Snowflakes

My attention was brought back to this blog that I half-deliberately forgot about, and I looked at it and was like, "...yeah I have to write something to get the most poisonous thing I've probably ever written away from the top of the page." I don't want to delete it because in some twisted way I'm proud of it.? Oh geez it's terrible. So yeah let's all just forget that existed and mooove on to the next thing... please...

It's actually quite, IDK, somewhere between amazing and horrifying, how different a person (me) can become when circumstances are changed. Just the way I think and the way I feel. It's different. I don't feel the same at all. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. I actually have not felt this way since last summer, and I remember thinking and feeling with similar thought patterns in elementary school. It seems like I've returned to my original state or something? Maybe it's how I always feel (or should feel) when I'm unstressed and away from the influence of people and culture. I guess that should be a good thing. It also worries me because I feel younger again, have I even grown at all? The past year has brought so many changes that I'd like to keep please and it feels like I've just circled back to where I've started. Just another year. That's the horrifying part. I've grown, but removed from the school environment I'm kind of scared that I'll just return to my original state. If things do not keep being pushed forward, they will fall back. I'm so scared I'll forget what I learned. It's easy to think something now, but is it even possible to maintain the same attitude and psychological state when circumstances and settings have changed?

I read half a book last year, The Geography of Thought, and it was about How Asians and Westerners Think Differently. In many cases the Westerner tends to think of things in terms of objects and the qualities of those objects, objects as their own entities, clearly defined and governed by sets of rules. The Asian sees things as being a part of an interconnected system, where things are always changing and things are collections of their relationships with other things. I feel that the Western view is just, I have to say wrong. A Westerner thinks of himself as a unit, a thing with qualities, for example the quality of "being shy" or "being honest," and he is a thing in himself. The Westerner moves around in a sea of other people-things, navigating, but operating separately from each other. An Asian sees themselves as the collection of interactions with different people in different situations. The Asian does not attribute "being shy" or "being honest" to being a fundamental intrinsic quality of himself, he sees them as the result of circumstance and setting. Not just in the spacial dimensions but also in the time dimension. He's not shy because he is shy, he's shy because he's in a new situation or because he feels no one wants to talk to him or he happens to not know anyone or he just doesn't want to talk.

Realizing this "Asian view" is painfully crippling as it dawns on you that the certainty of knowing who you are isn't something you'll ever feel again.

Now it's summer. I don't feel like I was during school. I can't figure this out. I'd just reached a state of psychological stability and equilibrium (basically) during the school year. Finally figured it out. Had about a month to relish in that. Now summer. And I feel like I'm going mad because without all of the people and things that made me, what even and who even am I now. It's unfamiliar and I want to go back when I actually felt that I knew myself. I feel this heavy sense of loss because once something disappears it's not likely to come back, and I liked who I was. Now I've lost that, it feels like. I've gone nowhere. It's just augh. I also feel so horrible even complaining about this problem-that's-not-a-problem-when-you-think-about-the-hardships-that-people-with-real-problems-have-to-face. I wish I never wrote this because now I am just feeling disgusted with myself.

I'm not afraid of change. The uncertainty of the future doesn't scare me (anymore) or at least not compared to the fact that what I already have is not something I can keep. My life now is so beautiful, and I'm so grateful to have it. I thank God every day for everything. Gratefulness should have been second on my list. This beauty is so so so so special and I can't keep it forever. Only in my memory. I can only save small fragments of it in my memory.

I am reminded of Snowflake Bentley who went out during every snowstorm and blizzard to save as many snowflakes in photographs as possible. Each snowflake is a beautiful breathtaking work of art created by God, and they hit the ground and melt away. The millions of snowflakes that no one has ever seen, the beauty that came and went. It's so tragic. Sometimes I just want to sit and cry over the loss of so many beautiful things that died, not just snowflakes. The things like memories and ideas that fade into oblivion. Moments of pure peace and perfection, when all the stars align and the trees are still, not daring to break the beauty, and there's a soft breeze, but no one is there to witness it. Or, maybe it's only me, there, struck by the beauty and joy and sheer wonder of it, but it's accompanied by the sadness that people are missing it, that there are people who aren't here to see this and feel this. This world is not perfect but it's so chock full of beauty. It makes you want to cry. This world crafted with love by God. Maybe it's because I'm an artsy person, but I know that intimate connection between the artist and his work. It takes love to art. I feel God's love more through the beauty He's created in this world, as this world, than through anything else. It's endless. that amount of love.

One last thing. Snowflake Bentley died of pneumonia after walking six miles in a blizzard.