original point, but it feels like we are in wars for these rafts and boats. Everyone wants to live in a yacht, but nobody wants to trade up their rafts. We want our boat and our emergency raft too. Who is to blame us?

So if there is this constant battle with the old and the new, it must help to have both. Like Theseus’s ship, maybe the real question of whether the ship is still the same after replacing all the parts is in the blueprints. People with all their problems solved do have the blueprints to their success. Some people sell the blueprints, and some sell the ships. Some own the dock and they must feel so proud of the platform they created. Some built the lighthouse so that the sailors stay safe.

You don’t have to trade up your rafts for a house or vice-versa. You don’t need a boat or a yacht. Fisherman, traders, and military need boats. The rest of us need to learn how to support them instead of always wanting to be supported. That yacht won’t float forever.

Although we may not see those forces of our pasts tethered to us like puppet strings, we cannot deny their hold on us. I can look through that magic mirror and see far back into my past to the times where those words were new to me, and I can still see how I felt and responded to them in real time. It’s easy to judge how things turned out now. At that time, it was not so. There is no magic mirror that lets you see the future, at best it is a crystal ball. The mirror always shows you your old self, and we choose how we feel about it. Being blind to yourself is like disappearing for a while. We wonder where we went when our mind went one place and our soul went another. We can only empathize with those wandering ghosts, and that is the only way to lay them to rest.

Too many times to count, I have made a steady change to something I do and it shifts my life around. Sometimes it is a healthy habit like showering before bed, not smoking after I shower, or trying to go to bed earlier. It seems like my results get worse each time.

I keep telling myself that I have been doing good with a few habits and to keep it up, but I keep resisting. For spending money I like to think that even though I may not immediately pay rent with my paycheck, I will eventually. I like to shower before bed because I know I would bring a lot of dirt into my bed, and I already bring enough from the floor I need to sweep and mop. When my bird poops, I know I should clean it up immediately, or the poop will toughen and harden. I know I should start that business and send that email and talk to that professor and jumpstart my career. The problem is that I know! I just don’t do everything that I know is right.

I wonder who would be at fault here and it has to be me. It’s not like I should expect somebody else to care about everything I care about and then do things for me. I have to do those things myself, like walking, tying my shoes, etc. See it was easy at first when I just wanted to prove everyone wrong. I liked to be capable back then because the real satisfaction came from the conquering of my obstacles. I’ve always been a scaredy cat, now that fear has manifested into anxiety. “I don’t want to be a famous author. I am afraid that if I wrote those books, then I would have to upkeep the attention.” I want the fame, but I don’t. I heard narcissists go through this struggle a lot of wanting to be seen but being afraid of attention. It’s like we know people are going to find out that kryptonite that destroys us.

Superman wouldn’t be super if he kept his kryptonite around, so I have to find away to get mine far away from me. Even still, avoiding my fears only makes them take more control over me. I wish that when clarity makes its way to me, that I acknowledge it and follow through. I wish to have the same confidence I have driving ten miles that I do in one. Sometimes pouring the wine superficially is just a waste as it pours down the sides. Too much conviction and all the wine spills out.

In the balance of willpower to do and to not, there is the needs, wants, and wishes that one day hope to be satisfied. If I want to live fully, I have to dig deep each day to encompass all of me. I have to acknowledge that although I may want something now, I may not want it forever, but it is okay to want. It is worse to not know your wants and have them control you. I may not always like the choices I make, but the better goal is to stick to the choices.

One foot in the boat and one on land will likely leave you in the water between. Taking that step from the platform to the traincab is dangerous, but the safest way to commit is all at once. Give yourself into the wave and surf it. Give yourself into the tide and you drown.