C.V. Sutherland's Blog, page 2

Ephemeral

It has occurred to me that everything we think is unique – and short-lived. For, technically, you can’t say what is on your mind – you only say what was. And by the time you do, your brain has moved on entirely, to ponder something new. Isn’t it brilliant? The gears of your mind are constantly turning at every moment of every day and they don’t ever stop.

For the record, I am writing this down in my notebook in the middle of the night because I was afraid of forgetting it in the morning. It’s magnificent, the human mind – oh, the things we think, so smart and logical and creative, but they fade as soon as they’ve appeared, like flares of light in dead space. Everything about us is ephemeral, down to the core. We’re constantly changing, and yet we’re unaware. It is beautiful. However barbaric or evil or deceptive we may be at times, we really are beautiful creatures.

Does it make you feel small, thinking about life this way? Hopefully. The only way we change is by putting ourselves in perspective to the rest of this big wide universe.

Wacky News: Edition 1

Today, I had an idea – not quite easily achieved, but certainly a good one in theory, if I do say so myself – and that was to create a new “series”, I suppose, displaying short summaries of wacky news stories that have appeared this week. This is my very first attempt, and I’m definitely not an expert researcher, but I thought I’d give it a go. Please comment and tell me whether or not you think I did a good job and if you enjoyed it. I always appreciate your input! I think, if I continue this series, then I’ll do five stories a week. Does that sound good? (Sources: NBC News, HuffPost)

- Story One: A friendly visitor arrived at an international flute competition in Denmark and landed on one of the competitors’ faces while she was playing – a butterfly! Surprisingly, she kept going despite the pressure, and it made for a truly outstanding performance. You can watch the video at today.com.

- Story Two: A man in Pennsylvania decided to call the police 3 times because he was merely lonely and wanted to be around other people – such as the paramedics who answered to his call. I think there are other ways to get company, don’t you think?

- Story Three: Just a few hours after he went missing in a car crash on the side of the highway, a New Mexican man called police and told them “he was lost and found himself surrounded” by donkeys! Can you believe it? Apparently, the full story is that he was drinking the night before and then did not remember anything after that, and that he might have been delusional. That makes a little bit more sense to me.

- Story Four: In Idaho, a group of teenagers were rolling around in a SUV – literally – because they decided to light the driver’s armpit hair on fire! Luckily, none of them suffered life-threatening injuries in the crash that followed, but they surely will not be attempting anything like that again soon!

- Story Five: A couple of passerby seemed very irritated when they saw a man washing his hair with mayonnaise in a public fountain! Needless to say, it caused quite the disturbance in Oklahoma City.

That’s all I’ve got in store for you in this week’s edition of Wacky News, as summarized by C.V. Sutherland. Stay tuned for next week – who knows what could happen?!?

Experiments

Now, I know I’m not exactly the best at science (history is more my forte) but sometimes I like to think about life as an experiment. In my mind, we’re the scientists in charge of our own little life, and we’re constantly mixing together different chemicals – ideas, thoughts, opinions, motives – and trying to find out what works and what doesn’t. For what is life, if not a jumble of colors and lights orbiting a whirring, churning mind? It is so beautifully messy and perfectly chaotic that we’re allowed to experiment at will. That’s what life is all about – finding the right combinations of components to create something that you want, that makes you happy, that suits you and pleases you and fits you just right like a good pair of jeans.

Yes, a good pair of jeans – that’s a perfect analogy.

Your life should be just like a good pair of jeans.

But anyways, the other day in my science class we did an experiment involving paper airplanes. We had to make model planes, position weights on them in various places, and fly them, testing their distance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not very good at making or throwing paper planes – I was never into that sort of thing – but I did think that the philosophical side of that lab was quite interesting. You know me, always trying to make a link between the real world and the world in my head. *chuckles*

So, just being myself, I thought about fuel and momentum and how much distance we could get out of a good, well-spent lifetime. The average human lives for over 70 years. That’s a lot of time to do a lot of things, if you spend it right.

How much mileage can you get out of your little paper airplane before it folds in on itself?

But I’m getting off track now. Yes. To conclude this post, I’m challenging you to ponder about good jeans and paper airplanes and what they really mean to you.

Bottle Cap

Why do people assume that the thing that comes undone is the weaker object?

This occurred to me as I was lying awake in my bed one night, my mind wandering freely as it tends to do when I’m trying to fall asleep. I was thinking that people seem to think that the bottle cap is weaker and less stable than the bottom of the bottle, when it’s probably just as strong in reality. The only difference is that it comes on and off. Is that why people seem to be wary of quiet or shy people – because they think they will come undone?

But the thing is, if it’s screwed on the right way, then the bottle cap is just as stable as the rest of it. The majority of the population is the bottle cap – something can remove them, weaken them, spill what’s inside. The question is, how tightly can you stay on, cling to what you know?

I think it’s very symbolic, in a way, to compare people to something that is not always strong, or certain. People tend to be overconfident about themselves – when you reduce them to something like a bottle cap, it changes the way they see things. It certainly changed the way I see things.

Thoughts & Words

Isn’t it weird, how sometimes a thought occurs to you but it’s not really expressed in words? Like, it is, but it also isn’t. And when you step back and take a look at that thought again, it’s suddenly in words? How can we express something without using the only thing we know how to – with words? And how am I able to record this strange phenomenon in words, when it wasn’t even in words in the first place? Why does the human mind have to be so confusing sometimes?

So basically, what I’m realizing now is that this whole post was composed of my thoughts about thoughts, and consisted of putting into words what was never in words.

Does that make sense?

Simplicity is Bliss

While I was writing this post, I thought about whether to call it Floating or Simplicity is Bliss. But then I realized – that little detail is just proving the point that I am about to make.

You see, my mother said something very wise to me today, as we were swimming in the pool under the evening sun, enjoying the last days of summer in idle pleasure. And then she said, “It doesn’t take much to stay floating.” I thought that was a very good point and that that could apply to a lot of different things in life, including life itself.

Just ask yourself – do the little things really matter? Does it matter if you buy the red bag or the purple bag? Does it matter if you buy spinach instead of lettuce? Does it matter if you forget to include something in your class presentation?

The answer is, no. What matters is that you have food in your belly, clothes on your skin, a roof above your head, and people that love and care for you, because some people don’t even have that much. I know that is going to sound super cliche, but it’s true, and there’s no denying it! We are lucky for what we have and what we usually take for granted.

Life is an ocean. There are sharks underwater waiting to feast upon you and there is seaweed that will wrap around your legs and pull you down, but if you can stay afloat then you can rise above it all, literally. It doesn’t take much to stay floating. In fact, it takes very little at all. Simplicity really is bliss.

 

sim·plic·i·ty

simˈplisitē/

noun
noun: simplicity






the quality or condition of being easy to understand or do.
Synonyms: clarity, understandability, straightforwardness, etc.



Thank you for reading this weekly post, and just to clarify, my blog is a place where my thoughts become accessible to you, like a public eJournal. Nothing more and nothing less.
Also, I’d like to add that as you can see, I’ve changed the appearance of my blog to something a lot more minimalistic. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the cutesy balloons of the previous theme, but I felt like it was time for a change. Let me know if you like it or not!

Pet Peeves

Hello everyone, and welcome back! I know there’s been a bit of inconsistency between my posts – I can go for almost a month at a time without writing, and I want that bad habit to cease. So I’m going to be making an effort not only to blog more (with the assistance of my new favorite app, Lift, that helps you set and achieve your goals) but also to try and connect with my readers more.

If you’ve been here since the beginning of this blog, in 2013, then you’ll know that most of my posts are about philosophical discoveries, I guess you could say. I haven’t really been writing directly to you guys straight from me, in this moment, sipping lemonade as my fingers fly across the keyboard. I would like that to change. I want to talk straight from me straight to you. Not that I haven’t been honest or direct before, of course. I just want to seem more real to you. Does that make sense?

Furthermore, I want to blog at least once a week, possibly more if I can. It may seem like a little bit of a stretch, especially to me since I know firsthand how hard it is to find stuff to blog about once all the exciting stuff has passed, but I think it will be good both for me and for you.

So, onto the point of this post: I’m going to be discussing my pet peeves (and trust me, some of them are really strange.)

Don’t you ever have those days where someone does something really ordinary and normal but it just rubs you the wrong way? I get them a lot, which means that every time I do I basically discover a new pet peeve that didn’t bother me before. It’s quite strange how it all works, actually.

Okay, let’s go.

- My first pet peeve, and one of the strongest, is when houses have those kind of faux-balconies that look like balconies but you can’t really go on them, you know? I guess it just bothers me because why have something if you can’t use it thoroughly? Why just put it there for decoration? Despite all my philosophical epiphanies I am quite a straightforward person, and it just bothers me SO MUCH! I think it’s kind of symbolic to me, to have things that can’t be used.

- I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone had this next pet peeve of mine, honestly, but people do it anyways. Can you guess what I’m talking about? Chewing loudly and with the mouth open. It’s just plain rude.

- Negativity. It’s okay to feel blue, but it’s not okay to darken other people’s skies too.

- And finally, my strongest pet peeve is when people know you’re afraid or insecure about something and exploit that for their own amusement. It’s not funny to take advantage of other people’s fears!

I think I could list about a thousand more but those are the main pet peeves that come to mind when I think of things that annoy me. And just for the measure, I’m not doing this just to rant. I’m posting these because I think that they’re all symbolic in a way, to things that matter more than just little habits people do in their daily lives. Uselessness, rudeness, negativity, exploitation. They’re all things we see in the bigger picture, and it’s funny how we can draw lines between that and our everyday lives.

Connect the dots.

The Struggles of Starting a New Book

Starting a new book is very, very difficult. Most people just assume that an idea bursts into your head, you sit down, and knock out a whole novel in a day, and the rest is just business. That’s not how it works at all, at least for me.

See, I have about 20 ideas in the works right now, churning in my mind, maybe a few rough chapters down on paper somewhere. But I can never follow through with them the way I did with Wildflower Dreams. I start doubting the plots I had created in my mind, turning them onto a different path, switch up little details and characters and BAM! The beautiful, perfect ideas I had in my mind instantly turned to mush once I wrote them down. So the question is, how do you preserve the gorgeous plots you start with? How do you make a perfect transition from notion to novel?

But I suppose this frustrating phenomenon is a bit of a blessing, too. Not only does it give you the opportunity to correct some errors in your original plot, but it has also taught me a few things about life in general. Things don’t always turn out the way you expect them to, and you just have to go with it, because who knows? Maybe you’ll end up in an even better place than before.

Anyways, thank you for reading this. I thought I’d shed some light on an analogy that has been on my mind quite a lot recently, and I will continue to work on shaping my ideas into books I want to write.

My Summer Checklist

Greetings, people of the Internet! I’m sorry I wasn’t able to write for so long, I was visiting family. But anyways, I thought I would share with you some of the exciting things I’ve been fortunate to do and see and experience this summer, and invite you to share what you’ve done in the comments! I would love to read them. So here we go!

- I went to South America, a continent I’d never been to. As you may know, I went to Peru with my grandparents, and it was a truly amazing experience. I loved every moment of it, and I blogged about what I did and saw right here on my website! I won’t go into too much detail because I wrote about it, but some of the highlights were Machu Picchu, the chocolate museum, horseback riding in the Sacred Valley, and more.

- I visited/swam in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and one of the Great Lakes!A lot of my summer consisted of spending time in Canada, where most of my relatives are, and I also got to see the Pacific Ocean while I was in Peru. I think it’s awesome that I was able to travel that much!

- I beat my family at mini golf. Well, to be honest, I tied for first place with my uncle, so I didn’t really beat them, but it was pretty fun nonetheless, and seeing as I’m the youngest child, also pretty impressive.

- I worked on building myself as a writer, a Buddhist, and an individual. I spent a lot of time working on my writing as well as my character and personality, and I think that traveling a lot was able to contribute to that. Also, as some of you may know, I recently became Buddhist in the spring after being intrigued by it for a very long time, and I spent a good chunk of time working on finding inner peace and happiness through chanting and meditation this summer.

- I challenged myself at band camp. I’m very serious about my French horn playing, and to help improve my skills I went to a band camp for a week. We practiced four hours a day and had to learn four songs in five days! I think that I am a much better player because of it and I had a lot of fun.

- I watched a ton of movies. I’m an avid moviegoer, and my mom and I like to go to the theater together. It’s our mother-daughter bonding time. So, naturally, I devoted a good chunk of my summer so far to films. Some of the movies I saw were Edge of Tomorrow, Begin Again, Snowpiercer, The Avengers, RoboCop, and snippets of A Chorus Line.

And I think that’s everything! Please keep in mind that these are the highlights of my summer so far, and also the reason I’m posting this now as opposed to the end of August, when my school starts, is because the climax of summer has already passed and I’m spending my remaining time at home.

Thank you for reading, and remember to leave a comment telling me a few fun things you did! Alright, bye guys!

Society

It has crossed my mind recently, and maybe this only applies to my generation but I thought it was important enough to share with everyone, that whenever people are feeling bad about themselves they point fingers at “society”.

I suppose they’ve got a point. When a few people have made you feel blue, it’s easy to pin the blame on the majority of people, especially when they share the same point of view or opinion. But what is society, really, but a larger version of people as a whole? We create society. We are society’s voice – we give it thought and feeling. So isn’t it in our power to change it?

On social media, people are always saying, “If only society didn’t make everything about perfection,” or, “Why does society always make us feel like we’re not good enough?” and so forth. But they’re just ranting aimlessly, to no one in particular, because like it or not, those people ranting are also a part of society, and by ranting about society they’re only making matters worse. They’re only emphasizing what the majority of people clearly already think. So what is the point of blaming society, pointing out society’s flaws? We are only blaming ourselves and pointing out our own flaws, after all.

So essentially, if we change our own opinions, we are also changing a tiny part of society’s. And if we just stay positive, maybe things will turn around and we won’t have to blame society, because someday maybe society will be on our side. And isn’t that what everyone wants?