Chameleonization

Yeah, not a word, I know :) Blogger is spectacularly dedicated to pointing out made-up words (or dyslexic-errors), with delightful persistent red-idiot-squiggles. (can you tell I'm half-asleep while writing this?)

A few weeks ago I was out with a friend, eating Brazilian food & listening to some sweet Brazilian jazz*, and during the course of the evening, I realized something.

I have very few things I'm passionate about, other than writing.

Sure, there are lots of things I like, or have liked, but it's on a casual scale. With music, I enjoy it, but I'm not about to commit a lot of time and money so that I'd be able to play it, or enjoy it, at a higher, or professional level. I played piano up to grade 10 of Royal Conservatory, I played jazz, I played in competitions, but I didn't love it. I enjoyed it, then I enjoyed moving on and learning something else.

One of the reasons I enjoy meeting new people, is so I can hear about everything they like, and why they like it, because then I can indirectly understand the virtues of something I'm currently unfamiliar with.

Also, I hold very few strong convictions, other than I think it's horribly wrong to discriminate, or treat someone else badly, for almost any reason. Respecting others is pretty much the only rule I refuse to bend on, and I'm willing to take any amount of flack, or a few bullets, to uphold that.**

The reason for having so few convictions is probably due to reading so much philosophy in my formative years. Very early, I understood that we, as humans, know very little in the grand scheme of things, and things we think we know now, could easily be disproved 5, 10, 100 years in the future.***

Even the basis we build our sciences on are founded on theories, which aren't actually proven.****

When people around me have strong ideas about the world, or about what's right or wrong, I'll often choose to argue the opposing view, even if I don't believe it, simply to get a better understanding of what others believe and why.

Belief in something that can't be proven, that fascinates me, just as the theory of gravity is fascinating. We know it exists, because we see how it affects us. Many very smart people have created theories, Einstein, Newton, etc, but we don't truly know how and why it works the way it does.


Now, I already knew that about myself... what hit me the other night was the understanding that my extremely malleable world-view is probably why the only thing I do have passion for is writing (and reading).

Because I'm not locked down, I can freely explore a wide range of characters. I can be a thousand different people, with a thousand different sets of beliefs, and know that in the moment of living within a particular character's skin, I will hold true to those convictions. Then, when the moment is over, I can slip into someone else.

It's the magic of words, of stories.

Unlike movies, where you're watching what's going on, with a story, you live it (or you do in well-written books :p).


Writing is slow at this particular moment, but for Project #6, it's certainly been interesting trying to live in Donovan's head and hold true to what he believes, even though it opposes my singular never-bend-this-principle of treating others with respect.

Perhaps it's okay because I'm trying to treat his convictions with respect, even though I don't agree with them.*****


Okay, that's enough weird self-analysis for one day...

Come back tomorrow for another Flash Fiction Friday!



* It's okay for me to be biased, my favourite cousin plays bass in the band ;)

** Not literal bullets, of course, but sometimes the figurative ones are more painful.

*** Humour my imprecise retelling: There's the old story about a friend of Socrates asking the oracle of Delphi if there was anyone smarter than Socrates, and the oracle said no. When her answer got back to Socrates, he laughed, and then investigated other people he thought were smarter than he was, and in the end, he said something along the lines of, "Other men claim that they know a lot, while they really know only a little, I on the other hand only know that I know nothing."

**** I trust no one is going to nitpick this, as I hope it's obvious I'm simplifying for the sake of making a point, not stating an absolute.

***** Yes, I'm aware I sound like a crazy person, since Donovan is a fictional character