Yesterday, I spent a good hour of my time talking to an acquaintance about everything he wanted to talk about... in 80% Mandarin and 20% English! *big smile * Anyway, our conversation led me to think/observe/realize many things I have stopped thinking about since pretty much the beginning of the semester.

One thing, is higher purpose. As I get to know more and more people in a deeper sense, I find that many people at my age lack higher purpose. In fact, people who you'd think would think about these things, usually don't, and the people you least expect to have these ideas, actually have a much more thought out answer. I go to a business school. My environment is surrounded by competitive, ambitious, rich, and worldly kinds. I would think that these people would have thought about their higher purpose much earlier on in comparison to other people. Because everyone here expects to be the next big money makers of our time. Many of them already have the money, the connections, and the education to make things possible. However, I find that this is not the case.

The rich people here, often assume they will do good things in the future. A vast, far away, and abstract vision with absolute uncertainty. And people let uncertainty prevent them from thinking.
Friend: "我覺得你是一個很有理上的人" - I think you are an idealistic person
Me: "真的嗎？ 那你呢， 你有沒有利上？” - Yea? And what about you, do you have ideals?
Friend: “當然有了!” - Of course!
Me: ”什么里上？” - So, what are your ideals?
Friend: I just know that in the future, I want to help people.
Me: Have you thought about how you want to help them?
Friend: [then starts to talk about his life, how his father is a great surgeon, and how he has considered being different types of things that could help people, and stated how they weren't for him (Doctor, Politican, etc). Thus, he decided to come here with this belief] "So I decided to choose business. '有錢做可以幫人， 找錢， 是最好的辦法'"  - If I have money, than I can use it to help people, so making money is the best strategy.
Me: So, have you thought about what you want to do with this money to help people?
Friend: [starts to name all the possibilities in vague terms - "you can start a foundation or something like that"] i.e. Not Really.

So the jist of this conversation was, do you have ideals? Of course! Have you thought about what to do with them? Not really, I think about it half-assedly, because really, who knows what's going to happen in the future anyway? My ideals can change, my situation may change.

Although I didn't ask him, my next question would have been. So... what do you live for?

I wonder how he would have answered. Does he live, to live? Does he live for something/someone? If my second question was, do you live for a higher purpose? His answer would have been, of course! Have you thought deeply about your higher purpose? Immediate answer - of course! Ultimate answer - not really.

If not knowing what the future brings, stops you from knowing something as simple as, what do you live for? What is really going on? I can come to one of two conclusions, 1) He's lying, he doesn't live for a higher purpose, he lives for himself. His falsified ideals are just defense mechanisms to keep his superego image in tact. Or the more frightening conclusion. 2) People stop thinking, because they don't know what will happen in the future. Everyone is just focusing on the present. They just remain content with an answer that isn't even an answer, just a response that keeps people from asking further questions (including themselves).

Plato says, in the voice of Socrates, “‘as people come to rely on the written word as a substitute for knowledge… [They] cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful’ and because they would be able to ‘receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,’ they would be ‘filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom”.

It sounds off topic, but Socrates was afraid that people would rely on texts as a substitute for knowledge. They will just take in information handed to us on a silver platter, and just take it as it is. Receiving information without proper instruction, we are then filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom. In this case, we are not relying on texts, we are relying on something even more dangerous. People are relying on a bunch of false promises that they make to themselves, to try and make themselves feel like they are good people out there to do good things. But in truth, they are just taking a common cause, as if out of a text book, re-quoting it, and claiming it to be their own. They are lying to themselves. They are filled with the conceit of ideals, instead of true ideals.

What do you really live for? Do you really know? Do you really have a higher purpose? It's okay if you don't, or if you don't know yet. But don't lie to yourself. Don't let uncertainty excuse you from not knowing what your true  higher purpose is. It's one step closer to knowing yourself, for who you really are, and what you stand for. Why wouldn't you want to know?

Confucius said:
"只學習，不思考，就會感到迷惘；只思考，不學習，就會有危險。”-孔子"
"He who learns without thinking, will be lost in his learning; he who thinks without learning will be in danger"

Wow... could this be it? Am I really at a true state of inner peace?
Honesty (to yourself), trust, the ability to let things go, move on, find happiness, and building genuine relationships..
Hmm.. that was fast.. what am I going to do with the rest of my life guys?

Hey everybody

Sorry... I have been MIA for a while huh? I haven't even had time to check Xanga! Lol... and you all know I'm all up on that... Well after Carol.. there's just birthdays up the @$$ now! lol... (in order now) besides my own, Danny C. (4/7), David Thomas (4/13), Pan Pan (4/11) and today! Lina and the birthdays to come... Holly, Susan, Jesse, Doggy (Billy Wong), the list goes on.. >.<

so yea.. I am too busy to write about anything... but! I will share some of my happiness >.<

it's my cousins birthday! let me make a big deal out of it because.. well because i love her and i always do things she hates like... getting her pink roller blades >.<

Happy Birthday Carol Can't wait to to see u >.< I will be aging with you soonnn

Who am I now? The reflection in the mirror is walking further and further away, but I am still standing here.. watching me go.

Shattered glass, pieces of my reflection
Scrape my body. Crying on my knees
I pick up the pieces in the desert sand.
Singing to you - a song stolen by the wind -
Never reached your ears. Instead
Broken mirrors plea at your doorstep,
Crystalized sin in your hand
Bemoaned and frozen, a faint light
Glows as it touches your skin
Traversing mountains of ice,
Secrets of ruins rumored tombs of promises
Encrypted in a writing you'll
Never understand. Braille embedded
With whispers of colors in music
Painted on an irrevocable canvas,
I sing to you - a song stolen by the wind.

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities - Collage - Morph

GumGum: So what are you doing anyway?
YumYum: I'm talking to you and playing with my light saber
GumGum: *blink*
YumYum: Wait a sec, that sounded really perverted, I didn't mean it that way O.o

KJ: why is it talking to you makes me feel nice
KJ: hmm i wouldn't say weird
KJ: i like you prima, very open and laid back when talking. to me at least...
CrazyCat: that's how we do
CrazyCat: you're the same way too no?
KJ: yes...
KJ: do you not see it?
CrazyCat: lol if you were fakin it i'd sure be convinced
KJ: i don't hold back on my words
KJ: hell yeah yo
KJ: if i dont like you
KJ: you would know it
CrazyCat: i'd be scerred ;p
KJ: i treat everybody like how i want to be treated
KJ: ill give you my respect first
KJ: if you screw it up too bad for you
KJ: you lose kj as a friend biatch

Hey guys call me cliche, but I've been wanting to write, and what better to write today than to write about love.
Today I will write with no boundaries only limitations. Today I spoke with an old friend. An old old friend. Someone who once liked me for a... long enough time, few years or so. Someone I'd consider a great friend, no matter how not close we are, it is always a nostalgic feeling I have when reacquainting this old friend.
I have changed. He has changed. I have changed, I am able to be more open. He has changed, he has become more closed, but today we held a bond. A bond where we simply spoke, in friendliness and concern for one another. Without fear of the other's opinion, without judgment, and without any fake-ness. In speaking to him, my mind journeyed through a sea of memories, and have realized how much I've changed since we met those many years ago.

Love. It is a word that has a meaning to me now. A concrete and unchangeable meaning.
The love I have for my old time friend, is one I've shared with many. As our lives divert in different paths, we sometimes look back, and when we meet again, there is an unspeakable joy that exists only with that person. And although I may not speak to him all the time, as he to me, somewhere in the back of each other's minds, it is well understood and quite obvious that we are good friends who care for one another, and wish each other the best. This is a love I sometimes forget exists within my life. Sometimes, they'll find me, when they are heartbroken, or bored, or stressed with life. Sometimes I look for them too. And we can talk for hours. I have a friend, I see once every 3 years. But when we do see each other, it is the same, unspeakable joy. Feeling this near valentines, made it very special

Then there's the friends and family love. haha.. But i credit you guys enough you guys all know by now how much I love you little douche bags And it grows stronger as time goes by. Maybe one day, you guys will become the old time friend, and maybe you'll come back But my heart will always have a place for the friends I've loved.

And then, there is that other love. In truth, I have realized.. that I have loved in this way less than I originally thought, which now has a refined and potentially evolving definition. Although all love to me in the end, is truly one and the same. This subbranch is just so enticing. Walking down the street, and suddenly I walk through a flashback, it's winter, yet I am drowned in the essence of spring, where I feel the warmth of the sun burning on my arms as a shadow of an image smiles beside me. Sometimes, the sound of his laughter, miles beyond me, can be clearer than the teacher who's talking 5 feet from me. That kind of love.. you know.. where I can even smell him sometimes, randomly, when I think too much, or when someone uses the same cologne. The type where you can't sleep well without saying goodnight to them in your mind, catching yourself calling his name, wondering if he hears your voice somehow. Staring at the phone and waiting for the call to come. And even when it's over, wish him the best. Knowing he's happier without me, I choose not to bother him. Grieving and hiding, trying to cause them the least pain possible. Staring at the screen name and afraid to say anything. When he finds me, a rush of emotions come and I don't know what to do with them, trying my best to end the conversation nicely. Mustn't make him think I hate him, or still love him. Oh but it's just so hard, he has encompassed me. I have consumed his being into my own. 此愛綿綿無絕期, the traces of his existence flow in my blood, and I grab a drink sometimes and just cry.. occasionally as the months, years ... just go by. A silent pain and happiness, a love that bears more weight than my own, put to the side. For it's become a love that needs to be another type of love, and it is forcefully done, out of love. That kind of love. Where logic and rationality hold no place. Where all values exist in the other's happiness. Where selfishness tries to get the best of you, where you find yourself in someone else's eyes and vice versa with complete comfort between each other, and you can spend days with each other and not be even slightly irritated. Talking about everything, doing absolubtly nothing, and being completely content with what's in front of you. Knowing exactly how he is, as he knows me. Catering to ideals. Holding on and letting go. A love like so.

Woah.. this is WAY too long for me to edit... but Happy V everyone may you experience a love as cherishable and priceless can be. For all of my experiences mean the world to me. Bitter or sweet, or both, there are no mistakes in bonds, only in human nature. Anyone 能夠動你的心的話 is worth it all, whether it be the cousin that sits there and can talk to me till the break of dawn, or be you the lucy crying her eyes out as I left for college, and then got some beef lol, and then wrote letters to me, whether it be like when I give you a rose on V-day, and then you throw your tantrum on me, and then love me for it years later, and even remember that the rose was yellow, or be you the old buddy who spent 2 hours talking to me when we barely talk in person at all, be you the person who is gracious enough to read me. Be you any person who I have loved, love, or tried to love. Or the person who once loved, love, or have tried to love me. May the force be with you man.. sorry .. it was kinda fitting.. but this post was for.. everyone above. Thank you for teaching me so many lessons in life. I am so fortunate for all those who have come and gone. My heart always has a place for you.