The netpaper about Elftowners, by Elftowners, for Elftowners.
Be Yourself?
Guest submission by [the_melomane], one of our prospective Heralders.
For my first Elftown Herald column I thought I would use this time to write something about the features of Elftown. However, due to recent events, that I strangely feel the need to tell thousands of strangers, I will (hopefully) be writing about that at a later time.
I find it quite odd that today I have had, for lack of better wording, several small epiphanies. I have begun to wonder about the extent of mankind and what it means to truly live and :quote: "be yourself." Who are you to begin with, in which you are being yourself? 'Yourself' is not defined soley by yourself. You are molded and shaped by those around you and them, likewise. I'm not completely sure what point I'm trying to get across, only that I thought of it today.
Two weeks ago my school hosted a ballroom dance, two weeks ago I had probably the most romantic moment of my sad, depressed life. Two weeks ago I met the perfect, if slightly bisexual, man. One day ago I asked him out. One hour ago he wrote me, and I quote, "Sorry, my interests lie elswhere, maybe another time ( ;_; ) I like cheese!"
The fact that he likes one of my best friends is not the part that horrifies me, but the fact that I actually woke up each day wondering, "Hmm...I wonder what he will think of this outfit."
I find it amusing and disenchanting that when one "falls in love", they strive to become the perfect person for the one they are in love with. Doesn't that in and of itself defy the act of love in the first place? While I myself, perhaps have never encountered love that makes me want to change. Wait, I take that back. I have! Didn't I basically just display this sad act earlier? I believe each of us has in subtle ways one way or another, whether or not we like to admit it.
A person you have a crush on mayhaps likes a certain type of music you've never heard of. So you venture out into this new unchartered territory with this person in mind and you find that to your complete disbelief that your crush has no taste in music. Yet you continue to listen to this music, until you too are one of these junkies. Are you being 'yourself' or is 'yourself' one who constantly molds to those around them? Does the saying "To thine self be true" contradict Darwin's theory of natural selection?
Think about it for a minute, if you will. The saying, "To thine own self be true" interpreted, basically means, be yourself no matter what. But taken into count Darwin's Theory of natural selection, or adaption, you come up with an even more complicated equation. Adaption, such as that of your crush (while not the best example) supports this theory, while it goes agaisnt "thine self".
Then, there is not changing and continuing to "be yourself," as in... let us say, the Civil War. The southern ladies and gentlemen were following (while I'm not supporting slavery) what they felt was themselves and "themselves" included the african americans being lower than them. Because they refused to 'adapt' to the north, they went against natural selection and died out.
Does this mean that if you follow your heart and such that you doomed? Does it mean that adapting will place you in a state of misery? I haven't a clue. It's just something that I've noticed.
Also, why is that humans are the only known creatures on earth to have emotions? And what are emotions anyway, except physicall re-actions to something that is happening. Do we as humans connect everything to our 'superior' brain power, when in fact it may have nothing to do with it? Think about it, I mean really think about it. When you love someone, you get this butterfly feeling whenever you see them. How do we know that animals do not have this feeling? That it is not just some part of an elaborate mating ritual that humans partake in? We don't. We have re-action and we automatically contect it to, what we have called this new level of conciousness, the mind. We call this "feeling" love. Tell me, how is this 'feeling' different from the feeling of fear one feels when, let us say, falling down the stairs or seeing a spider crawling on our shoulders. We have the same butterfly feeling. Perhaps it is our natural, for lack of a better word, prey response to life. We, again called it an emotion. Fear. This non-existant emotions debilitates us beyond reason.
This imaginary belief that something will hurt us effects our everyday lives and we 'feel' there is nothing to do about it. Are the people that are full of emotions the weaker of the human race, doomed to be selected as the next part of humans to die out, leaving the emotionally distant people? Or am I wrong about everything, that those with more emotions will suceed and they will triumph, even with the deblitating effects emotions have on us, because don't they also have an extremely postive effect?
Hope and faith. They are not a physical feeling. At least not literally. They happen, once again, in that what we call the 'mind.' Yet, these small 'feelings' have the ability to makes us do great things, which under normal circumstances, one would never be able to do.
One may ask, what I'm getting at in this column. Truthfully, I really don't know. I've only been letting the words flow through my fingers an on to the keys, into the computer. It may not makes sense, because my thoughts, rarely, if ever make sense.
While in reality, I haven't written much, one would be surprised the amount of effort it takes just to write a simple entry like this. I, like many people, have a hard time writing things down. Partly because as I said before, my thoughts are a bit complicated to be put in words. But mostly because I don't trust myself and other people with my thoughts.
People are always interpreting things and spinning them one way or another. There is nothing in this world of which you can not find a pro and a con. For in every good there is an evil and in every evil there is a good. The chinese were smart when they created a ying-yang, a visual symbol for this puzzle.
Perhaps I am looking too deep into the subject of humans, or perhaps not deep enough. I doubt I shall ever know, unless there is a person who thinks the same way as I. Ah, but if they did, they would reach the same conclusion as I, wouldn't they?
That there is no conclusion in the spectrum of life.
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