Love of Lights

To some extent, everybody has an aesthetic duty to themselves. This is something I'm coming to learn, but it's taking a very long time to fully accept. I view aesthetic and ethics as siblings -- perhaps even twins -- they are almost identical, except the one deals with questions we allot a greater sense of triviality (beauty, image) and the other we take more seriously (how to treat others, how to comport yourself). However, in terms of their argumentative structures, my hunch is that they are identical. Ethics has been important to me for quite a long time now -- I've long been searching for how to live the good life -- but I see now that I can't ignore aesthetics either, as the more "trivial" elements also play quite important roles in what we call "the good life". There are three examples that have been on my mind recently. The first is the aesthetics of your environment -- the places you spend the most time in, like your room. Historically I ha...

Love is a weird thing. A complicated, wriggling, twisting, gnarly thing. It doesn't have one shape or one dimension -- just when you think you've begun to understand it and its way, suddenly it morphs, suddenly it assumes a brand new appearance and you find yourself having to start from square one. This is the position I've found myself in. I was always used to love working one way, in one particular linear order, and I always expected it would have to stay that way. That order is: you see some cute girl and half-fall in love, you get to know her and full-fall in love, and then you try to figure out some way to worm your way into her life, get her to notice you, get her to love you. This is what I'm used to. This is what TV shows. This is what the books show. This is what the movies show. In fact, even as I write this and I have very good reason to believe it doesn't have to be this way, I still kind of believe it. I've seen a new order. There's a girl t...