When I was younger, I spent hours every day researching song lyrics. Not only because I wanted to sing along... also because I earnestly believed that every single song I listened to had a meaning. Not several possible meanings, not an implied meaning, not an interpretation, but one single solid and specific meaning, a no-nonsense factual paragraph that every song could be reduced to. I have given up on this ideal. Although I still find myself looking up lyrics of songs that make my heart pang, I no longer spend hours debating and analysing exactly what the song-writer meant. Even if I still fully believed it was true that a song-writer had one specific intention and meaning in mind when he wrote the song, interpreting laws and legislation has taught me that that meaning is impossible to extract. Somewhere deep within the layers and levels of my thinking and beliefs though, some small part of this ideology remains, and it seems that it rears itself in my social interactions.

 

I do not know if everyone is like me, if everyone wants there to be a specific meaning for every action, a reason for everything, a logical rational link. I do not even know why I still insist on looking for these things, when I know my own actions do not adhere to this logic. If my own actions do not adhere, and I want them to, then what of other people's actions, when they do not even attempt to function from a plateau of logic. I think I missed my calling, I should have pursued logic, not law. The two seem to be mutually exclusive.

 

My point follows. If I know my ideals, and have tried to give them up, then why am I constantly disappointed by people's actions when they do not adhere to the logical actions I had pre-mapped in my head? I know I like to be in control. I know some traces of my ideals remain. Are these the answers? I just seem to feel people's lacks more acutely than others, seem to be more sensitive to people's pitfalls, more expectant, more hurt, more disappointed. Over-sensitivity gets you nowhere, I have learnt this from observing people close to me. Being over sensitive merely leaves you vulnerable to the unwitting attack of the insensitive. And this world is populated by the insensitive, possibly because the over-sensitive do not survive. We perish.

 

I must conclude that I am not more open to attack, but more perceptive of it. I dance on the line between desiring ignorance and needing to know everything. Neither side is healthy, but I know which side can stop me feeling the way I do. I just can't let myself go there. They say you can't break the habit of a lifetime... I don't think that is true. But I do think you need to want to change it. And again I repeat, as it always echoes through my head, that I cannot choose ignorance. So I must be acutely aware of people's shortcomings. Having decided that this is inevitable, I am brought back to coming to terms with such shortcomings. And to forgive, I have always needed to understand. I do not believe that blind forgiveness, or blind faith, is true. Some might argue the complete opposite, but it is this belief that leaves me religion-less. Nobody who thinks like I do can believe in religion.

 

All I find are questions, and  I am still learning to embrace them. Please bear with me, I can accept I am learning. But other people preach forgiveness and tolerance to me, and do not see their own hypocrisy. I detest mine, and seek to correct it. And that is one more step than them.

 

"How darkly the dark hand met his end
He was withered and bony, exposed for a phoney
But we heed the last words that he penned
Haste to disgrace the traitor. Do not wait till later
I don't think that you've got to pretend
I see God in birds and Satan in long words
But I know what you need in a friend
So now when I leave you, I hope I won't see you"

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