Idealism and a characteristic rant

Do you ever want a different life? I don't mean just changing a few things around, like your grades or a particular friend: we need to feel like we have something left to strive for, or our lives take on an unhealthy inertia. No, I'm talking about something on a slightly grander scale. Do you ever want to wake up in the morning and be completely different, and say completely different things and talk to completely different people?

And do you ever try to have a different life? Do you ever wake up in the morning and decide you're another person? Do you ever realise, halfway through the day, that there's no point in and no hope for changing?

If your image is one you dislike, if you find yourself constantly being restricted by the face by which others know you, then you no doubt understand what I mean. This is an entirely different kind of ambition, more of a desperate longing, and is no healthier than perfect, permanent satisfaction. Either you do change completely, and then, most likely, discover that this new facade allows for no more freedom than your previous one, or you fail miserably and are forced to continue in the same vein as always, a little more of your self-confidence shattered.

I am a dreamer. No one (except Noran...yeah, I don't understand it either) will accuse me of being a realist. I do not know if my dreams are what others might consider possible, feasible, and yet I have a strange confidence in many of them. One of my dreams is to be able to live at ease with the world, without worrying about a stupid, oversimple image. It sounds a lot easier than I believe it to be.

Thing is, we as a species are convinced that simplification is the key, because understanding complicated things is a lot more difficult. And sometimes this seems to be true -- no one takes the long way around on a math exam.

But there is a limit as to how simple something can be made. Politics often divides the world in two, allowing for subtle differences of opinion to be lost. And how often, when someone asks you a question, do you really listen and consider before spewing out a canned answer -- an incredibly simple answer already prepared that requires little actual brain activity?

Numbers are simple entities that can be used for complicated things. Humans are complicated creatures that cannot comprehend anything less simple than a novel of 200 pages.

I implied that I wanted to be different, but that was less accurate than either of us suspected at the time. I don't want to be different. I want to be free.

This one's for you.