You there! You there! Did you enter the URL? Did you take a picture of the QR code? Did you click on a link? Did you wind up here randomly?
How about we play a quick game? Think of me as someone working at a carnival.
Or maybe you can think of this as some kind of magic-powered pact. Do you like mythology? Do you like the anime Hunter x Hunter? Maybe you are into gambling?
The game is as follows: if I can make you feel like you became a teeny bit smarter in two minutes, or make you smirk a little, or make you feel actually amused, in just two minutes,
you have to promise me to read the last 30 or so of my posts.
Take as long as you want, but you have to do it. On your sacred honor.
Make it a bookmark, write it down, leave a note.
But you have to do it. You’d have made a promise.
If I fail to produce one single spark of amusement or intrigue in just two minutes, that means you win the game and not me.
You get to close the window and forget you ever stumbled upon the found emotion dot com.
You can continue to live the life you were going to live without my help.
Are you ready? The 2-minute game begins…..now!
Ahem…..
I’ve noticed something funny about holidays and birthdays.
Whenever the clock reaches 12:00 am the night before, (or maybe 12:01, just to be safe) it’s like that holiday has begun!
How many times have you stayed up late (if you do consider midnight late) on Christmas Eve, and said ‘It’s Christmas!’ How about ‘it’s my birthday!’ as soon as midnight is passed? Maybe it was Halloween and you put on a spooky outfit for early hallow’s eve’s morning. Maybe you felt patriotic far before the dawn, on your nation’s Independence Day. Or maybe even had an early Valentine’s fling?
This doesn’t seem too absurd, since going by the calendar, the day it is really does change once the clock finally grows beyond 11:59.
Until you suddenly realize, people don’t just stop celebrating holidays once midnight begins upon the next day!
Of course if someone were to argue and say “it isn’t really Christmas anymore” on December 26th, you could very well smile and agree.
But you wouldn’t treat it like the holiday itself was somehow cancelled. Even if your culture forbids any celebrations beyond the solar day day, you’d still feel like you were connected to that merriment, savoring that festival.
The party does not end as soon as the clock seems to suggest it.
And yet you had it start when the clock merely implied it.
How very odd to savor.
In both cases, you are playing a strange emotional game with time. You are taking too much from time, but not officially. You are making a choice about how we see time, though not belligerently. You are understanding the weirdness of your use of time, but not too shamefully. You are humbled by the indulgence, though not bashfully.
You feel rather profound.
I say the following sentence.
“holidays tend to be 29 hours long”
and you feel something like a smile.
__________
All right! That finishes the two-minute game. Bring bring.
Did you feel absolutely nothing special?
Then it’s time to close the window, come on.
On you go.
Or did I win the game? Did I make you feel something, anything nice at all?
Then that means by your sacred honor, you need to save this webpage and commit to reading my most recent 30 posts!
Don’t worry though, you just might find yourself amused, excited, or even enlightened or moved profoundly by my work.
You’ve gotten a preview of what I’m about. Do you want to know what I’m about? Do you want to know my mission?
It’s to do what everything the mass media has churned out….wants to do but fails to do.
Everyone wants people to just behave better and stuff.
But every time time you read anything tell you how to behave better and stuff
it always seems weirdly not apt.
Awkwardly not insightful.
Offensively demeaning.
Hopelessly charmed by its own condescension.
Enough to make you go “enough”.
That’s the vibe my writing lacks.
I’m not really a “people are good” type.
Nor am I an “everyone has the potential to do great things” type.
But I believe people are a lot more shrewd than is let on.
Every person has a sense that they are the really shrewd one.
I believe that is exactly where the lock and key that will explain how people really are
have been resting, patiently.
Yes, there is a magical shrewdness in every person that makes so much odd and beautiful behavior very possible!
And we can tame the absolute heck out of it.
Ah yes, the holiday thing. Here is a paradox for you- if things are so terrible for humanity, in society, with the very nature of sentient people,
then why exactly is the average person capable of finding cleverness in that observation?
Why would people share that sense of witty modesty about their own indulgences?
I illustrate once more my philosophy in a very neat fashion.
1. People are in touch with their own excess and strive to not act in ugly ways despite needing to act strongly.
2. People understand that accusations and praise are somewhat crude things to deliver, and strive to not dole them out in a way that feels ugly and immature.
3. People do not simply wish to feel like they are proper or special. They crave that elusive balance of outrageous versus normal, unhinged versus restrained, acceptable versus rebellious, and even childlike versus wise.
You do not have a moronic heart.
You do not have a shallow mind. You are never the joke people say you are.
You are never as pathetic as people say you are.
Because as long as you have an appreciation for something as strange and silly but deep and meaningful as our own ability to mess with time,
there is a wittiness at your core.
There is a will to not be badly at your core.
There is a will to give yourself up to un-screw-up how damned annoying being human is at your core.
And by reading these posts, I will help you strengthen that muscle
in a peaceful and proper way.
New Year’s Eve becomes New Year’s Day upon the stroke of midnight. It’s kind of a hybrid holiday where both the day before the day after intermingle in a forlorn fashion.
They’re symmetrical days, but the party on the former really kicks off on the early hour of the latter. And the daytime of the former is based upon the achievement of the daytime of the latter. New Year’s Eve demands that time stretches far from it in order to exist.
And I hope that one day, my attempt at reigning in the heart, to make us resemble pleasant parties, is forever etched into time.
2022 shall now be mine!
The Found Emotion (Invoke Yourself) 