Whims

Sometimes I wonder why I expend so much energy trying to be nice and accomodating to people. It really is quite tiring and occasionally painful. Yet it seems the natural thing to do. Does that mean I'm a nice guy? Nobody really seems to agree, so why should I bother? Perhaps I should simply give up and surrender to the suppressed impulses to simply be unpleasant. Maybe it is just me, but I have always had this desire to snap. There is a reason I become a little more violent when I drink a bit.

Ok, so that would land me in a lot of trouble. Forget it. What does bug me, and has been weighing down my mood recently, is the difficulty of doing anything in this school. Everything has to be a major production. At home, it was so easy to do things. If you wanted to go take a walk at night, just go. Here you worry about getting mugged and freezing to death. Go clubbing? Just go, even if you don't bother to take people with you, you're likely to meet people you know at wherever you go. Or just get drunk and everybody's your friend. At least you'll think so. Go out and get supper? Even without a car, in Singapore, just walk out and eat, entirely normal. Here it is impossible.

Maybe things aren't really that hard, but they only seem to be because it no longer seems normal to do things on your own. Go shopping downtown alone? Are you insane? No, normal enough back home. Not so here. Why is that? Why is there this compulsion to be social all the time now? It used to be I could actually enjoy a day with exactly zero interaction with people I knew. Now, facing the same few people every single day, I cannot seem to pull away. The ridiculousness is patent, yet it seems inescapable.

The only conclusion I can find is that living with another person in the same room is detrimental to any sense of independence one may possess. When I was younger, I shared a room with my brothers, and I was very stuck on people, whether it be them or my friends. Later, when I got my own room, I became a lot more introspective and solitary, not necessarily a bad development, mind you. I liked myself as a singular entity, without the cloying dependence on others for validation of one's own worth. Instead, I was able to enjoy what I liked without looking to others for acceptance or company. If there was a movie I wanted to watch that nobody else really did, a common enough occurence, I could simply head out and watch it on my own with no negative vibes whatsoever. I happily chilled with those wonderful books that people nowadays don't seem to read anymore, and that was a happy thing. Now, everything has to be catered to the preferences and whims of others. Ridiculous, I tell you. Of course, perhaps it is only coincidence that the changes in my character have followed the alterations in my rooming arrangements, but the general point remains, that I have become far too dependent on others for personal gratification than I would like or would consider to be healthy.

Perhaps I should simply decide to become more independent, to do what I want to rather than what others would like to. Compromises are not a good thing. It is possible that this is simply being stubborn and precious, but I think it is important to occasionally do what I want to without having to think about whether others would like to do it as well. Avoiding dilution of personal pleasure is crucial to maintaining a happy and content state of mind for myself.