yuhknee

[yuhknee]

Something tells me we won't be seeing each other anymore and that makes me sad. The semester just went by too fast; as much as I know that you barely even knew me, I hope at least you somehow saw me smiling at one of your lame jokes. I hope that somehow I existed in your world even for just a brief moment--with just a shadow of a smile.

[yuhknee]

What is so nice about these Nike shoes? Sorry, please don't hate; I just need someone to enlighten me. :(

[yuhknee]

Hell Week Blues

The semester's about to end in a few days. For most of my fellow students they'll probably be free by Friday, but I still got an oral exam on Monday so I still have to hang on a little. I still don't know what to feel. I suppose I expected I'd be a lot sadder than this, but. . . I'm not sure; I just want to get all these requirements done with and finally get my laptop in two weeks. Yeah, I finally decided on buying a Mac. It's not the cheapest laptop I know but I've always contemplated on buying one. Besides, in the long run, I'm supposed to save more money with it. My 6-year old Dell buddy is slowly giving up on me each day and I'm kind of sad thinking about it. Truth is, I don't remember what have kept me from investing on a Mac all this time. Aside from the price, I guess I was just a bit hesitant considering how I could pretty much do the same things on a much cheaper, standard laptop. Only lately have I realized how it feels so much different when you're using a Mac. I mean, it's so sleek and stylish and cool to the touch and it's so simple and so free of anything that can weigh it down; it's so. . . clean. It gives me a nice feeling.

This must be what Marx meant by commodity fetishism, I guess. You know, like how Nike shoes make you feel as if you're going to be the next Michael Jordan, or something? Marxists would probably hate me for this--well actually they've got an entire world to hate so I don't think I'd be much of a bother.

Speaking of Marx, I ended up with Marx's Alienated Labor during this morning's oral exam for my Contemporary Philosophy class. Man, that was the second worst oral exam I've had in my life, I think, the first one being last Monday's exam for Theology. My prof was all nice about it, though. I know it wasn't OK but at least he didn't get mad and lecture me on my study habits, at least. That would've been embarrassing.

I guess, all in all, this week has been alright. Perhaps I'm just saying this now because the worst (I think?) is almost over. Now I'm only left with two papers due this Friday and one final 30-minute oral exam (the Mother of all of my oral exams so far!) which will be on Monday for my Medieval Philosophy class. That's another thing I've been feeling sad about these days, as well. I've had the best Mondays in my life these past few months because of it, now I'm not having it forever.

I don't know. I've been feeling so many things at once these days.

[yuhknee]

or maybe I'm just too naive

Do people really need to earn other people's respect?

I get that thing about not doing unto others what you don't want others to do unto you, but I don't think that it's really necessary for someone to respect another just because that other gave the person a reason to do so. Just because a person is acting in a way that begets disrespect doesn't necessarily mean that you're obligated to disrespect him or her. I don't believe that there are some people who don't deserve respect while all the others do. I think, that no matter what happens, there is a need to respect everyone--the human person in all of us. We may not like some people's actions, we may condemn what has been done, but our actions don't define us. Respect, I think, means seeing the human person within all of us, seeing beyond our overt actions and understanding that each of us are all human beings deserving of the most basic rights any human could ever need. Respect for our very own humanity, I think, is one that we all have the right to.

Wait. I'm not sure where this is headed now.

[yuhknee]

Guess what! I procrastinated all day!

So, today I borrowed some books by Camus from the lib (The Fall, The Plague, Notebooks 1935 - 1942). Not that I regretted it, of course. (Not yet, I guess.) I mean, why would anyone regret reading Camus? That's just absurd. Reading Camus is always worth one's time; still worth doing in spite of the bugging presence of my thesis project, in spite of the tons of (Philo) readings that I've yet to finish reading (which, I should say, are equally interesting in their own right), in spite of myself constantly reminding me to get my shit together--nah, Camus is more important.

Anyway, here are some passages from his books that stuck to me (aside from the long one I posted right before this):

“Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death.”

“Your successes and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others.”

—The Fall

“At a certain level of wealth, the sky itself and the star-filled sky seem natural goods. But at the bottom of the scale, the sky recovers all its meaning: a priceless gift of grace.”

“We always have too low an opinion of ourselves. But in poverty, illness, or loneliness we become aware of our eternity. ‘We need to be forced into our very last bastions.’” (Jean Grenier)

“. . . Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.”

—Notebooks (1935 – 1942)

[yuhknee]

Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with earth! Then the expression of admiration springs forth naturally, that admiration they were perhaps expecting from us all their lives. But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial in between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short. If they forced us to anything, it would be to remembering, and we have a short memory. No, it is the recently dead we love among our friends, the painful dead, our emotion, ourselves after all.”

Albert Camus, The Fall

[yuhknee]

Should I Review my Previous Philosophy Classes or What (Note to Self: Yes, I Probably Should)

Earlier today we greeted our prof Happy Birthday in class. At some point before class started someone asked him how old he is now, our prof replying that he's 40. He quipped that people usually say that life begins after 40, or something like that, and the whole class laughed. I've heard that line so many times before and I never really paid much attention, but that time, I found myself reflecting on it. Somehow.

I guess what went on in my mind back then was something like: "no, life ends after college." I know it's a very narrow view in life and a lot of people might even just roll their eyes at me and think that maybe I'm just bitching around, whining like a spoiled brat who just doesn't want to face the world--and you know how it goes. I mean, during this whole time I've been feeling sad--or just lethargic; I don't know--I never really understood what it was that was making me feel sad, and I know that this has been an age-old problem of mine and I thought I've resolved this already at some point in the past year or so, but, for some reason, it doesn't seem as easy now to pinpoint the reason for my being sad. Maybe I am just a whiny kid after all. OK, maybe not a kid anymore in a strict sense. Just whiny.

I don't really know, it's just that these days I've found myself feeling sadder than usual--the thought of graduation day looming ahead making me feel as if time is gradually closing in on me. Once I'm done with school I won't really have anything to look forward to anymore. I mean, come on, what else is there to feel excited about? Work? That's fine. I'm happy enough with designing, but what else is there about it? It's not like it's my passion, or something. Like I've always said, I don't really know what my passion is, if I even have any. Wait 'till I marry someone and have kids? Then what? Work until I turn 60 and just wait for myself to die?

I don't know, but that's not exactly something I'll ever look forward to. These past few months weren't exactly hell, I suppose, if I consider the fact that I've always looked forward to each day of having school, of once again attending my Philo classes. I'm not so sure, but my Philo classes have been the only thing that's made my senior year bearable so far; the thought that it's finally Monday once again--yes, I love Mondays now--and my week's just about to begin. 

I really don't know, but I guess there's just something about endings that terrifies/saddens me so much. I don't know.

[yuhknee]

My Cup Will Never Be Full

I was struggling to sleep last night when somehow I ended up re-reading a paper I've written in class from last year. It was my first quiz paper in Philo102 (Philosophy of the Human Person II) and it was resting on a pile on my bedside table along with my other previous papers, gathering dust. I'm not sure what compelled me to read it up again but somehow it felt important that I do so. You know, as important as any little thing can get at 12 in the morning.

Our topic then was about Heidegger. The quiz question was, to roughly translate it in English: "Is it possible to be happy while remaining in a position of Angst and by keeping in mind the possibility of death? Explain."

My instinctive answer was yes, it is possible, but then soon enough I realized that it's not as easy as that. Thinking about the problem and reflecting on how it relates to my life made me realize quite a few things that I was sure I've always known, but I haven't really understood or clarified in my thoughts until then. I guess you can say it was some sort of an eye-opening experience. Well, I don't know--I guess my eyes have always been opened. It was something else that kept me from seeing what was in front of me, or what I've always felt; what was obvious and apparent.

To start off, let me say that my answer was (and still is) no. I was pretty much all over the place throughout the paper and I'm sure I wasn't really able to get my points across. I admit that reading it now made me somehow cringe at my quality of writing--not that by now, almost a year later, it's a hundred times better. My prof game me a C+ at least, and I guess that was good enough considering that a lot of my friends complained that he grades really low. (I don't really know how to gauge if a grade is low or high since I'm not much of a grade-conscious student, anyway). But, well, I'm still conflicted about what he thought of it. 

Anyway, here is my answer: I still believe that we can't be truly happy in this life. This is purely from my current standpoint (so basically this isn't what I exactly answered on my paper). I've tried to clarify it more now.

Some people go through life with the constant struggle of attempting to know or understand the meaning of life, if there is any. We go through our everyday experiences questioning—consciously or subconsciously—if there is any sense in all this; if all of us are going to die anyway, what’s the point of struggling in order to survive? What’s the point of loving or keeping the things we love when all this is going to end anyway? In Camus’ The Stranger, the main character sees death as a “dark wind” that levels all things in front of us, that renders everything else meaningless and pointless. Isn’t it a sad fact that we’re all going to die someday, that one day, all these traces of who we are, what we’ve done, the things that we’ve loved will all be gone?

I think that when we try to search for meaning in this life, what we’re actually doing, in a way, is that we’re trying to search for some sort of assurance that all these things will not go to waste; some sort of ground that can tell us that all these things we love, all of our experiences, all these beautiful things in the world will not be totally gone at all. When we love something in this world, we love it with some sense of urgency, with some mixture of sadness with the realization that all this is going to end, that our happiness won’t last.

When you love something, I think, you'd want it to last forever. And the sad fact about living is that nothing truly lasts. At least in the existentialist mind-view, course. Outside of Christianity, one can never find the sort of "assurance" that people look for when they ponder about the sense of the world around them. Perhaps it makes sense that, somehow, people cling to Christianity because with God, nothing is wasted, nothing is truly lost, and death is only a step to be taken.

I think my answer made me realize how much I truly wanted to live, that, perhaps, underneath a person's desire to just die and end it all is an overflowing want to not die--to live as fully as one can without this dark wind that in one instant can just throw it all away and make everything meaningless. I realized how I loved life so much. I realized that I love life so much that it hurts to only be given a taste of it. And I know it makes me sound so greedy when I say I'm probably only getting a taste of life, but in reality, isn't that how it truly is? Isn't that what desire means; to be unsatisfied by this infinite, unquenchable longing? 

[yuhknee]

This is Why I Hate Birthdays

Last night was fun. My roommate organized a kiddie party at McDonald's for her boyfriend (and our friend). There were tons of people who came--schoolmates, friends, family--whose faces most of which I doubt I've ever seen in my entire college life. Of course, I got to be (semi-) official photographer for the night, I think mainly because nobody else wanted to bring their bulky camera with them. Phone cameras did suffice for the most part to some people, though. But then what I meant was, well, nobody else took as much photos as me.

Anyway, it was nice going to such parties once in a while. We ate chicken, had caramel sundae, we even played parlor games and we even got birthday giveaways! You know! Like kids! I think I also made friends with a bunch of people. I mean, not friends friends; just talked to a few or laughed with a few because it was just that fun. And to think that most of us are stressed out with our own versions of Hell Week right now. Yes, we definitely needed that kind of break.

The sad part, I guess, was realizing that next year, around this time, when we celebrate our friend's birthday it won't be like this anymore--given that we'd even be as close as now to even bother with each other's birthday, of course. He'd be 21, it probably won't be in McDonald's anymore, there won't be as much many people, we'd be out of school and who knows, maybe he'd be married with my roommate by then?

Wait. That last part is highly unlikely though because they'd both still be in school by then (they're both extending to their fifth year; long story short, they enjoy learning). But you get the point.

And, well, it makes me sad. Leaving school, not having to go to my classes anymore, looking for work, earning my own money, paying my bills, not having my Philosophy classes anymore, not having to see the familiar faces of my classmates, being alone--

I've always thought I was so sure I'd prefer being alone my whole life, but now I just realized. . . maybe I really do want to be alone, but only with these familiar faces around.

Man, I don't wanna grow up.

[yuhknee]

some rants

I really don't know what to feel about being a graphic designer. I love designing, I really do. It may not be my passion, but I find a sense of accomplishment in finishing my work; in being able to render something artistically or much more clearly in a visual manner. Again, not that designing is my passion--I'm not even sure I do have a passion, to be honest--but I guess I love it enough to the extent that I'd be willing to do it without getting any payment in return, any sort of material or financial reward for my hard work. 

In an ideal world, that could probably work out, but, sticking to reality, I'm faced with the fact that I can't live in this world without money. It's funny really, but it seems like the more I try not to care about money the more I am enslaved by and for it. I need money for food. I need money to live. I need money to make more art. I need money for everything. What's worse is that I can't even do anything about it. 

The most I can do about it is complain.

I guess I've long resigned myself to the fact that I'm only good at pointing out problems and not at solving them. But anyway, here's another complaint. One other thing I don't like about being a graphic designer is that, in the real world, it's not just all about me. (Oh, and don't we just hate that?) Ideally, even if I can't exactly do design jobs without earning anything, I'd still be willing to design for a very low price. That would be nice if I'm the only one who gets affected by the consequences; if I'm the only one who eventually suffers. But the thing is, I'm not the only designer around. 

Behind me is a whole industry of art and design that constantly works hard and at times still do not get the credit that they deserve, an industry that gets underpaid by corporate bosses who think so little of what we do and look down on the kind of "work" that we have. These are the people who believe that our love for what we do is enough to keep us alive in this material world. These are the people who take advantage of our skills and exploit designers for their own, profit-centric needs. 

If I do a good job on a particular design and I agree on receiving very inadequate payment for it, it contributes to this sort of injustice. If I do that, clients will soon enough think that if they can get quality work for such a cheap price, then why opt for quality work that deserves more--and an adequate--payment? One designer is enough to perpetuate this kind of mentality among clients which could eventually spread faster than we know it. If I allow myself to be underpaid, it's the entire design industry that gets underpaid. It's not just about me now; it's a whole industry out there.

Another thing that I hate? It's when clients apologize for the cheap payment you get, accompanying it with a statement like, "But you had fun doing it, too, right? That should've been enough." It's as if you can never associate fun with earning money. Our work may not be as "hard" for you than it actually is because you think we love what we do. And yes, we do love our work, but that doesn't mean we don't deserve payment for the hard work we've expended on it. 

If you think it's unfair that we get to do what we love and even get payment for it, then I'm sorry that you didn't push through with what you wanted to do in life when you still had the chance and instead here you are now pinning your frustrations on people who actually love what they're doing. I apologize if that sounded too generalizing, but here's my point: please don't think we don't need to get paid just because we had fun doing it; a sense of accomplishment won't feed an empty stomach, nor will your words of praise be sufficient as payment for monthly rent.

And again, no matter how much I hate this societal structure that values money, I still can't do anything about it. Well, not in this lifetime. For more about this critique on this material structure of society and value-making or whatnot, please read up on Marx. It's too long.

[yuhknee]

I like keeping a notebook where I write down my tasks as checkboxes so I can fool myself into thinking that my life is organized.

[yuhknee]

I thought I should be writing a sort of letter to my future self by now, but I just realized that I write about my current condition occasionally and that already sort of functions the same way. I wouldn't know what to write to my future self anyway, except maybe something like "I hope you're still alive." And probably an even better version of myself right now. I honestly don't know how one becomes "better" though. I mean, how do I get any better or worse? Am I working through life on a scale of good and bad, excellent or mediocre, self-actualized or--I don't know--bummed out? I don't think I like to look at myself that way. Maybe I can just tell my future self something like "I hope you're whoever or whatever you feel like being: neither a better nor a worse version of yourself. Just you."

That should make my future self feel better.

[yuhknee]

I am interested in art, philosophy, literature/poetry, life, your favorite color

[yuhknee]

I think I kind of miss having Math, but only a little.

Like right after saying it I don't miss it anymore.

[yuhknee]

I am literally not accomplishing anything but I always feel tired.

[yuhknee]

I still believe that school (or the current educational system) ultimately hinders creativity and thinking. I think it's necessary that before sending our kids to school paying teachers to teach them what to think, children should first be taught how to think; otherwise, this may inadvertently prejudice them into thinking in a certain way without them--in a way--having a choice in the matter. That is how we make puppets; that is how we build robots. I believe that children are naturally curious anyway; they go out in the sun and wonder about the things around them even without other people telling them to do so. I think every kid experiences a certain degree of trauma when they're locked up in a classroom on such a beautiful day, when they should've been outside climbing trees, feeling the heat of the sun, or dancing in the rain. Instead, here they are cramped in these four walls, not allowed to speak, not allowed to play. People argue that school exposes kids to the world, that it's a good thing because they can meet other children their age and make friends. But I don't think we really make friends at school; we just find fellow sufferers.

[yuhknee]

Sometimes when I wanna relax I think about reading poetry. But then I realize poetry makes me think hard, and that stresses me out even more.