How I Imagined An Ideal Relationship

is between Phil and Claire. Respectful to each other.
Maybe relationship is not that complicated.
We just do it, and solve the problems ahead.
Problems stem from bad communication.
Things we’re afraid to say.
Sometimes even after good communication, there are still problems.
The next problem is immaturity.
Given good communication between each other,
relationship should have been going well.
We share our discomfort, and we find the middle ground, i.e. compromise.
But someone who’s immature, stays in place, not moving from where she stands.
Always her wishes that must be granted.
Or she takes, takes, and takes, never gives.
Because she thinks that’s what women are supposed to do.
I admit I’m immature, too.
Why would I leave the comfort I’m having right now,
and increase my spending by two fold or maybe thrice?
Maybe the key component I’m missing is love itself.
If I really love someone, things like that wouldn’t bother me at all.
Just like what other people do, who are willing to sacrifice everything,
even their own life,
for their lover.

An Insight from Things No One Taught Us About Love: Part I

When reading this book, I kinda get a sense of what the author wants us to be like, or in another word, what the author is like, if in his life he practices what he writes.

Imagine someone you know, whose mind is always positive. Some who’s always avoid thinking negatively about another person. Someone who’s vulnerable, brave, cheerful, unafraid of love, be the first one to approach people, who’s a radiant sun to people around him, who’s emotionally mature, who’s understanding, you never worry about saying wrong things to him/her, and an anchor to ships during deadly storm.

But what if I’m the one who’s always leaving?
and I have no love to share.
Heck I don’t even know what ‘giving love’ exactly means.
I mean, just being present is enough? I help people if they ask for help. Is that giving love enough?

dude…
I should get tested
for sociopathy. 😀

While writing this, a song from Amy Winehouse was playing: Love is A Losing Game.

Love is a losing game
One I wished I never played
Oh, what a mess we made
And now, the final frame
Love is a losing game

I love this song as it teaches us one of love’s core: whoever loses, they win.

Things No One Taught Us About Love

When I first encountered this book at Periplus, it was wrapped in plastic.
I couldn’t check what was inside.
As a robot who is learning about human behavior, this intrigued me, and I wanted to know how love works. I expected the contents would be something like, how relationship worked, how it should be.

But after reading into half the contents, I found that this book is mostly about self-love, which is true actually.
1. Loving yourself is the greatest form of love, just like Whitney Houston’s beautiful song.
2. Only after loving yourself, you can start loving other people.

And in chapter one, Vex King explained the nature of love. After reading chapter 1, his definition of love is divine love, or in Buddhism, metta. The great love. Love for all beings, even to the unworthy. Love to the whole universe.

While talking about this, there’s this sutta in Buddhism that I really loved. Basically it taught you to grow and spread your love to the universe. Doesn’t make sense, right? Maybe it’s not effective or beneficial to other beings we are spreading this invisible love to, but it is beneficial to our own selves, it brings to me some degree of peaceful feeling and happiness. Here is the link if you’re interested.

About self love, I think I have enough of it. That’s why I don’t seek validation anywhere else, thanks to how I was brought up. I notice that loving others are often a form of lust and self-serving desire. Like, when someone says she loves me, it doesn’t mean that she wishes my happiness. More often it means that she desires her own happiness which can be realized by being with me. I can sense what exactly she means by that. And even in the smallest form that even she doesn’t realize, I can know. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, I sense these kind of things by instantly analyzing the motives. I imagined another condition when I: am not rich; am not handsome. Would she still like, or even interested in me? The answer is mostly no. This sensitivity has helped me most times, but it also broke me. But as Tyrion said, “wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you.”

For this reason that’s why I am skeptical with people, knowing my background, praise me too overly even though they don’t know me personally. It happened once when I was matched with some far distant relative and I met with her family. I prefer people who just act normally and respectfully to people they just meet, this way we can build trust and respect together.

From observing people I also realize the possible truth. Maybe women multiply the love you gave them. You have to do it first. Maybe other people do it instinctively. I don’t. Maybe I already feel abundantly loved. Maybe that’s why children from broken home family are usually “wilder” in their teenage years. Not saying that it’s bad. I’m saying that it’s human. Our core value of being is to be loved. No one ever taught us how to love ourselves. It’s very normal that those teenagers seek love elsewhere. (Wow lots of maybes in one paragraph)

Or could there be another perspective? Sometimes people talk about loneliness when talking about needing a relationship. We don’t necessarily love someone, but we need them to make us feel less lonely. So somehow it’s like a mutualism symbiosis. It’s like having a loyal companionship for life. But for me myself, as someone who’s self sufficient most of the times, I have been by myself since college times, or maybe far before that. I was told that as a child, I don’t like to interact with others. When my cousins came to my house, I would resort back to my room, laying on the floor, bring up a pencil and a paper, and start drawing. Even during college times, there was a time I rarely interacted with people. I came to campus, listened to lectures, then going back home, then playing games, sometimes I explored new restaurants. If I seemed like an extrovert to you, it’s one of my learned trait. But my nature couldn’t lie. If I hang out with you, after 2 or 3 hours you will see tiredness in my eyes. They say lack of interaction with other human beings could make us less healthy physically. I don’t know about that. But if someone becomes my close friend, then it means he has been through my invisible filter, it means he’s a good person. Not necessarily perfect but he’s morally good or has a good heart.

After all, I’m only at chapter 2 of this book. So after reading more about it. Maybe I’ll write more about it. For now, that’s about it.

My Soft Spot

In my life, I have realized I have a soft spot for ugly women. Like sometimes at a mall or maybe in a running event, like she offers something for me to buy, I have more tendency to buy than if a beautiful woman offers it to me. Yes, I will not sugarcoat my word with terms such as less beautiful or less favored. It may not seem obvious, but there is such a thing as a universal beauty standard. No matter how you won’t accept it and refuse it, beauty is subjective. For each person, what beauty is is different. But at some degree, there is a universal standard for beauty. For example, no way Kekeyi would be accepted as Victoria’s Secret angels even though Kekeyi has the height, perfected the runway, etc. No way Kekeyi would be in the cover of Vogue magazine. No way will we hear a healthy young girl say with an honest intent that they aspire to be as beautiful as Kekeyi.

Reminder for myself

Sometimes when I read my words. It all sounded like words from someone who has figured it all. But the truth is, I’m far from it. Of course sometimes I feel like I am better than most people, I’m sure people too at some degree. But then I also realize that it’s my ego talking. My real self would know it’s not true. Sometimes I just need to be reminded.

A Little History of Everything

Phew.. finally I finished the book. While at it, I took a chance to write all the questions I had before googling it.

Here are the lists:

  1. Lucy australopithecines –> a fossil record found in Ethiopia, dated at 3,2 million years old. First bipedal ape recorded.
  2. Difference between homo and australopithecines. Mostly physical features, as shown in picture below.
How Running Made Us Human – UNews Archive

3. How long homo Erectus roams the earth –> 2 million years. 2 million years compared to only 10.000 years of recorded history? Imagine how many have died and what kind of stories they had.
4. Why being monogamous is beneficial for evolution?
To prevent conflicts in a harmonious society. Since our strength comes from collective collaborative behavior.
5. How do they know it’s Homo sapiens or neanderthals that made the art?
It was because the art was dated to a time in Europe where sapiens haven’t arrived yet, while Neanderthals have.
6. Oldiest Homo sapiens art
Blombos Cave –> but the search result is disappointing, the art was not really artsy to me.
Leang Bulu Sipong –> this one is second oldest and it is located in my home country, Indonesia. This painting is magnificent.
7. Fossil record showed that 40.000-60.000 years ago, Homo sapiens didn’t spread to Europe while Neanderthals did. Maybe they were at war and genocide happened, finally Neanderthals was defeated and Homo sapiens now roams Europe?
8. Are asians descendant of denosivans?
Not much known about denosivans as studies are so limited due to fossil record limitations. But in my random guess, maybe denosivans cremated their bodies. My guess is only at 10% believability.
9. Catalhoyuk first building of Homo sapiens
Apparently not, it’s Jericho in Palestine! I then looked up Jericho and it’s so cool! Is that where all those stories began?
10. When did homo Erectus evolved into homo sapiens?
They didn’t evolve directly, more like this table below. The question of when becomes unimportant.

Human evolution - Wikipedia

11. Why did all other homos become extinct?
Maybe Homo sapiens or earlier homos, battle over resources with other homos. There are still other apes and great apes because they are not considered a threat to homos.
12. Lake Makgadikgadi -> where first Homo sapiens live
Homo erectus left when drying period of this lake began, and later Homo sapiens appeared.

There you go.
And about previously why we exist. It is as I expected. Nothing religious or spiritual. He doesn’t know and in his opinion it’s purely random and by the grace of this randomness that we exist.

Life

Okay, so I just read the A Little History of Everything chapter The Emergence of Life and Life Conquers All and I have a few contemplation I want to share.

So, in the book, it is described that how life begins. There are many theories but the most widely accepted one is the primordial soup theory, it’s basically about a soup so rich in chemicals essential to life, with right temperature and pressure, it will somehow create a fatty membrane containing proteins, which is what a cell looks like. Then inside that membrane, the nucleotides (an organic compound) then rearrange into DNA. That DNA has a program that instructs them to self replicate. Maybe after billions of iteration, at one point a single DNA with that kind of instruction appears.

Then it’s a long way to go to become us humans.

About the contemplation, I wonder if life was created that way, then why would there be a need for life at all?
Life is needed only by life itself.
What is the end game of life?
No, I am not talking about life as in your life or mine, but in the existence of life at whole: in plants, in bacteria, in animals, etc.
I know living beings evolve to better their survival. But why do they need to survive? Why do they need to replicate and inhabit their planet? It’s a pointless game with no winner, right?
Imagine if there’s no life and no consciousness.
For inanimate objects, nothing changes, it doesn’t matter much.
Or for our case about Earth, Earth would probably much better off without life.

There are 2 chapters of the book, which is titled: Consciousness and Why We Exist. Maybe inside them, I can see Tim Coulson’s answer to my questions. Although it is certainly not definitive, but maybe there’s an insight I can get.

DNA

I have a lot of things that I believe.
Among those things, what I most believe are that our personalities are descended from our parents. Our parents from theirs, and so it goes.
Then our brought personalities combined with our experiences, what we eat, breathe, consume, our environments, and basically everything we’re in contact with, they will then create new personality. Then this new personality will be written in code into our DNA. And this coded memory will get passed to our children through the combination of sperm and ovum.

And I find it so amusing how a single cell can bring lots of life informations. It’s like a super huge memory card. (But apparently after I did some quick search, it was only amount to 37,5 MB of data in a single sperm.)

I don’t have a hard evidence whether what I believe is true or not. But I watched it from people around me. There are some personalities that were never taught to them, but somehow they have it, and apparently their parents have it, too! For example, there was this friend in high school whose father ran away when he was little. His father was a womanizer. And I think you can guess what my friend was….

Since I observed it from people around me, of course it’s not a matter of scientific truth, it’s a matter of belief. And disagreeing with me is totally okay.

Tywin Lannister

If someone asks me, who my favorite fictional character is, there he is.

Actually, there could be others, but right now the one that crosses my mind is him.
And he was perfectly portrayed by Charles Dance.

The things that I like about him is his strategic mind and his decision making process.

Well, most of my favorite fictional characters are antagonists and I usually hate protagonists. It’s not because I want to be anti-mainstream or because I see the qualities of the antagonists within me. Sometimes I like protagonists and hate antagonists, too. But in most of the movies and books, usually protagonists are stupid. They make their decision out of kindness and it ruins almost everything. Sometimes people die because of their “good” decision. While protagonists are stupid, usually antagonists are portrayed as smart and calculating. The qualities that I like. And Lord Tywin Lannister of Casterly Rock is not only smart and calculating, he is also wise. I guess you can say I hate weakness and attracted to strength.

Again, about Lord Tywin Lannister who shits gold.

I hate it when talking about Game of Thrones, people on the internet -I think most of them are stupid- say that, “he’s evil” or “he’s good.” It’s like they’re incapable of understanding the complexity of humans. From watching a movie, you can get a sense of who you’re going to support, but it doesn’t mean that their enemies are bad guys. In a well written story like Game of Thrones (at least until season 4), characters are more complex. They have a reason for doing the things they do, maybe they’re motivated by fear, by money, by love, or in Tywin’s case, by legacy.