Life is like Ocean

In the first couple years of me blogging, I think that I developed a skill of talking about things without actually talking about them. Unfortunately, I think that skill has slowly been fading away over time. I wonder if it correlates to any one thing in particular, but I think that there's a new kind of blog post that I'm falling in love with. It's the kind of post where I just throw down scattered thoughts in this space and call it a day. I did it at the end of the summer in which the Olympics happened, and more recently, at the end of this past semester, my penultimate at Stonehill. It's a kind of style that always, without fail, makes me think that I'm writing similar to how Explosions in the Sky writes about their albums on their website. Just thoughts leading into each other. Here's one of those posts, with a little bit of added meaning.

One album that I've been going back to every now and then is Tin Shed Tales, an acoustic set by John Butler. There's one conversation he has with himself/to the audience that results in him talking about evolution, and there's one thing he says before he plays his next song that I will probably never forget. "There's no point in having children if you don't have hope." I'm not sure if I want to have kids, and I'm not sure if I have hope, but that's not to say that I don't want to have kids or have no hope. I'm not saying at all where I stand on that, but I am saying that I completely agree with that sentence.

Another thing that I've been thinking about is reinforcement. It's simultaneously fascinating and horrifying how powerful reinforcement is. A laugh here, a body-language seal-of-approval there...little things that I guarantee people don't think about can go an incredibly long way. It is literally awesome - I am in awe of the power of reinforcements, and not always in the good way.

I've been giving a lot of love for the term "value," too, specifically that to which we place value. We place a ton of value on the culture of professional football. We tweet about a huge hit that sends a player out of a game, and then we go watch that play several times on YouTube. We attack players who sit out because they don't want to risk further injury. We place so much value on players who are willing to injure themselves for their team. Think about what that means for players. There are so many implications that come with where you place value, and this is another thing that people don't think about. Again, something that I'm not always glad to be in awe of. If I had a blog post about exclusively this, it would have been called "Value Game."

Earlier tonight, I was thinking about the song "Ocean" by John Butler. He also plays this song on Tin Shed Tales, and is the last song he plays. And it too comes with some words before it, and John Butler says that "Ocean" isn't done, it's not finished, and it's probably not ever going to be finished. I've thought recently about the phrase "figuring yourself out" and how I've always believed that there needs to be time and space for people to figure themselves out. And I thought to myself, that's what we do with our lives. We spend all of it figuring ourselves out. We're never finished figuring ourselves out. I don't think we ever can be. I'm not sure for how long I'd want to live if I thought we were done figuring ourselves out, if we even could be. So, life is like "Ocean."

"It kinda says all the things that I want to say about kinda everything, if I had to explain how I felt about everything, about myself, about you, about all the things that are going on in this world today, and all the things that I can't possibly even put into words, the infinite, wondrous universe that we live in, all its complexities, and all the things I don't understand, I wouldn't use any words, because I don't think words really suffice. I'd play you this song."