Today I finally overcame trying to fit the world inside a picture frame

Hearing other peoples' perspectives on things that you thought only you were concerned about is really weird.

I think it's impossible to learn and/or do the whole progressing through life thing without occasionally feeling like a huge idiot. In order to recognize new, superior ideas it's inevitable to periodically look back on some of your past perceptions and wish you could steal the Delorean for the sole purpose of smacking your own ignorant grill. That's probably why I squint a little when people say they live without regrets. You can always claim the "who I was made up who I am today" loophole, but I personally think it's perfectly acceptable to be a little justifiably ashamed of pre-me. Like, say, the Linda who thought living entirely without emotions was seriously a good idea.

I'm not entirely convinced I like having short-term goals. It makes my days go by way too quickly.

A while ago I was talking to a friend who, in the context of our conversation, started to say something like, "You deserve better than..." but then stopped himself. "Actually," he corrected, "who says any of us 'deserve' anything? What have you done, more than anyone else, to 'deserve' something good?"

It's something to think about. I'd like to be bestowed with certain Good Things, but just because I don't go out of my way to trip children on the sidewalk, do I really deserve anything? Isn't the fact that I didn't grow up (or fail to grow up) in Uganda blessing enough?

Hate on and love through unrepining hours

I've always heard, though things like DARE, healthy relationship week, and the crazy ladies at DressBarn who're always eager to spout microcosmic life advice, that change is good, but changing for the sake of other people is bad. And for all the iterated, reiterated, and overiterated reasons for that, I more or less agree.

So is it ok to consciously change at all? I might be wrong, but I think most people would say, "um, yeah." That's kind of what New Years resolutions are all about, let alone diet programs, self-help books, and yoga.

But now that "other people" have been taken out of the equation, why would anyone ever feel the need to change? Maybe, you could argue, for intrinsic self improvement. But why would you desire to improve yourself if not to achieve societal ideas of what's good? Why would you be "intrinsically" dissatisfied with yourself if not because there's a standard that you've ranked yourself against and felt lacking? Maybe, then, through natural developmental processes. But isn't the way you develop intimately related to whom and what you interact with?

Actually, the only motivation for change that I would consider human-free would be for religious/principle purposes. Which doesn't necessarily hold water, either, since it, in turn, would undoubtedly spark a debate among people who sit in high-backed velvet recliners and smoke pipes about whether lofty principles and spiritual standards really are divinely/independently transcendent or are really based on thousands of years of a developing human consensus of right and wrong.

And in reality, in most societies, it's totally acceptable to change for other people. Just as long as it's a positive change and not a step in the perceived wrong direction (going from an axe murderer to flower enthusiast would be green lighted, but the reverse trip would probably be frowned upon).

So it's pretty unlikely that any change that occurs in you wasn't prompted by someone else. The difference between head shakes and hand shakes is simply in which direction the change occurs in relation to the values of the environment.

It's trains of thought like these that make sociology simultaneously seem completely essential and like a total waste of time.

He's a dude. She's a dude. We're all dudes.

So, according to an article I was reading, children's game developers are currently trying pretty hard to make "disengendered" games and toys for kids. It cited as more or less irrefutable fact that Barbie and Tonka are preadolescent conceptual Nazis that forcibly brand boys and girls with certain pink/blue characteristics against their will. While I can appreciate the idea behind this opinion, is the total elimination of gender roles the answer to society's gender problems?

In past times, unequal and confining gender roles were certainly a huge problem. I hear the 50's were all about social conformity and intense ostracism for women if the Lucy Ricardo, bake-a-pie stereotype wasn't adhered to. I'd attest, though, that at this point gender roles, while still certainly around, are significantly less stifling. Girls are still put in pink dresses and boys are given construction hats, but at least most people acknowledge them as a fabricated convention and not divinely-ordained--we realize that the societal norms define gender norms, which gives us the freedom to treat them objectively. We can choose to which and to what extent we will conform. Certainly not everyone sees them that way, and there is still a lot of inequality derived from outdated gender assumptions, but if society finally reaches a point when we will be aware of gender distinctions but not of stereotypes that make us restricted by them or bounded by expectation, I'd think they may become a positive force more than a negative one. We can still happily admit that genders do, indeed, exist, but none will suffer for being aligned with one or the other.

If we were to attempt to live in a genderless world in which boys and girls are constantly presented as if they have no predisposed differentiating features, I feel like it could foster a sense of ignorance. There are, after all, still convincing arguments that at least a few basic differences exist between the genders, both physical and hormonal, and failing to address them would harbor confusion and lack of definition. There is a degree of comfort in gender relatability that would be eliminated in favor of total, all-encompassing neutrality. Children may not benefit much from being stripped of one of the ways they distinguish themselves from the rest of the world's population.

Genders, when treated with the correct objectivity as an available option as opposed to an end-all, be-all for acceptance, can be a good thing. Giving consideration to our differences will always be superior to either being blindly bound by them or blatantly ignoring them.

It ain't about equality, it's about reprieve

So, when it comes to making "life decisions" (as Kim so aptly calls them), I know several people who create pro/con lists, either mentally or physically, consciously or not. Which stands to reason, 'cause as long as you're on good terms with foresight, it's a relatively foolproof method. When I make those kind of lists, though, they tend to fail me, because while I might make a lengthy, logical, detailed compendium of decision-making brilliance, I will always disregard it completely and go with what I intuitively want more. Which would seem uncharacteristic of me if you fail to take into consideration that I have a galactically logical intuition.

I think a lot of times it's helpful to operate in a state of half-awareness (No, not literally. Put the syringe away). It's more like when you set your clock ahead a few minutes to make yourself more timely. Even though in the back of your mind you'll always know that the numbers glowing at you aren't the anal-retentive, atomic-precise time, you allow yourself to be distracted for the sake of punctuality. I can think of several other scenarios in which that skill would come in equally handy.

In my sociology class my professor has been drilling home the idea that it's impossible to truly know who you are unless you make the effort to see yourself as others see you, and how you appear and function in the larger scope of things. I guess that means that everyone who says they don't care what other people think of them are considered intrapersonally sociologically retarded. Take that, punk rock.

In The Departed there was this line where Ms. Only Female Character says that truth and honesty aren't the same thing. I can't decide if that's worth trying to think about.