Something Personal

"How do you decide what is important?"

This has been the question that has been running through my mind all day. How does anyone decide what is important to them or more specifically; How do I decide what is important to me? This thought first popped into my head on Sunday night when I was helping a friend prepare for a calculus exam and I found out that Krispy Kreme remained open until 12. Okay... So what? I realized, I am neither the one closing this Krispy Kreme nor the one opening this Krispy Kreme in the mornings, does that make this place unimportant to me? Do I care about the upkeep of the ovens and the technicalities of the glazer? All of the parts that make this Krispy Kreme work day in and day out have nothing to do with me, yet here I am, studying math at this very place. Is it important to me?

So many processes and systems and random events take place on Earth every day that it is almost mind-boggling to consider, yet our brains seem to phase all of that out and focus on this things that we deem the most important to remember. Do I remember exactly what grade I made on the Chapter 6 test for 4th grade math? Who cares? And that is exactly the point. My mind seems to have erased that memory because it's relevance was considered unsubstantial and just erased that connection. Besides memories, how do we decide what we care about, what we are passionate about in the present?

On a side note, I think that all of my friends are bad influences on me. What if I, myself, am the bad influence though? That scares me. How can I expect anyone to understand me when I can not understand myself? And why can I not understand myself? I realize I am asking a lot of supposedly rhetorical questions and not providing any answers but the truth it, cliché enough, I do not have them. I watched the movie Prometheus tonight with my friends, they were high of course, and I strangely connected my search to understand myself with the story of Prometheus. In the movie, humans were in search of their ultimate creator and once they finally found them, it attempted to destroy them, albeit with failure. If I were finally to understand myself, or accept a version of myself enough so wholeheartedly that I could truly know myself, would it destory me? Would I be the person I am, right now, writing this entry from my bed in my home? One just can not know. For once you know the truth, thepast lies seem irrelevant. Perhaps I am merely a bundle of lies, gift wrapped so ironically to discover and be horrified with what I discover, so for now, I will be content with myself as I am in the present and move on in search of something, for all of life seems to be a search for something greater, something of meaning, something to live for. A purpose.

"What are you living for today? Why is it important to you?"