Old Thoughts In Time’s Present

Exploring Select Thoughts Past Journalled

From Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

-But I am different. I want it more than anyone of them!

-Charlie you’ll get your chance, one day things will change.

-When will things change?

-Probably when you least expect it.

I think this quote best describes the mentality going into this post. There are changes always and when you least expect them. Hopefully, though, we’ve had some say in that change, hopefully some active say.

Below are raw thoughts from 2018/2019 as they popped into my brain.

Do we think up our thoughts or do they appear to us? To be determined. :)

I picked a handful of more interesting ones and expanded on my current perceptions, always interesting to think back and see what new can pop into our brains.

Enjoy and do let me know your thoughts!

From caring and wanting to, to doing it cause you’re bored and have nothing else to do. Lucky to live where we can say we need to do what’s best for us. Even then people pretend they do and don’t really, they do what is best for things outside themselves or in a deeply selfish and inhuman way. Accumulation of money, lack of empathy.

We live in a time where we do things because we’re bored but we’re not bored enough to do useful things it seems. It could also be the case that we need to be selfish in the right ways and selfless in the right ways too and I sense that isn’t always the case.

I remember imaging clout chasers and those who think in terms of the perceived benefits of their vocations instead of their own personal growth. Not building character but building a character.

We all do this to some degree, it’s difficult to not wonder and worry for those people and things around us, it’s difficult to not lie or deceive, to perform as we’re believed to be seen, but it’s an endeavour made impossible when it’s all for appearances sake only. Truth is hard work (un)fortunately?

Unintentional design, indeterminacy of encounter of humans and non-humans in different landscapes, how we remove history but create paradoxical histories and as assemblages in these history removing systems create ourselves but blind ourselves to the outside factors of life, in the process, polyphony and dissonance and harmony.

No accountability nobody wants to take responsibility and usually its put on the people to make the changes and like the system dictates, clearing histories to mask accountability is the point, the world dying doesn’t fit into their scalability forms of progress expectations.

This I have changed much of my perspectives on, it was almost exclusively influenced by my liberal anthropological education. I think there is value in being critical of our lives and society, of appreciating the indeterminacies of our lives and those encounters as life can be quite random.

The influence on us from our friends and family, our random meetings with strangers and new friends, they change us in ways we could never fathom.

Small acts of kindness, for example, can go a long way, so can harsh ones, important to think that we are so much more important than we know for when we think this in a non-narcissistic way, we start to believe all our actions are important and have consequences that matter.

All the more reason for us to be responsible as individual people, engaged, for the “system” that’s so often criticized is dictated by individuals itself, and certainly the ethos of today isn’t perfect but I’d rather keep the individual as king and the community as of utmost essential importance, growing strong from each individual out.

Heroes the ones that struggle not the athletes that have the skills but the ones who can live as if they do?

High skill comes off as show off or awe not followed by clap.

Light shaming on those who are performing skilled movements, feelings of insecurity.

Worked at a lovely indoor obstacle course called Pursuit OCR in Toronto. I recommend checking them out! I remember noticing that those higher level athletes, on busy days, would be seen as show-offs in front of the less physically inclined guests. Some awe in it but it’s mostly appreciated by atheletes.

Typically nobody clapped on those, it felt a bit awkward sometimes if you could read the energy and man you could read how thick it was when someone did something impressive and people hated them for it! Made me laugh, made me cringe, was a time.

Most people related to the average Joe or Joette, I’d assume, so that would explain why their struggles got all the claps and the athletes were kind of dismissed. I remember hearing a guest say something along the lines of, “tsk what was the point of them coming?” Interesting to ponder but not all that surprising.

Nobody likes to feel inferior and we love the struggling underdog.

I don’t belong sometimes. My hearts not in it, I crave more, something different. I crave to move and think and adventure and life, to learn and see life around me in more than what I’m used to. Perhaps the door lies within but I don’t know how to open it yet.

A thought while working one day and it’s easy to feel like your potential isn’t being met or that you aren’t living up to yourself when no standards are being set. It’s easy to make yourself the underdog, there are infinite ways of being one and all people relate to it because we’ve all made ourselves one once.

It feels good to be one as we’re never the best we could be and we tend to compare ourselves to others instead of ourselves. Feels good too and it’s in my mind a difficult character flaw for humans to overcome.

I’ve made many changes over the years and setting a standard for myself was scary but most enlightening! It’s scary because I set myself parameters for achieving my goals and therefore set myself parameters for failing as well, and obviously the winning line changes as I do but there has to be something worth losing, something worth chasing and striving for.

It wouldn’t matter, like most new years resolutions, if we didn’t have something worth losing, if our pride and ego weren’t at stake. It has to be real.

There is both the real and unreal which exist simultaneously though I think the unreal is plain and thus what we make of ourselves can be the only thing that matters.

Culture, thoughts, perceptions, real and unreal things which shape in an uncontrollable flow the real and unreal ongoing. I would think that we are just. We are simultaneously both and simultaneously exist and don’t and simultaneously are and aren’t.

But I think we are right now because the present would dictate it. Until there is no such thing as a present then we become unreal. Potential on all sides but perception always the important factor in determining present, past and future.

Some phenominological influences here no doubt, I’m still grappling with ideas of real and unreal, super fun topics undoubtedly!

Though I’d say, like phenominologists would, that all that there is, our experiences, our thoughts, though they may be perceived as unreal and abstract to some extent, I’d say further that there is nothing more real for any of us individually in all our moments as we experience them. Could it be otherwise?

We haggle with the future for a better present, I do think this is essentially human and an incredible feat, but it doesn’t get more real than that if that’s what’s to be done, and it’s what’s been done to get us here I would say. Not perfect but human, we’re trying as we do and it’s a miracle in itself.

The self, an energy spiraling around itself, in a meaningful way, to create self.

Consciousness, an energy spiraling around itself to create consciousness.

Life, an energy spiraling around itself to create life.

The universe, an energy spiraling around itself to create the universe.

God, an energy spiraling around itself meaningfully to create.

A poem before I really started getting into writing poetry. I feel I’m trying to explore ideas but learning to express them is a fun process and challenge in itself. The more comfortable I get with them, the more they just come and then I can clean up that chaotic mess and make it into something beautiful.

That’s the goal anyways, not that it has to be beautiful, it could be a beautiful mess, but it’s mine and I do appreciate the effort into beautifying things, I believe we all do. We know it when we see it.

Perhaps the beauty we all seek gets us closer to God if there is to be such a presence in our lives.

Thanks for reading, curious if y’all have any remarks, please do let me know!

Best to all of you.

Ilija Begic