metaphoria

Love Gifts

Posted on February 21, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

Gifting is a peculiar mechanism. When sincere and with taste for what’s truly desirable, it can be among the best things one can do for you. When part of a social obligation and generic – so as to not disappoint the gifted because they “expect” you to gift – it becomes a duty to accept, and it may not always feel like a pleasant action.

Infatuation – which so many young people inevitably take to be true love – gives birth to another kind of gifting, where your gifts aren’t meant to be of use to another but to somehow reaffirm the relationship, or the “love”, between the two. They seem extremely pleasing from the outside, and some even envy such gifts while disguising their reaction as exaggerated disgust, but on the inside, there’s not much to them – nor is there supposed to be.

Noise

Posted on February 14, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

We live in a world so overcome with sound, and yet we never notice it.

We got used to hearing car engine rumbling and honking so much that we no longer pay attention to it, but it doesn’t stop the sound from pressing our mind. If you’d like to see just how big is the effect, spend a week in the nature far away enough to not hear any noise barring the nature’s own. I promise you: you will be overwhelmed when you come back.

Or, if you leave in a small enough city, take a walk at night. During that time, you can hear people near you breathing, and every step you make matters. If a car decides to roar at night, you can hear it’s engine streets away, and all it has to do to sound like a wild cat is to ramp up the rotations just a little bit.

At day, however, having a quiet moment with somebody is a luxury for most of us, even with sound-proof windows installed. We no longer live in a world where quiet is the default; to keep our vast productive civization steady, we have to come to terms with noise – a deal that’s bad for us to make.

The 70-Year-Old Obsession

Posted on February 7, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

When the Nazi Germany capitulated, it was a sign of victory for the whole world, for every continent. Through the common effort, through blood and tears, several of the world’s greatest armies fought – and defeated – the biggest threat the modern history has ever seen. It was the brave actions and the lives of thousands of soldiers of different nationalities and allegiances that brought down this terrifying enemy, and this must not be forgotten by those who are allowed to live afterwards.

However, there are limits to such a vision – or, at least, the rational mind dictates that there must be. While it’s important to honor those who have laid their lives for the sake of their children, it’s also important not to turn it into an obsession. It was a terrible tragedy that happened to the whole world, and we ought to be grateful for it to have been ceased, but there is no longer any honor in celebrating the victory. It happened, and like with all things of the past, we must learn from it and then let it stay in the past; not of ungratefulness, but of concern with the lives that we have now and the problems we have to solve to let the future come a shade brighter.

It pains me to see, therefore, how the Russian culture is malformed under the premise of patriotism whilst celebrating the “glorious victory” the Soviet Union held seventy-some years ago. In preparation for May 9th, banners are strung above the roads saying something to the likes of “Congratulations with N years of victory!”, public transportation serves as a moving such banner of its own, silk lines – orange-and-black Georgian brands, presumably after Georgiy Zhukov – are given away on the street to be worn as a symbol of commemoration of the event and the whole country seems to be going crazy for around a month.

Things of the Past…

Posted on January 31, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

…should stay in the past.

We often hang up on things that are no longer true or present in our lives. That ex from three years ago, with whom you’ve spent wonderful time but whom you’re no longer with. That opportunity that you’ve missed that would’ve been so great. That stupid mistake that you’ve made as a child.

Those things haunt us, or we keep them around. Either way, they occupy our minds more often than they should and make us feel a certain way, and often enough, this way is pity, loneliness or regret. Yet, for some reason, those things persist, no matter how much we don’t enjoy them – and if they don’t persist in one’s mind for long, they remind of themselves through a subtle hint in one’s surrounding, something others will not even register.

Except… they don’t.

Rules Unexplained

Posted on January 24, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

It bothers me how people sometimes issue rules without explaining the reasoning behind them. It may be a house rule, a moral rule or even a state law – whoever one issues it upon is assumed to understand it and follow it therefore, and when the rule isn’t followed by some, it’s assumed that it’s the people are stupid or rebellious – you know, just ’cause.

Human beings are rational creatures capable of crunching through an amazing set of problems on their own – a set that includes problems of moral and ethics, complex sciences or day-to-day incidents like a leaking tap. Perhaps, this is the rationale behind not explaining the given rules: that “they’ll figure it out” – which is disrespectful to the governed persons, at best, because now it is somehow the ruled’s fault for not following the sometimes-not-so-clear thought lines of the rulers, all the while it’s the latter who are supposed to be the more capable ones. It’s why we trust someone to lead, isn’t it? – because they’re capable of leading in a way that’s beneficial to the led.

This trust can easily be misused or even abused if it is, in fact, blind faith. Despite how clever we are, we aren’t always capable of dissecting the world on our own. Some things just don’t stick in our heads, and even if we work hard enough for them to stick, our brains have limited capacity, and learning one useful skill might very well lead us to losing another. We require those more capable in a given field to provide us with information that’s beyond our grasp to work efficiently – this is why whole institutions exist for education and training to commence.

Yet, we often persist with the unclear rules, following them blindly for the rest of our lives at times, without giving it a good, hard look and see why they exist in the first place. Why is that?

Self-sabotage

Posted on January 17, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

Many of us had at some point the feeling of not going through with the plans of ours that promise some sort of vital improvement in our lives. For some, it’s getting the job to start making one’s own money; for others, it’s taking up exercise or taking it past a few days’ worth of work; and for someone else, it might be as simple as taking up brushing teeth every evening before going to bed.

How come? We know it’s an improvement, and we know it’s achievable; we have the intent and the opportunity, time and resources, perhaps for the first time in our lives. Why not proceed, then? What changes our mind?

The Peculiar Light in the Night

Posted on January 10, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

Spanish is a beautiful language, but I want never to learn it.

Not because I speak of its beauty out of any sort of politeness: in this case, I speak my mind clearly. I find the spirit of the language – mirroring its speakers’ mentality – inspiring for its strength, for its fortitude; like any language, it can produce beauty and fear when used in those directions, but generally, the sound of the Spanish language attracts my ear.

Not because I can’t, either.

I want never to learn it to preserve its beauty in a way that would vanish had I understood what it meant.

On Contemporary Cynicism

Posted on January 3, 2016 by mtreasureseeker

The world today seems to have cynics overpresented in every area of life. “World’s going to shit”. “We’ve raised a generation of spoiled idiots”. “Those blacks/Mexicans/Chinese are overtaking our jobs”. So on. Idealism is laughed at; effort to improve the world is trumped before it can begin to yield results. In media, people seem to enjoy listening to cynics of various degrees – because the speakers’ words resonate with so many, but not because they’re right.

Cynics are constantly disappointed with the ways things go – but why?

On New Year’s declarations

Posted on December 27, 2015 by mtreasureseeker

It seems to have been commonly assumed among the more “life-educated” people that using New Year as a source of momentum to change oneself is pointless because “nobody follows it up anyway”. It’s considered by them a poor taste, a mainstream media abomination of sorts to declare one’s wishes of change for the following year due to it being “a mere projection onto reality”, and therefore meaning nothing but one’s desire to have it better than they already do.

I disagree.