Cynicism has always been a part of my nature. I’m prone towards disappointment (often times due to my own over-buildup of events in my mind) and I feel the cynicism is a survival trait. Expect the worst and all that goes right in the world comes out as a pleasant surprise. Think positively and any failure is seen as a set back, rather then an expected result. I don’t want things to be negative and I certainly don’t want to fail. I want to be continually pleasantly surprised in this life. There have been many surprises as of late in my life and I am over-joyed at that. Working a job that I love is an amazing feeling. I feel productive there. I work with people I like. I work in a field that I enjoy. I can see life as a good thing - something where those things I want can be accomplished. It makes me feel like the effort I’ve made and the work I’ve done have actually paid off in some regards. This is an immensely good feeling - however there is that side of myself that feels as if I’m setting myself up for yet another great fall. I don’t want this to be a story of self-fufilling prophecy. I’d like to think I am capable of seeing those things that are starting to go astray due to the weight of the world, and if I can see them I can prepare for them, I can change them, and where I can’t make change I can accept things for what they are, examine all sides of a thing and adapt myself accordingly. We all fall down. Life is filled with times where we are knocked on our asses. The measure of a person is not how well they maintain their balance in the face of adversity - the true measure of a person comes from the fall and how they get up. There is nothing wrong with accepting defeat as long as we learn from it. We all have limitations and we must accept those. Until we are willing to accept those things how can we move forward? How can we truly know where our real strengths lie and how to effectively use them to craft the world around us. We will fail. Failure is a certainty. This is not cynicism. But even in failure there is hope. There are lessons to be learned and in learning these lessons we become stronger. The whole becomes greater. We adapt. We survive. In understanding this, in truly being willing to close our eyes and take the fall knowing that in the end we will get up, stronger, more focused, more determined, and much more a part of the whole we have then succeeded. Failure is but a bridge to things greater. It is in these moments we find out greatest successes. It is in these rare moments of change, those moments where we stand at a turning point in the road that we discover ourselves. One must be willing to look in the mirror with eyes wide open - look past the masks that we have built up amongst friends, amongst strangers, amongst love, amongst hate, amongst fear - see through these disguises we wear so well and see the fallible human. See the person who is capable of being wrong. See the person who is capable of great injustice and cruelty. See the person who hides secret prejudices and harbors desires too secret to wear in public. See that person and accept that person for in the person is someone filled with great compassion, great understanding, great love, great wisdom. We are the beast. We are the shadow. We the better angels of the light. One is never whole unless one accepts both sides in to themselves. Open the door and invite yourself in. Love yourself for your strengths as well as your weaknesses. Accept all sides in to yourself and then filter them through you so that you may understand, so that you may see, and so that your mind can truly be your own - not a mind pulled or shaped by others, but one you have crafted through acceptance of those things you can and cannot do. Do not, however, resign yourself to failure. It takes a brave heart to hurl itself against a wall knowing the wall will never break. Knowing that after the heart falls silent the wall remains. Live your life for you. Do not let the impossible make you feel small for you are a giant as long as you believe it to be so. Look up in to the night sky, see all the stars, see the great vastness of time and space, and just for a moment allow yourself to feel bigger than it all. Just for one second stand up and shout out to the universe the most simple truth there is: “I am.”
Tiger Balm really is my best friend. My lower back is pretty well on the messed up side. This is from youthful injuries and just other long term stupidity on my part. The point is somedays it gets really tight and painful. Somedays it absolutely locks up to the point where I can’t bend it. Normally a nice hot shower or a heating pad loosens it up so that it can function. Aspirin dulls the pain some. However Tiger Balm burns the pain right out of me. It gets the muscles nice and relaxed as well so that it makes it easier for me to function.
Sure, I need to get back in to my hard core stretching to keep my back at its most flexible, but Tiger Balm really is magic in a little jar.
Saturday night I went down to Cinemapolis to see Night Watch. It’s a Russian film that was released a couple of years ago there, but has just been released in to limited distribution under the Fox Searchlight Pictures label. I had seen some previews for it last summer and had been highly intrigued by it. It’s the first movie in a trilogy (Day Watch, the second movie was released in Russia in 2005, Dusk Watch, the third movie will be released this year in Russia) about the classic Good vs. Evil. It also has vampires, witches, shape shifters, and a kid with a perpetual nose bleed.
This movie certainly lived up to my expectations. In fact it exceeded them. It’s a subtitled film, but they worked the subtitles in to the movie. In some scenes where the subtitles are in red they sort of drift away like blood in the water. It’s pretty clever and ads to the entire feel of the film. Continue on to read more with some minor spoilers.
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I was supposed to head off to Rhode Island today, but due to some issues there it wasn’t a good time for me to go. Since that trip was put off I decided to just spend the day relaxing. Well part of that relaxing included putting on the webcast of the Niagara v. Beimidji state hockey game for the CHA championship (and a bid to the NCAA tournament). I spent a lot of time pacing around my room while listening to this game. It was a tense one. Beimidji’s goalie was on fire. He was stopping all kinds of craziness that was thrown at him which gave them enough momentum to start scoring on a rather icy performance by Niagara’s generally good goaltender. Niagara tried to come back late in the third, but they didn’t have enough to force an overtime and Beimidji won. Yes, I was quite dissapointed. However I hope they do well in the tournament. If my boys can’t be there then I’d like to at least see someone from the CHA do really well. It’s a longshot, sure, but I love the underdog.
I’ve been sitting in the dark listening to my growin music collection, just sort of relaxing while waiting for the pick me up that will be tonights 6th season of the Sopranos premiere. I’ll enjoy a little high definition viewing of it too. This should certainly help lift my mood back up. The growler of beer isn’t hurting in that regard either.
And finally, I’m aware the server is still slow. I’ve eliminated a lot of possible problems and am left with a mystery on my hands. So I’ll continue checking that out - but not tonight. My brain is done for the evening.
So after a colossal waste of time and effort I learned what I thought was the cause of the server slowness wasn’t the actual cause. I’m going to have to continue the investigation in to that. Though, the plus side of the days of nothing actually working was that it got me to upgrade both PHP and MySQL. Those two are once again playing nice with one another. Now if I can find out why the server is butt slow to respond to things (which is annoying because the Webmail interface is faster than ever - so there is some weird calls going on somewhere involivng MySQL or PHP or some combination there of). Well at least I’ve eliminated a bunch of potential causes, so maybe I’ll discover the problem in due time.
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