Tastes like

Ok, so here’s one on love.

So there’s this analogy I subscribe to, passed along to me by a friend of mine. I’ve been calling it the lemon cake philosophy, and it’s the best advice anyone’s ever given me. I’m validating it on my blog because I think everyone should give it some consideration. Especially those of you who have bought into “out of my league” or “not her type.” I want to put some wind back into your sails.

It’s simple, really.

Imagine that the first time you try cake, you’re given a slice of chocolate cake. You grow up eating chocolate cake, and you come to love it.

Catch is, no one ever tells you that chocolate cake is not the only kind of cake there is.

One day, you go to dinner and the server tells you that cake will be served for dessert. After you eat it, you decide that this is the shittiest cake you have ever had.

That’s because it was lemon cake, and you didn’t even realize you enjoyed it. You were too focused on how unlike chocolate it tasted.

The message is this. When it comes to what people like, rather who people like, there isn’t always agreement between what they think they like and what they simply don’t have the experience to recognize they like.

So keep your head up and fight to show him what you’re about. Look to show her what she’s missing out on. But don’t feel bad that you aren’t a shitty chocolate cake.

Don’t give in to the world around you.

Play even if they say you’re too short.
Sing even if they say you’re tone deaf.
Dance even if they say you suck.
Eat even if they say you’re fat.

because one of these days there’s gonna be a dream and a girl they say you can’t have

and adequacy is a habit.

동수의 편지

나는 너와 함께 했던 시간들과 웃던 모습, 했던 말들 모두 기억에서 안 지워졌다. 다른건 다 잊어도 네 기억은 그대로다. 지금 이 순간에도 네가 떠올라. 건강하게 돌아올테니 다른 사람과 애인하지 말고 기다려줄래?

Spilling milk on ships that have sailed.

One of my favorite comedians, Louis CK, has a little commentary about how noone is thankful for what we have now in our high convenience society. He talks about how back when he was younger, people didn’t just use credit cards to buy whatever they wanted. If they wanted money they went to the bank, and then when they spent all of it…well that was it. You couldn’t do any more stuff. Too bad. One of my favorite relatives, my grandfather, once told me to treat every opportunity as if I were in a foreign country. What he meant was to treat my opportunities like I wasn’t going to get them again.

It makes me think about what kind of changes I’ve seen in my short lifetime. Obviously, everything has centered around shrinking the world. At first people thought it would be by means of internet, but now it’s become something even bigger than that. Multipurpose devices have made it possible to capture our most intimate and precious moments, moments that used to disappear as soon as they happened. What’s crazier, these moments don’t just stay hidden in our fragile memories until we die, we can share them with anyone with access to one of a million ways to connect to the internet. The other huge breakthrough would probably be in social networking sites that make it unnecessary to ever say permanent goodbyes to people. In a sense, I guess all of these advancements make the world a less lonely place. The best humans used to be able to do was leave legacies, little half copies of ourselves, to prove we were here at one point. Now, we can leave legacies and effectively add our collective memories and moments to this thing called the internet for everyone to experience some day. It’s like The Giver, except less sad.

What I can’t help but think is that I don’t know if it’s worth it.

Before youtube or facebook came along, I remember appreciating TV time slots. When Dragonball Z got moved from 4:30 to 5:30, I nearly had a heart attack from being so happy. When I said goodbye to my friends who were moving away, I said “Hey see you never. I’ll miss you, keep in touch.” and we never did, and we sometimes kept in touch. It moved me to appreciate my friendships and times with people that much more. Now, though, I see everyone living as if today can be experienced tomorrow and I hate that I’m buying into it. Youtube makes it easy to just put things off, facebook tells me I’m friends with randoms I’ll never see again and records me in pictures with people I met that night and won’t remember the names of the next morning upon friend request.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that we’re cheapening ourselves by making our most precious moments so accessible and convenient. We are the first generation to experience these changes firsthand, and I can see us transforming–taking for granted everything the generations before us held dear. What will happen to the generation after us that takes all of this in as normalcy. Do I want kids that will be so absorbed with updating the world with every little detail of their lives that they lose touch with what they’re naturally like? I don’t want my kids to be little drones who can’t enjoy things for themselves. Drones whose first compulsion is to report the highlights of their days to the collective facebook mind. Some things should be temporary and other things, I believe, should be enjoyed alone.

the Telepathic Pebble.

A few weeks ago, I discovered a lone pebble outside of a bar. I had consumed a copious amount of liquor, and I was squatting on my haunches pondering the meaning of life. It seemed like I was out there a long time; it was at least time enough that the drunkenness gave way to a clearer buzz. The great thing about tequila is that as the fog lifts from your mind and makes its way through to your kidneys, you allow yourself to think for a bit outside the box. And when you think a bit outside the box, you can feel some things that you may not have had the guts to let yourself feel.

I looked at the pebble and realized how frightened and lost it must be. I looked at the size of it, and tried to judge how old it had to be. You see, most people take for granted that stones don’t change much over our lifespans. If you were a turtle or a tree, you might be able to observe just a fraction of what a stone might experience in its lifetime. If you could live eternally, you’d probably see so much change between boulder to pebble to dust to sand to glass to other geological forms that stones would probably be much more exciting than any strictly living thing.

Anyway.

After speaking to the pebble telepathically for awhile, I realized that I was projecting myself onto it. I was asking the pebble how it felt to be separated from the boulder it was probably chipped from years ago. If it was hard to adjust to not having its friends around, and what body of water transformed it from a jagged rock into a smooth, friendly pebble. I wanted to ask it so many things because it seemed like the right thing to do. Take your wikipedia and parental advice or the counsel of your loved ones. Keep it. I’d rather talk to my pebble.

The pebble just listened to my thoughts, and it gave me license to do the same. For all the thinking I do, it wasn’t until I was drunk enough that 1) all of the unimportant background noise was relegated to where it belonged (the background), and 2) I was talking to an inanimate object telepathically, that I realized what’s been bothering me.

What did I see in the pebble? I saw a medley of things I saw in store for myself: isolation, loneliness, wisdom, a future, insecurity, patience, impatience, and above all, freedom (maybe too much) from the boulder it inevitably broke from. I also envied how content it looked. Even though I would hate to be immobile in front of a ktown bar stocked full of cigarette smoking morons for years before chance took me somewhere else, the pebble seemed perfectly fine where it was. (This thought also made me kick it away into the street…I’m sure it is looking content there as well, even in the face of oncoming traffic.)

So what’s this all mean? I’m afraid of graduation. Yes, I have my diploma and I’ve inherited an alumni network that has no rivals on the west coast. Cool. But where do I go from here?  Can I say I’ve graduated from studenthood when I still feel that I haven’t learned enough?

My whole life I’ve planned things. As impulsive and reflexive as I can be, I’m a tactician at heart. I play my life like chess or go, and I hate it when I feel that there is no correct next move. So what do I do from here? Sure, the plan’s always been to go into healthcare but what about the other aspects of my life? The aspects that USC allowed me to explore, nurture and substantiate on a multiweekly basis? I’m not even sure what the next step is to recreation. Bars and clubs for the rest of my unmarried life? Really? I respect my pebble sitting in ktown, but I don’t want that to be me. I have to move, but where do I want to go and how do I get there? And my network…the people I have held dear for 4 years, where have you gone, and how will you get there?

There is still so much left before I will be ok with being a pebble. What body of water will the world throw me into to straighten out my rougher edges? Pun intended: I guess graduation means I’m finally going to “rock” at life. But my new goal is to be a pebble.

The next entry will probably be about risk in romance. More specifically, whether it’s worth it. So far I’ve worked out that the answer is conditional to whether or not you are or are not an idiot.

If you are an idiot, you will believe that a girl may be the love of or your life. If you are not, you will realize that there are too many women out there to be concerned with one.

That said, I think I’m getting dumber.

Goodnight.

Today’s going to be another lucky day.

Diamonds

I recall a series of conversations I had with a certain friend a few years ago.  It was about the games he’d play with people, particularly women.  He talked about how to build up a certain image, how to use smoke and mirrors to make a particular impression on others.  A lot of women came and went with him, and I think I felt pissed.  No, not because I stand for the best interest of women or because I was jealous.  I just thought it was pathetic, and it looked to me like he had to hide behind artificial curtains to make people like him.  I was really skeptical.  I’ve had my share of people tell me that I come off cocky, but up to that point I had rarely attempted to make people believe that I was anything more or less than exactly what I was at that moment.  That’s changed, and I kind of want to turn things back.

Over the last few years, I think I’ve bought into the smoke and mirrors state of mind, mostly because you see that it brings the quickest results. First impressions are shallow, but they matter…a lot.  You go to a bar dressed like a bum and you aren’t getting served well.  We live in a world that encourages people to be a certain way.  Elegant, classy, and flashy at the same time.

I chase the same things that I used to: love, happiness, friendship, power, wealth, but my means of obtaining these things have changed so drastically.  I noted during my sophomore year of college that intermediate level sports are dominated by players that employ a lot of flash.  And1 ballers, trick shot tennis players, gimmicky Shodan kendo fighters that use a lot of fake outs.  The bottom line I saw was that flash gets you to “good” but you hit a limit.  If you want to truly become someone spectacular, you need to work on the basics.  Work on the fundamentals.  How’s that relate to what I’m talking about?  I think deep down I’ve known that buying into flash is a waste of time.  Get that suit, get that hat, work those abs, spit that game, spend that cash.  It all seems so trivial.  I need to go back to basics and focus on the things that will make me a person that’s worth knowing.

Dig deep into your reserves, Ike.  You’re not going quietly.

I treat my goals like my Earth in a world governed by gravity. The farther I get from them, the greater my potential energy. It gets to 1/2 emveesquared, I let myself fall at increasing velocity. Accelerating as I come crashing down to where I need to be. But sometimes the stars are just so attractive and Earth isn’t what I want to see.

Old Fashioned Lovin’

I’ve never understood the concept of having fun really.  Whenever my friends said things like, “Hey listen, you know just have fun right now.  Nothing too serious…” I thought for awhile that there was something wrong with me.  It sort of seemed like everyone else knew that “fun and nothing serious” was where it was at.  In recent months, I tried to change the part of me that turned that type of relationship away.  Because you know, I’ve never liked the idea of dating with an expiration date.  I’ve always been kind of straight old fashioned like that.  The only brush encounter I’ve ever had with love was an encounter where I gave everything I had and even a bit of what I didn’t, but you know what?  It was worth it.  Half the time it wasn’t fun, and it was always goddamn serious, but after a couple months of this “fun” business, I’ve realized that this “fun” business isn’t even fun.  Well, at least for me.  It’s surface, it’s shallow, and it feels like a waste of my time.

Listen, I’m not trying to endorse super long-term relationships against the odds or some crazy ideas about fate and marriage.  I’ve learned my lessons about that topic twice over.  However, if you’re going to be with someone at least commit enough to be able to look back on it and say wow, that one back then.  That was classic, it was classy.

Oh, but let me tell you that this comes with a disclaimer.  1) Be old fashioned to the wrong girl, and you’re gonna end up a chump.  Not only heartbroke, but broke too. Broke. as. hell.  Noone needs that shit, it’s a recession.  Avoid this one at all costs, you can mend your heart with just some time and tequila, but usually your wallet takes time + effort and you can’t drink on the job. 2) To be old fashioned in these modern times is bound to be disastrous…most of the time, but sometimes you’ll find one worth hanging on to.

Another thing, this doesn’t make me a hopeless romantic, just fucking stubborn when it comes to my own ideals.

And you know…I’ve found a measure of happiness sticking to them.