The middle aged gentleman was taking a slow sip of his drink at the counter when a woman burst into the bar from the rain.  Despite the downpour it was amply clear from her quivering lips and downcast eyes that the sky was not alone in its crying.
"A martini, please," the tearful woman, a sleek blonde in perhaps her late twenties, prompted the bartender as she sat two seats down from the gentleman. 
"Wouldn't it be great if life weren't so complicated?" the gentleman could not help but say a few moments later as the woman dabbed at her tear-ridden face with a tissue.
"I'm sorry?" the woman said, looking up.
"You know, why couldn't life be arranged like a game show or something like that, where the rules are all very simple and the choices spelled out, instead of us being forced to nagivate the painful world of relationships."
"Yes," said the woman smiling in her tears, "that would be nice."
"There is a way."
"What's that?" the woman said, not sure she heard him. 
"We humans often experience paralysis when it comes to major decisions in life," the gentleman said poignantly, "We sit at the doorsteps of a million different lives as we consider who to marry, what profession to go into, what sort of person we ought to be."
"It is awfully taxing," the woman agreed as the bartender put down her drink in front of her.
"So the solution is to realize that any amount of thought probably won't put you in a better position," he introduced as his conclusion. "We lowly humans, who are given such a small inventory of variables to control, cannot possibly overcome the infinity of unknown variables aimed at us from all sides."
"What are you saying?" the woman asked after a sip of her drink, her brow furrowed.
"That maybe it's best when we have some major decision to just pick on whim, and then learn to live with it.  We don't pick most things, and how crazy would it be if we let anything and everything ruin our days?  We should learn to live with our decisions the same way we live with the weather," the man said, nodding toward the melancholy day outside.
The woman laughed, happy the man had decided to talk to her.  "Indeed, it certainly makes sense," she said, smiling at him, just ready to finish off her drink.
"Of course it does," he assured her, "Think of the long hours we spend on relationships, all the pain, the emotions..." he leaned in to her and lifted his eyebrows as he said softly, "the tears."
"Thank you for your comfort..." she trailed off, realizing she did not know his name, as she searched through her purse for money.
"Mark."
"Mark.  Thank you."
"So, want to get married?"
"Oh, uh—" she stuttered, having just laid down her money on the counter, "I'm so—I have—I have to go n—" she finished sloppily as she backed away, suddenly turning around to frantically exit the bar, apparently eager to rejoin the rainy outdoors.

What is arrogance?

There seems to be some sort of distinction between being confident and being arrogant, but it is hard to discern what entails the difference.  For it seems the case that someone could be perceived as arrogant, without actually being arrogant.  But then what is it that makes a person actually arrogant?

It seems arrogance has to do with intent, for it always characterized of the way a person acts in conversation.  The audience perceives that the purpose of the words—that is, the purpose the speaker has for the words—is to establish the superiority of the speaker over that of his listener. 

Now here is the problem if that is indeed true—how do you know what the purpose of a person is when speaking?  My experience has been that if you have thought about some topic a good deal, and thus have a good deal of confidence in your position, it is nearly certain you will be perceived as arrogant by anyone listening if you choose to talk about it.  But as we have said, there is a difference between confidence and arrogance; there is nothing about confidence that means a person considers themselves a better person than someone else.  If a person takes a long time to verify each step in a math problem, their confidence in the correctness of their answer is in no way incompatible with them being a thoroughly humble person. 

The problem, I think, is a difference in kinds of people.  There are some people who are simply more interested in ideas than other people, so much so that they can participate in any intensity of discussion, so long as it remains focused on the issue, without ever even considering the status of their relationship with the other person.  But for a person who does not track closely the status of ideas in their mind, a person who seems confident in their position on an issue becomes an anomaly; listening to them they think, "who does this?  Why is this person so confident? What is going on?"  Since they do not pay so much close attention to ideas themselves, enough so to develop a confident position, there must be some other explanation for why this person is so confident in their position.  To them, the idea is not being considered at all; only the relationship is being affected, and the other peson is asserting their dominance.  People stop listening to ideas, and all they hear is you saying over and over again, "I am better than you."

It is critical, then, for a person to determine the orientation of their audience.  I may care a good deal whether or not the rational-actor model is true in international relations, where as my friend Leslie may not care at all.  It would be a bad idea, then, to discuss it with her, since if she disagreed with me my confidence in relation to the position I hold would only be understood as me putting her down for being wrong about international relations.  

A relationship-oriented person will always misinterpret an ideas-oriented person, unless they somehow come to understand the difference of the way these respective minds work, which I have found, is quite rare.  

And to conclude, there is nothing that necessitates an ideas-oriented person must think themself better than other people because they happen to care about ideas.  There are lots of things that make for a good life; for instance, I may understand philosophy, but I cannot even play an instrument, or do yoga, or in terms of my character I am not a very good servant.  So while I think an ideas-oriented person may be at risk of being arrogant by actually thinking themself better than other people, this is often simply a confusion caused by a difference in kinds of people.    

I think it's a good thing to be optimistic about things, so in the morning, I whip off my covers and jump into singing I Just Can't Wait to be King as I get ready for the day. 

Then it's off to the shower, where the fish on the shower curtain always oblige in helping me sing Under the Sea.

Being sadly at the mercy of an infinitely forgetful mind, I then sing Oh Where is my Hairbrush while looking for whatever I managed to misplace that morning.

In the evening it is time for dinner, so I find the nearest person and break into Be Our Guest, hoping they will be convinced by the testimony of the dishes and myself that dinner will be splendid.

Now it is night, and I walk outside to see the gleaming white moon from my porch, and ask the neighbor walking by with his dog, "And have you eeeeever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?!"

And then I go to sleep, and the people I live with kill me. 

When you experience something, you experience it as a whole idea, not as the many smaller parts that comprise it.  All art is like this.  Paintings, people, or life at all. 

But I tend to think a lot about anything I experience, looking at it from every angle possible, most times interrupting the experience itself to start doing so.  Because of this, a question often comes to me. 

Does analysis destroy beauty?

EDIT: From Walt Whitman.

When I heard the learn'd astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and
measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much
applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

On Sunday an Iraqi news reporter threw a shoe at George Bush, and one thing is clear: that it was a tremendous sign of disrespect for Bush and his foreign policy.  What's not so clear is whether if Bush would have caught the shoe the reporter would have been out. 

Meanwhile, back in the U.S. my little brother and I were shopping at Target, and while walking around I suddenly got a nosebleed.  Fascinating.  It must be a latent camoflauging instinct suddenly emerging at this point in my life.

I have decided to become a vegan. But since that's such an enormous project, I've decided to do it slowly, by giving up one animal each month.  This month is koala bears.  Next month is elephants.  After that is giraffes.  And just like the WMO has all the hurricane names planned out, I have all the animals planned out for the rest of my life.  Barring the extinction of any animals on my schedule, I won't get to anything important before my 112th birthday, at which point I will probably not be able to eat them anyway.

Ever suddenly realize you're in a room and wonder why you're there?  Sometimes I think that will happen to me one day only I'll be in another country.

Saying things in conversation is great, because it's like quoting yourself on something for the first time ever.

I just love this point in our trip around the sun.  Happy Holidays everybody!

"I beg your pardon?"
"Be quiet! I wasn't talking to you."

I'm addicted to having everything in perfect moderation!!

"You can't do that! It's against the rules."
"Oh I'm sorry, is there a rule that says you can't break the rules?"

"What about you? What do you think."
"Oh, I am definitely for voting."

"Sir, a starter? Perhaps a salad?"
"Oh, no thank you. I don't eat anything vegetarian."

This is the first real fake thing I am going to do.

If I changed completely everything would be totally different.

I am timing how long I am going to be timing for.  Seventeen seconds, a new record!!  Let's try again.  Ugh..45 seconds, that one was bad.

...

Haha..sorry, this stuff makes me laugh. Which is really too bad, because then I laugh to myself and people are like "What's the joke!!" and if I tell them they find out it's not that funny.

I've always thought it futile to try and express what our family is like, but my sister Hope is intent on trying.  A glimpse is all that is here; perhaps fortunately, I am not sure the world is ready for more. 

For those who haven't been around long, I do have two other sisters, but one is Boston and the other is in Tanzania.  Anyways, I've got exams to study for, so farewell! 

"Mornin', Bill.  Have a good weekend?"
"Ah, Steve, good to see you.  Yes, my weekend was incredibly relaxing. What about you, what'd you do this weekend?"
"Well," Steve replied, filling up his cup at the water cooler, "remember I had that court case I had to sit in on for jury duty?"
"Oh yeah, yeah, that's right," Bill, who already had his cup of water, responded.  "How did that go?"
"It was nuts," Steve said, now standing fully upright with his cup, "One of the defense's main witnesses flat-out lied about his relationship with the defendant.  Some fact-checking proved they had played Dungeon&Dragons together in high school.  Once that came out, everyone started shouting and the defense called for a recess and everything."
"No kidding?  Wow.  That must have been good," Bill admitted, until he looked up with a thoughtful look, "Actually, you know what? That kind of reminds me of Tiller vs. Indiana from the Supreme Court." 
"I don't know about that one," Steve said blankly.
"You don't know about Tiller vs. Indiana??" Bill said, looking surprised. 
"No, how do you know about it?" Steve inquired to move the conversation along. 
"HA!" Bill blurted out, "Know about it? I wrote the majority opinion on it!"
At this, Steve's face, which had been plainly composed while waiting for an answer, turned profoundly confused.  His eyebrows scrunched down and he puckered his lips as he wondered what Bill meant.
"You wrote the majority opinion?"
"Sure did," Bill said proudly.
"What do you mean? Like, on an internet message board?"
"No, no," Bill said, staring off in fond reminiscence of the event, "You see, what made this one interesting was the prosecution's strategy.  Brilliant, just absolutely brilliant."
"What was the strategy?" Steve asked to play along, hoping an oblique angle would reveal what Bill was talking about.
"Well, every time a witness said exactly what they wanted, they would set off a round of fireworks.  It worked wonders on me and my colleagues.  Really emphasized the point, you know?"
"Yeah," Steve said, looking around to see if anyone else in the office was listening to their conversation.
"They had to stop using them when the animals got loose in the courtroom, though.  They didn't want any of them to get hurt.  The defendant was a penguin after all," Bill explained, raising his eyebrows to indicate the common sense inherent in the reasoning. 
"Bill," Steve said slowly, as Bill continued rambling on.
"By the way, if you think the Supreme Court really wears those black robes, that's just a common misconception.  We only wear those for the yearbook picture.  During cases we wear togas."
"Bill," Steve said again in the same tone.
"Oh, and if you ever think I'm a dishonest person, let this forever put the idea to rest.  I wrote the majority opinion even though the defense attorney was smokin' hot.  In fact, I tried to sleep with her after the trial."
"BILL!" Steve lost it, "You are married!"
At this Bill snapped out of his trance of telling the story and grew a confused face, glancing at Steve. "Come again?"
"Bill," Steve said, putting his hand on his coworker's shoulder, "You didn't happen to have any dreams last night, did you?"
At this comment, Bill dropped his cup of water and his eyes grew wide, as though he were looking into the face of eternity.
"Have a nice day, Bill.  I'll see you around the office," Steve said, walking away.

Around midnight last night I strolled through the door, and Alex, who I had not seen in two weeks, was sitting on the couch just inside.  At the sight of me he instantly went into a routine of being sarcastically flabbergasted, and with eyes wide exclaimed, "You're alive!" 

Out of indelible habit we immediately delved into conversation of stories and ideas from the last two weeks, making plenty of jestful comments along the way.  Then it struck him.  "Waffle House?" he said, one eyebrow raised.  Silence thudded on the floor as I stared motionlessly at him.  A moment later I started walking for the door stating "I'll drive" as witness to the inevitability of partaking in one of our favorite traditions.

But Alex had to go upstairs and grab some things, so I fiddled around on his computer while I waited.  I then googled: things that i can talk about with alex at waffle house that will make him realize he needs to start eating breakfast. 

In the first link was this picture:

I would say that's a pretty convincing argument.  A pretty convincing argument, indeed. 

In all my life, life is definitely the weirdest thing I've encountered.

Biology. While I live I only see the world, but millions of things are going inside me? And I don't experience them at all?  Cell replication!  Blood on the move!  Chemical secretion, metabolism, billions of firing neurons!  I may be bored, but my busy biological bureaucracy of a body continues its infinite work, and I think of it, grabbing my arms and abdomen thinking, what is happening inside me!  What crazy thing am I!

Conversations.  If we are around people we know, we have to say things?  And we don't know ahead of time what we will say, like in a play, but rather we have to think of what to say right on the spot?  Oh my!  How many options there are!  The words, the facial expression, the tones of voice!  And yet we must pick them all instantly.  Can't we call a timeout when we don't know what to say? 

Voices.  I say something.  Ah.  So that is what I sound like?  And if I ever want to talk, that is the sound I have to use?  And it is the same with everyone, so every person has their own built-in, copyrighted sound?  Wow!  What anticipation there must be before you hear someone speak for the first time, to hear what their sound is like!

I. So I am in my head?  And standing in a room of people, I can see all of them, but I can't see myself?  What!  And to every other person it is the same to them?  So if I want to know how I am perceived, I must replay the day in my mind, imagining I was every person who saw me that day, at the moment they started seeing me?  How weird it is that each person is in their head!

Thoughts. I see a crowd of thousands sitting, quietly listening to a speech.  But then the speech ends, and it becomes loud and noisy.  That whole time!  Invisible things were filling the air above their heads, each person having many of them!  But people don't have to tell us all their thoughts, so life becomes a mystery where we must try to figure out who people are?  There are so many people, how difficult it becomes to keep track of all the clues.

What interesting elements form the symphony of our experience.  A fascinating show!  How easy it is to forget to be the aliens we came here as.  We are all so sleepy.