Substance without Qualities (the morning rant)

It is 5:30 am, and yet another sleepless night has passed. I am on a sleeping pill, but it has not kicked in. I kept thinking about my newly flared up motivations for academic writings and things I could accomplish with them. It is truly an exciting thing to think about – just not at 3 am in the morning if I ever want to fall asleep. But here I was, thinking about useless things and planning a day ahead. I even downloaded an app for an aquarium on live so I can watch the fish swimming in a coral leaf somewhere in the ocean. But it failed extraordinarily to make me fall asleep, since the app came with a loud music and I soon realized that I would have to keep looking at the screen when I want to close my eyes and fall asleep. Then the birds began chirping and the main officers came by to drop newspaper. It’s blatantly bright outside, and there is no way I can just magically fall asleep. So here I am, writing a new blog entry that has nothing to do with academic essays. Partially this activity was motivated by the fact that I have not yet uploaded any essays for the last two years of any substantial contents, and partially because the writer in me wanted to fill that void of not having written up anything creative that has originated and sprang up from within: my true voice.

As I was thinking about all those possible academic topics I am to accomplish, it came to me that how did I get where I am right now? (Remember, this is all conjured up in my attempt to fall asleep, so forgive me for any incoherent or way too poetical form of framing a question) Well, as I have mentioned many of you already, had I not seen the movie Titanic, I would not have been where I am right now – starting with illegitimacy with English at all. And had there been no actual tragic incident of Titanic, there would not have been a movie that came to touch me from distance (a philosophical interest cleaving in already). But this is a story I tell to people how things happened. Not necessarily why things have had to happen that way.

There was a girl I admired in my 10^th grade. She had just moved to Hiroshima, where I used to live at that time. Little did I know, I was to move away instead of her coming in to the school I was in shortly after. She was, sort of my replacement, or vice versa. In the short period of time when I got to know her, I soon fell in love with her, and she once said to a group of us what she was looking for in a guy. I am not going to bother listing all up, but she mentioned some qualities she wished her boyfriend would have. At that time, I did not question about them. In fact, until just few hours ago, I didn’t question about it. I just accepted them as natural requests or wishlist. But then, in conjunction with my recent academic flare, I began to put them into perspective. What she said was something any girl or boy would have said – a decent set of request for a partner. You can see them everywhere now with the Internet dating sites like Tinder, OKCupid and eHarmony, etc… I suppose this trend has also camouflaged the ambiguity in this set of requests people have about each other. Think about it, these are qualities you want to have in your partner. Qualities. Ever since I heard what my crush had said at that moment in May of 1994, I kept striving for acquiring those qualities, and I still am. It’s a good thing. In many situations, I was able to become the kind of person with the kind of set of moral standards because of her. So I owe her a lot for who I am. For that I will be eternally grateful for her.

A man was in a cave, looking for a shelter as it was raining so hard, when he finds a girl in the same situation. He started telling her the story of his first crush and what qualities she wanted of him, and the girl said in utter wonder, “But are qualities not inherent in oneself?” The man shrugged his head, and responded, “No, they can’t be. Otherwise you are born with qualities such as sociability or good handwriting, but babies can’t have that.”

But can qualities something you can acquire actively or do they come to you because your environment requires you to have them? Can you will to be sociable and become sociable, or can you will to write well and have good handwriting? Maybe you can fake it once or twice, but that is not the same as possessing those qualities, like virtue. So would it not be cruel to ask for someone to have such and such a quality? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Even if my crush did have someone already in mind, and not that she was trying to change someone to have those qualities, as a result, it made me want to be a better person. Does that not count as good? I believe it does. Even though, I admit, I have not yet mastered all those qualities she wanted in her partner, I think because of her, I was able to hold onto some principles and adhere to them in times of hardship. Further, she made me want to be someone whom people want to have conversation with, and someone whom they can feel glad that they have met. Because talking to her was such fun that I wanted the same for others who may come across my way when they talk to me.

I think my morning rant is coming to an end. The sleeping pill is kicking me in, and I don’t know how long I can last. I will end with a picture of me that I discovered I could take with my iPhone today that also foreshadows, in hindsight, what I have decided to write just now. (because it seems like it’s all substance without qualities)