Gluttony

I learned a few years ago that I’m incredibly impressionable. It’s something I have to be very aware of. The things around me and the people around me, become me.

When I was 14 I saw Brian Greene’s “Fabric of The Cosmos”. An absolutely stellar documentary about the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. It blew my mind. So I bought his book by the same name. Dense and poetic. Concerned with how things are not as they seem. It was existentially humbling and conceptually phenomenal.

I now have a degree in physics.

When I was 16 I met a girl who liked poetry. She’d read Dante’s inferno and spoke a bit of Latin. She could make magic out if anything. Or she saw the magic in everything and knew how to show it to me. She wouldn’t talk about school or work or friends. I learned to speak like she learned to think.

I’m a poet now.

When I was 19 I was a cynic. Bitter and mistrusting of the world. I met a man who became my taekwondo coach. All he knew how to do was smile. He didn’t have it easy. He wasn’t lucky. He worked comically hard. He fundamentally reshaped how I thought about myself. I realized my cynicism was a reflection of me ; I was bitter and mistrusting of myself. I didn’t like how my life was and decided that my life is a product of the world. He said to me once he’s an optimist, “Life just has way too much opportunities as an optimist.”.

I’m an unrelenting, unwilling optimist now.

I have a dozen more examples. I read a book by an ultrarunner and ran 50 miles, I fell for political scientist and became an activist, I befriended a partier and became the life of every party.

I am very concerned with who I let myself be around. I am malleable. The world shapes me and I it. I want to be this way. I like carrying the world with me. This mosaic of self. I feel like I’m carrying dozens and dozens of lives with me.

I’m gullible. I’m a glutton for change.

Read and reread. There’s always a bit of you in everyone.