Frequencies

Due to a conversation with a co-worker (and when I say co-worker, I always mean friend as well, for these folks are all good friends, all four of them), regarding Obama's speech on Afghanistan, I began to think of how people (mainly myself) operate on different frequencies and how we're able to -or perhaps, culpable of- tun/e(ing) in and out, much like a radio as you drive along the mountain range, picking up stations as you go.

For example: I operate on a frequency that is highly internal, almost selfish I suppose in the sense that I am always thinking about how I am thinking and how I can apply what I think and why I think like so to my life. It's quite fascinating. I think more about me because I can figure myself out or at least be satisfied with the unknown, whereas having this same fascination with another person's thoughts would be both presumptuous and fruitfully endless. I will never understand exactly how another person thinks because I am not capable of being in someone else's brain. I'm fine with this, but it makes me sound self-absorbed, which is an entirely other topic of conversation considering I believe you have to be selfish and confident (not outwardly, but privately) in order to achieve goals, especially if you find your energies and power from within rather than from an outside source. But this is all beside the point.

My internal frequency notices things about how I am thinking, reacting, moving, expressing, etc. I notice what causes me to have a genuine smile that is natural as opposed to one that I create because it seems appropriate. I notice what other thoughts (in/external) cause me to leap from one topic to another in my head, and I notice what thoughts I voice and what thoughts I automatically keep hidden. That is one of my strongest frequencies: being tuned in to myself. I think this is important because for a long time I did not know what made me happy or sad or angry or how to figure this out. I guess that comes with age. While I still don't know what will, in the future, make me happy (or sad or angry, etc.), I at least have a semblance of an idea.

A second frequency I am highly attuned to is the kindness frequency. I notice acts of kindness wherever they are, large or small. Several days ago, I watched a young man (high school age?) keep a door held open for a family that was struggling across the parking lot with three children in tow. He was not part of their clan, nor would he have been rude to go inside without holding the door since he was well ahead of them, but nevertheless he waited, and then simply went on his way. Yes, this is a simple, small act of kindness, but I see these things and pick up on them from great distances, as if my kindness frequency waves extend farther than others.

In the same respect, I have a jacka** frequency that spots completely jerk moves from miles away. I have absolutely no patience for people who are purposefully ignorant or jerktastic for their own self-absorbed reasons. If you make a mistake and you honestly didn't mean to do it, apologize. That I can handle (though sometimes I feel like it's an abuse of the whole "better to ask for forgiveness than permission" bit...). But I do not for a second believe that a person really thought s/he was turning right and ended up needing to turn left and therefore feels it is his/her right to butt into the left-hand turn lane and not only block the right-turners, but hold up the left turners as well. Nice try buddy...

I suppose these add up to my awareness of people and my surroundings. I am forever thinking about how I am affecting the people around me. Will it kill me to make small talk with cashier? No. So I do because it might just make his/her day that much better. Sometimes I wish I could lower this frequency of mine and be blissfully unaware for a spell, but such is not the case.

There are frequencies I would like to develop and maintain that only operate on a low level right now. I'd like to reach a global frequency, to tune into the daily occurrences of people in other countries. This is a frequency I will have to purposefully establish. There are those who are drawn to the global frequency (whether it be through history, politics, literature, cooking, etc.) that do so automatically. I, however, will have to work to make this frequency audible to me. The obvious conductor for this frequency is literature, for me, so I plan to revisit my worldly literature first, and the go about reconnecting, or simply connecting with another region. It's far too easy for me to distance myself from other realities, and remain within my own, so this will be my reaching out.

More on frequencies later...my thoughts have run out of words to match.



image by questgarden