Mediocrity.

me•di•o•cre mē″dē-ō′kər►

Somehow somewhere in the middle of all of this I have achieved mediocrity. Odd isn’t it? In all my arrogance, in all my pretensions to being for lack of a richer vocabulary “better”. I have reached the limits of what my mind can comprehend. I think I consistently overestimate what it is that I can accomplish. I bite off more than I can chew and if I don’t collapse under the crushing overwhelming feeling of it all, the disappoint as I burnout and am unable to conquer my demons says it all.

I might have fallen in love.

An unfortunate accident. A miscalculation. An error of cognition and emotion. Sad isn’t it? We could have stayed friends and have been the better off for it. These paragraphs are connected in only that they serve as a medium for me to connect thoughts. Thoughts so far apart in form and subject that their only connection being the ego that ties its subjective experience together melded in a “self” that can observe itself. Something troubles me.

These days I’m not quite sure what it is. It unsettles me. It’s not the friendship that ended that troubles me. It’s not the love that might have been found. If it could have it would have, and it didn’t. These things bother me, but that isn’t what’s bothering me.

Existence is remarkably unexciting. Did you know that? A significant portion of our lives, “living” is spent doing unremarkable things. Brushing your teeth. Taking a shit. Showering. Pondering on where you left your shoes. Of course you know that. You know it so well that it doesn’t even register anymore. The thought processes so ingrained they are relegated to the subconscious and unworthy of analytical examination. Habits.

Then tell me is excitement so important?

Adrenaline, serotonin, testosterone, steroids, dopamine and a host of many many other hormones that don’t have sexy or catchy names is the pursuit of stimuli so important? Apparently it probably is for the being as a whole but not so for the conscious mind.

Food then? Shelter? Security? Water? Sex? Stimuli that’s all it is. A response. A casual reaction. Trapped in the model of a mechanistic world.

I wish I was more religious. I would have found semi-solace in the comfort of my supposed beliefs. Questions such as these would have found a different mode of thought. Then again? I suppose? I couldn’t be anything other than I am. There is no alternative universe right?

Return then to the girl. Why a girl then? Why this individual? She had weird feet. Her smile seemed weird in photos sometimes. She had many opinions I disagreed with. She was a contradiction? Although I think she didn’t see the contradiction. Rather maybe she didn’t want to. I am of course talking about the girl that exists inside my head. An abstraction. A model of a real phenomenon. Not the actual human being. Not the consciousness perceiving itself. That is something no one knows. Not even the self. Inaccessible to reality and mirrored in perception. That is the girl I speak of. The girl I fell in love with for lack of better expressive words. She had quite possibly the tiniest tongue a human could have. She was a force all by herself. But then? Perhaps I’m propping her up too much. She is just a girl after all. My knowledge of this being is accidental. An unfortunate sequence of events. Nonetheless, I don’t see how she is so special from anyone else. What it is then? The existential nature of her beliefs? Her supposed obsession with intellectualism? Was it that she was pretty? I think not. It was the quality of conversation.

I liked talking with her. I liked to challenge her. I liked it when she challenged me. I didn’t want her to hold punches and I didn’t want to hold punches. This is what died that night. That night I kissed the rebel in the dark. She did not kiss me back.

Questions like why are unimportant and have exhaustively been pondered upon. Why was it important that she kissed me back then? Why was it that she “had” to share these new feelings? Why couldn’t we return?

Why then is such a trivial thing standing in the way? Like it did before? Why was the possibility and reality still a chain? Maybe it’s my ego. It feels like I would lose something if I accepted that offer. I want to be friends. I think. I cherished that friendship. The nature of it. It was unique. Not in that the individual herself was unique(well… this isn’t exactly true), it was the interaction of this being with myself.

Towards the end? Did we still have interesting conversations? No. I think not. I became immersed in programming and technology, a part of me that I could not share. The parts of me that I did want to share? were wrapped in doubt and uncertainty about the future. A feeling of dread towards growing up and achieving success in life’s pursuits. The icing on the cake? The collapse into the animal dimension. The question of sex. The eternal quest for reproduction. And sex is not rational or intellectual or guided by abstract reasoning or thought. Attraction is not comprehensible. It’s complex. Often? Irrational. Left in the unknown world of the subconscious. I am not separating cognition from emotion. Unlike many. I’m simply illustrating the difficulty in understanding the interaction of it.

I acknowledge myself as an animal. Often seeing the contradiction, the weeping contradiction. The reach to a realm of existence outside the physical must of course be bound to the physical. This I think is the ghost of descartes in many modern individuals. It’s the separation. The belief of the ghost within the machine. Men are entitled to their opinions afterall, and this is a question of philosophical thought. Yet, the ghost of descartes must die. Scientific evidence the weapon, it is simply a question of will then? We must kill the ghost. Sex, is not holy. Sex is not evil. Sex is just sex. Whatever ethics that form must acknowledge this. Yet it is still intimacy, and who that is shared with? Well… Isn’t that the source of our disagreement? That I violated your consent. Not that you didn’t want to kiss me but that you didn’t want it to occur then, in that moment in time. An unforgivable sin? To kiss a girl at the wrong moment? I don’t know.

In my ethics, things are not black and white. They are much greyer. A rich color palette that if you chose to? You would see the color. I wanted to kiss her and I did, I was just bad at it. Call it what you will, stealing a kiss, a selfish action, a violation of consent, a betrayal of trust. Call it what you will. I cannot see it that way. I see it as a horribly timed, less than ideal build up to, in a not so great context kiss. What really ruined it? Wasn’t that I kissed her. It was that in the days after? I didn’t properly handle the situation. Not until many days later after numerous conversations did she bring it back up. Seemingly out of nowhere, whether this was a delayed internal processing of an event or the influence of an external actor are not important. I felt like I was being tested and I was. Whatever rational justification there is, or have been I fucked up. See, it was in my response that I failed. Quite easily.

The relationship devolved quite easily. into a back and forth, of a boy wooing a girl. Arguments, about I don’t know what. I think in this very moment, if I asked, for us to be friends again she’d indulge me. Yet… we can’t have a simple friendship anymore can we? The very reason she can’t admit to herself, the reason she didn’t kiss me back that night is no reason at all. Some truth inaccessible, buried within subconscious processing and thought. That is the same reason I can’t ask us to be “just friends”.

That is what bothers me deep down. That I do not know myself. I do not know why I choose this or that. I do not know if I am evil or good. Am I condemned? A worthless human being ?. Or powerful beyond measure? Is my mediocrity all that there is?

I was intimate with another girl, weeks after. It was such a chore listening to her honestly. I was respectful and kind, I did not lie. I appreciated the complexity of this human being before me and I acknowledged her feelings. However, I wanted to be sure, that what I felt simply wasn’t desiring another or sex, sometimes maybe you really do just need to get laid, other times? Unfortunately? It is because you’ve found something, some untold connection with another human being that’s hard to find and you lost it. I’m not that great with girls and the argument can be made that I just “need to get out more”.

I have accepted the loneliness of existence. Despite this, it’s really nice to share existence with another strange soul every now and then. Sad. isn’t it? she had oddly remarkably great skin. She was very very vain about it. I liked that about her. I liked how she could be bossy. I liked her narcissism. I liked how idealistic she could be and marry that with reality. I liked that she was kind. I liked holding her hand. I liked cuddling with her. I liked her. I really really liked her. Enough to cry. Enough to hit things. I never wanted to chain her. I never wanted to claim her. I just wanted to be with her and know that she was with me. Locked somwhere, in my existence are details of another human being I didn’t imagine I would feel this way about.

--A love letter to my broken heart about my mediocrity.

In love, school, knowledge and programming.

-Haile Lagi

-An obsessed youth, a programmer?? and a chemical engineering student.

These are the things I choose define myself by.