Just a Thought

So I thoroughly enjoy reading people’s blogs. Especially, people I don’t know that well, it’s really interesting to see the discrepancies between how people view themselves and how they portray themselves to the world. I love seeing the way people’s minds work.

And some times I wish mine worked differently. I was playing the piano today and I realized that I am beginning to forget how to read music. By this, I don’t mean forgetting what the notes on the page mean but that the time it takes me to see the notes and be able to hit them is noticeably longer. I have also forgotten how to play all but two songs on the guitar, haven’t written a single song in 3 years, and probably couldn’t play the flute for more than an hour anymore.

The discovery that I was forgetting how to read music actually made me think of a conversation that I had with a friend a couple of years ago. Kate* is seriously one of the most sincere people that I have ever met, we’ve lost touch over the years but I still absolutely adore her. Unfortunately, the Kate that I knew was also certifiable. Like really, really crazy. She was always an obsessive girlfriend, and either she had a boyfriend or was depressed that she didn’t have one. She also always told them that she loved them within the first week of dating. This horrified me and in the back of my mind I’d always suspected that it was one of the reasons behind her frequent lack of a boyfriend. As I understood it at the time, love meant a commitment to stay with someone until you literally kill each other or the other person was old enough for all their teeth to have fallen out.

At around break up number 6 or 7, I finally asked her
“Why do you always tell guys you love them so soon?”
“It’s something you just understand when you’re in love.”
“But doesn’t it scare you that you might have to take it back?”

Disclaimer: I have never told someone I loved them and then taken it back. I just think that that mindset applies to so many other things, especially as I am entering my senior year. Pretty much every Penn kid is like “if this is what I’m doing right now then this is what I love and this is the only thing I will ever love.” No matter what it is.

Anyways, back to the music. If I had taken the time and effort that I put in to Penn to seriously sit on a mountaintop or something and just played my little heart out I am pretty sure I would be better at reading music than I am. All that aside, that is life and we always have to neglect something. It’s kind of like you're standing on the spoke of a bicycle wheel with a bunch of possibilities all necessarily leading in different directions. But I still want it all.