Rhetorica ad Herennium

Perhaps I don't believe in Evolution as an origin of life, but like a chicken is unrecognizable in his egg, we change from simple, yellow ducks into complicated working, clucking, and at times seemingly mindless... what are we anyway? Machines? Taxidermic consciences? I guess the answer is as explanatory as "body and soul". That's helpful.

What I'm getting at, is that I've grown unexpectedly. And what's a blog's entity but for chatting up the page with your own thoughts, externalizing a little piece or moment of who you are. Or were.

Even looking back a little over a year ago, did I know I'd be neck deep in technologies like Groovy, Maven, or Perl? Or that I'd have a mean back spin in Table Tennis? Or that I'd have a fetish for remembering techniques? (If my mother could see my now.) I think I irritate my wife sometimes when I get to talking and work my way onto an esoteric island of DSL's (domain specific languages) that I've found. On the other hand I think she's established a healthy wisdom of knowing at exactly what point to smile and nod.

I use to think Love ruled the world. I still do. But it looks a little different. It's like when you watch so many hollywood movies that you get these ideas that her eyes will always sparkle and sunshine will poor through the window reflecting off even the light absorbing paint on the walls and tint everything with a feeling. You think even after years of marriage that same feeling invoked by the silver screen should be ever existant. Like the soft hum of an engine.

The other day we laid on the floor of our living room after a simple dinner and played cards. Afterward, she put her head in my lap and I used the cards to make up a story. "Once, there was a... (King of Spades) Secret Agent Man, who had.... (3 of Clubs) 3 children!" And on it went getting more and more ridiculous. In the moment, it somewhat felt... normal. There wasn't feelings welling up inside, except when she laughed, and I don't think I heard any Quelqu'un M'a Dit notes in the background. But as soon as it was over, I looked outside and saw the sun just setting, and it hit me. Those Hollywood moments happen all the time, and sometimes we're just too organized and task oriented to realize it. I'm going to do better at creating those scenes and most importantly recognizing them. It's amazing what you can savor when you pause and focus.

A year ago I also dreaded working the "office job". Pushing paper, reading hours of emails until your eyes fall out of their sockets and your taken up with the more important task of not losing your mind as well. What I found and what was probably told me a hundred times was that when you're an "engineer" it means the guy that walks up to a mountain and says, "I challenge you!" I've become obsessed with finding harder and harder problems, and peering into an ever growing toolbox seeking solutions. While most of my problems are conflicts of 0's and 1's, or better put, a sandbox of 0's and 1's that need to be shaped into a castle, the most complicated is the problem of people. Of course, in the end of the day, the vastly more complicated people problems are the only one's worth solving.

I use to think Love ruled the world. I still do. But it looks a little different. I used to think "all you need is love", except somewhere along the way I misinterpreted that little simple triple. I thought Love was a solution to problems- in that, "We need to scale that hill" - "Ok, here's a rope." But now my definition has evolved a little. It's more like, "We need to scale that hill" - "Ok, but it's ok if we can't". Love is no longer a solution to external problems but internal ones. There will always be antagonists, and men of contradictory actions, and people who will hurt you, and people who will get hurt, and people with scar tissue that does what any good scar tissue would do and over compensate for the offending abrasion. Over those external circumstances, we are powerless and love is useless. But Love allows us to forgive others, forget ourselves, and live in this tumultuous life with peace. And truthfully we all need a whole lot of that Love. Too bad I didn't know that a few years ago.

Thanks be to God I'm learning some of these lessons. In a few years, I'll learn some more while I'm miles deep in a career, up to ears in little tawpies, and perhaps my memory tricks will help me retain those lessons for as long as I need them.