Deary me, back again! You lot are going to start missing updates if I keep posting this frequently... but of course I won't keep it up, because you know me and my highly unreliable posting 'schedule'. Basically I post when I feel like it and only occasionally when I don't, and it's so obvious which ones are the ones where people have asked me to write when I'm uninspired and I've just dredged any old crap up from the depths of my subconscious.
Just because it will annoy me: despite the fact that it says somewhere up there ^ that this was posted on November 27th, and despite the fact that that is technically true, as I haven't gone to bed yet it's still Saturday as far as I'm concerned. This is update number two of Saturday November 26th 2011. Suck it up.
Before you start reading past this point: right click on this link - right click! If you don't, you'll be directed away from the post, and I just want you to listen to the song while you read because I was listening while I was writing. Hopefully it'll set the mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HieNpwB3Eac
I was saying earlier today (yeah, that's right, today) about how you can't write some feelings down, but I think I was wrong. You can write feelings down - for me at least - as long as they're negative. I'm the queen of writing depressing stuff. I've got a million sad songs and poems and stories - and, as you know, blog posts (though they're censored a lot) - but only a handful of happy ones. I wonder why that is... my guess is it's because happiness is one of those things you can attempt to describe only if you feel it in every cell of your body, and even then it's difficult. Maybe it's because most of us have been sad more often than we've been truly happy - and that in itself is a sad concept.
I'm not saying everybody in the world is sad - not at all. There are many stages between happy and sad (in linguistics we call this gradable antonymy (or 'Grey's Anatomy' as I read it when I was writing an essay on it at half past two (2:30, to avoid confusion for my European readers) in the morning) and most people sit around the levels of contentment or satisfaction (not that kind of satisfaction. Get your mind out of the gutter). That's why you'd get a bit freaked out if you saw someone grinning inanely at you as they passed you in the street.
However, as creepy as a grin can be, a smile from a stranger can put you in a good mood for the rest of the day. While I was in town today, I literally bumped into a hell of a lot of people (it was very busy; I'm not just spectacularly uncoordinated) and only one of them apologized to me. I don't know, maybe they weren't British or something... some of you will be familiar with the concept of 'British politeness' (one of Britain's defining characteristics) in which we apologize pretty much whenever we can and most of the time when we don't need to. Excessive apologizing is certainly a habit of mine and I've lost count of the times I said sorry today, so it surprised me that only one person said it to me. People are rude, I was beginning to think; how can they think it acceptable to just barge past me and not say a word?
And then someone barged past me, turned round to look at me, said "Sorry!" and smiled at me, and I realised that however many rude people there are in the world, there are also so, so many nice people. For all the times we say "there are only two types of people in the world", we're basically talking rubbish. There must be millions of different types of people in the world.
I've made friends here in York, but I have no doubt that I'd have made friends wherever I'd chosen to attend university. I could go anywhere in the world and make new friends - as can everybody else. That means that wherever you go, there are people you consider 'nice'; people you'd want to spend time with; people like you. And there are also people you wouldn't touch with a bargepole, but they have friends too, right? Most of them, anyway. Consider how many different types of cliques there were in your school and then multiply that by whatever ridiculous amount of people currently live in the world and how many types of people does that mean there are? Way too many to comprehend. But imagine - if we could meet everybody in the world, imagine how many friends we'd have!
Everybody seems to be full of stories about how the world is full of evil - and yes, maybe it is, if you look in the wrong places. I once heard someone say that you find dodgy people in dodgy places and though he was joking, I think there's a certain truth to it. Just as there are people with whom you find yourself congregating, there are places where you and your you-alikes congregate. Similar people seem to like similar places, to a certain extent. So maybe the world has its evils, but it's not full of it. You can find magic too, wherever you look.
I'm lucky, because I have found so much more magic than evil throughout my life to date. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way, but that's only because the evil things have a way of sticking around, of being the most memorable things when really they don't deserve any more of your time or mental capacity than they demanded of you when they were happening. Somehow evil manages to push magic out of your head. But don't let it! Remind yourself of everything wonderful you've ever been lucky enough to experience; remember every person who's ever loved you; reflect on every random smile that's ever brightened up your day. Sometimes magic is huge and it hits you right between the eyes, and sometimes it's small, and you don't even notice it there until you have nothing else to notice. But it's always there. And the people who love you... so are they.
And just in case you were curious to see where my 'on-the-go' post was written this afternoon, I was sitting right there on the bench (the little brown bit near the left hand side of the photo).
I have a thing about ruins of buildings, especially ones like this. It's just the fact that stone is something that seems unbreakable, so solid and strong, and yet the weather, something everyday, something to which nobody really gives any thought most of the time, has done the impossible and broken it. Kind of makes you feel small, doesn't it?
That's why that's one of my favourite places in my beautiful, historical city. You jealous?
Molly x
Just because it will annoy me: despite the fact that it says somewhere up there ^ that this was posted on November 27th, and despite the fact that that is technically true, as I haven't gone to bed yet it's still Saturday as far as I'm concerned. This is update number two of Saturday November 26th 2011. Suck it up.
Before you start reading past this point: right click on this link - right click! If you don't, you'll be directed away from the post, and I just want you to listen to the song while you read because I was listening while I was writing. Hopefully it'll set the mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HieNpwB3Eac
I was saying earlier today (yeah, that's right, today) about how you can't write some feelings down, but I think I was wrong. You can write feelings down - for me at least - as long as they're negative. I'm the queen of writing depressing stuff. I've got a million sad songs and poems and stories - and, as you know, blog posts (though they're censored a lot) - but only a handful of happy ones. I wonder why that is... my guess is it's because happiness is one of those things you can attempt to describe only if you feel it in every cell of your body, and even then it's difficult. Maybe it's because most of us have been sad more often than we've been truly happy - and that in itself is a sad concept.
I'm not saying everybody in the world is sad - not at all. There are many stages between happy and sad (in linguistics we call this gradable antonymy (or 'Grey's Anatomy' as I read it when I was writing an essay on it at half past two (2:30, to avoid confusion for my European readers) in the morning) and most people sit around the levels of contentment or satisfaction (not that kind of satisfaction. Get your mind out of the gutter). That's why you'd get a bit freaked out if you saw someone grinning inanely at you as they passed you in the street.
However, as creepy as a grin can be, a smile from a stranger can put you in a good mood for the rest of the day. While I was in town today, I literally bumped into a hell of a lot of people (it was very busy; I'm not just spectacularly uncoordinated) and only one of them apologized to me. I don't know, maybe they weren't British or something... some of you will be familiar with the concept of 'British politeness' (one of Britain's defining characteristics) in which we apologize pretty much whenever we can and most of the time when we don't need to. Excessive apologizing is certainly a habit of mine and I've lost count of the times I said sorry today, so it surprised me that only one person said it to me. People are rude, I was beginning to think; how can they think it acceptable to just barge past me and not say a word?
And then someone barged past me, turned round to look at me, said "Sorry!" and smiled at me, and I realised that however many rude people there are in the world, there are also so, so many nice people. For all the times we say "there are only two types of people in the world", we're basically talking rubbish. There must be millions of different types of people in the world.
I've made friends here in York, but I have no doubt that I'd have made friends wherever I'd chosen to attend university. I could go anywhere in the world and make new friends - as can everybody else. That means that wherever you go, there are people you consider 'nice'; people you'd want to spend time with; people like you. And there are also people you wouldn't touch with a bargepole, but they have friends too, right? Most of them, anyway. Consider how many different types of cliques there were in your school and then multiply that by whatever ridiculous amount of people currently live in the world and how many types of people does that mean there are? Way too many to comprehend. But imagine - if we could meet everybody in the world, imagine how many friends we'd have!
Everybody seems to be full of stories about how the world is full of evil - and yes, maybe it is, if you look in the wrong places. I once heard someone say that you find dodgy people in dodgy places and though he was joking, I think there's a certain truth to it. Just as there are people with whom you find yourself congregating, there are places where you and your you-alikes congregate. Similar people seem to like similar places, to a certain extent. So maybe the world has its evils, but it's not full of it. You can find magic too, wherever you look.
I'm lucky, because I have found so much more magic than evil throughout my life to date. Sometimes it doesn't feel that way, but that's only because the evil things have a way of sticking around, of being the most memorable things when really they don't deserve any more of your time or mental capacity than they demanded of you when they were happening. Somehow evil manages to push magic out of your head. But don't let it! Remind yourself of everything wonderful you've ever been lucky enough to experience; remember every person who's ever loved you; reflect on every random smile that's ever brightened up your day. Sometimes magic is huge and it hits you right between the eyes, and sometimes it's small, and you don't even notice it there until you have nothing else to notice. But it's always there. And the people who love you... so are they.
And just in case you were curious to see where my 'on-the-go' post was written this afternoon, I was sitting right there on the bench (the little brown bit near the left hand side of the photo).I have a thing about ruins of buildings, especially ones like this. It's just the fact that stone is something that seems unbreakable, so solid and strong, and yet the weather, something everyday, something to which nobody really gives any thought most of the time, has done the impossible and broken it. Kind of makes you feel small, doesn't it?
That's why that's one of my favourite places in my beautiful, historical city. You jealous?
Molly x
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