The Nature of Trusting Others in Our Daily Lives

I brought up the following topic at the dinner table, and the conversation that ensued really got me thinking.

Does everyone realize how many people you have to trust to live a normal life? Of course, many people regard their family and best friends as the ones that they trust the most, which is usually a very good thing, as those are the people you most likely see quite often and who you are closest to. At first, it might seem as if trust ends there. However, think about it. Unless every moment of your life is spent in a self-made cage that you made from scratch, without any tools or materials, eating absolutely nothing, the chances are high that you trust a LOT of people. Every time that you buy something from someone else, you're trusting them not to put something toxic or dangerous inside of it. Every time that you ride in someone else's car, or bus (or other vehicle), you're trusting them not to crash or do something wrong, and even if you're driving the vehicle, you trust every single other car on the road not to crash into you. If you're an average person, you probably trust every single person that you see in your daily life (what if you were afraid that every single person you crossed was about to throw a punch at you, or worse?)- to a certain extent- people some more than others, of course, and rightly so.
Though this requires people to be reliant on so many other people, this is not a bad thing. It means that there is definitely good in the world, and an abundant amount, because otherwise humans would not- and should not- trust others as much as they do.

I realized how many times I post poems on here about something depressing like death, so I thought about life and happiness instead. That was a bit of a rant up there, but I hope you still liked it! :)

-Cora

Basketball, Sports, and the Strange Tendencies of Humanity

Warning: Everything I say below is my opinion, and my opinion only. I am not attempting to advocate this opinion whatsoever. If you disagree, then you disagree. That's your choice.

I watched a basketball game yesterday.
Almost every student in my school came to watch, because the game was during school.
Our school is pretty small, so everyone can fit in the bleachers of our gym.

Our team did really well, and I only knew that by looking at the scoreboards. I was completely amazed to see that only after two goals- ummm, do you call them goals in basketball? Or do you say hoops?- the score was 2-2. And in the middle of the game, our score jumped from 39 to 41 suddenly.
Until I remembered that for every goal- hoop, whatever- you can get more than one point, depending on how far away you are. But for me, keeping track would be confusing.
Actions in sports like basketball don't make much sense to me.
Numbers do.
Thank goodness for scoreboards, or I would be completely lost.

The game lasted almost an hour and a half, and my opinion about it was mixed. I wanted to support our team, because they're from my school, and it's a human tendency to want to support those that you have things in common with. However, I'm not much into sports at all. I don't dislike sports, I just don't really care.

As you can probably tell, I'm a nuisance at sports. I can't throw a ball and have it reach its destination. I'm okay at catching, but in most sports, if you want to play it, you have to be more than okay.
I'm mediocre at tennis. I can't serve, though.

Why do people play sports? Why are people so negative against the other team that they're not cheering for? Why do shouts in the stadium- is that what it's called? A basketball stadium? Or is that football? Ugh, I'm clueless- include "BOO!" and "MISS!"?

It's probably because we have a strong will to win at all costs, no matter what. We want to feel good, and in order to do that, we think that our opponents need to feel bad. We win, they fail.

Our feelings should not affect whether we do well or not. We should just be able to play sports and win if our abilities surpass our opponents.
And yet they do. Our feelings have a very strong effect, and they carry a lot of weight in the result of everything we do.
Humanity has a tendency towards feeling strong emotions. This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
It's good because feelings give us an opinion and make us unique and special, which is important. It makes us human.
It's bad because sometimes it closes off our minds to what other people think, or feel.

The bottom line? Emotions are confusing.

About Me and a Ranting Update on My Life

Hello, everyone! Today is January 2nd, 2011! 2011!!!! It's unnatural typing that in a date. I guess I'll get used to it sooner or later, like I did with all the years before. :)

I just realized that you probably don't know a lot about me, so I've added two lists in the toolbar to the right.

Anyway, an update on my life:
I just video chatted with Mollie (one of my best friends). We practiced our lines for the play we're doing and such. I'll explain later.
Recently, I've been sending ranting emails back and forth with Mollie. We've been talking a lot about the awesome quirks in literature and humanity's strangeness. Here's an excerpt of my side of the lovely conversation:

Ahh.. ranting. Words are beautiful.
But also quite stupid.
So close, but yet just out of my grasp.
I could write a poem about it.
It would be about how I reach and reach,
and I rant and rant.
and words are there,
but they make no sense.

What a lovely life.
Life is beautiful.
But also quite unfair.
And annoying.

I went to the Titanic museum exhibit today. Have you ever been? It tours around all over the place. If so, do you remember those cards that they give you? If not, they give you little cards that have a random name from someone who was a passenger on the ship. It lists their class number, a bit of their history, and their family life. Then you go through the exhibit, touch an iceberg along the way that's pretty cold, and you can only imagine how it must have felt for everyone there, and then you find out if you died of not. I was a mother. 48 years old. I had a son that was thirteen.
Age... why did humans choose to have it represented by a whole year, when in comparison to others they aren’t actually always a year older on that one day? Why do humans use a celebratory days in the first place on specific days in which they feel special and not like in the giver. Nothing big actually happens on that one day, it's just the marking of a year's time. I guess the reason for specific days in which people feel special is just because of that- so that they feel special.
But that's not the point, I'm sorry. My character had a 13 year old son, a 18 year old daughter, a 21 year old daughter, and a husband, who all came with her home on the ship. We were all from pennsylvania, and I left one of my older sons behind in America. I was going to find suitable husbands in France for my daughters, because my first class self was apparently disappointed in American suitors. The irony of it all is that upon our arrival, the son that I had left behind in America died, so I was taking the titanic back home with the rest of my family for his funeral. I was apparently very distraught and I stayed in my cabin almost the whole time. Poor Emily. That was her name. Emily Marie Borie.

We survived.

Which brings back the unfairness of the whole issue. The more money you had, the more likely we were to survive. It's true in real life, as well. In general, the more money you have, the more resources you can buy for your survival. More people died in third class than in first and second combined. 1st class, 2nd class, 3rd class, and crew losses added up to 1423. However, people regard it as such a complete tragedy. Think about the holocaust. Millions of deaths. People aren't even sure about the exact amount, it's so many. It's scary, how little everything matters. How little everyone's particular life matters, though most people value them fairly highly. Why? Does it matter that that family made it through the Titanic? They died afterwards, anyway. Everyone does at some point.

Do people realize that they are just one out of billions of people? And that's only people. What about all of the other living beings out there? On Earth, and possibly beyond...? The earth'll keep spinning without people, and when the earth doesn't support life anymore (Comment: poor Gaea!), then there's still all those other planets and stars out there. Will another life form make its way somehow and discover about all of us? Will they know that we each had a story? They'd probably say something like, "Oh, it's just humans. They were only around for a few million years. Nothing much." Said in their own language, of course.
It makes everything look small and useless. It really snaps things into perspective. Does it even matter that i'm writing this email to you? It's only one email of billions sent every day.
Yeah. I just looked it up. There's 247 billion emails sent every day, 2.8 million every second. http://email.about.com/od/emailtrivia/f/emails_per_day.htm
WOAH. Right now, that's how many. And another few million. And another. This is one in 2.8 million emails that are about to be sent. Well, technically more, because if there 2.8 million now, then in the next second another 2.8 million, that means those people are going to send their emails soon, too, because 2 seconds is fairly soon, if you ask me. Then again, even days, weeks, and months, even years and decades, and centuries, and millennia are technically nothing, worth nothing in the whole scheme of things. In one year, 90,155,000,000,000 emails are sent. 90 trillion 155 billion. I don't even want to think about how many are in a decade, or a century, or a millennium, though I doubt that email will exist.

Do you see now why psychology intrigues me?
To understand all of these human desires to live and be known, our natural instinct of survival, our want for attention, the fact that many people are failing to understand how little they have to do with the rest of the universe. Or this could just be their way of unconsciously coping. By believing that they are important, they feel that they are important to life and to something that is important. I hate it, how many people are often so closeminded and interested in little things that are so trivial. Yet sometimes, those things matter the most.
It's almost 2 am. I just spent an hour rambling on about this. I'm really sorry for you now. I would delete all of that, but it doesn't seem worth it. That's my stand. My little effect on the world. In the meantime, a bunch of emails have been sent. 10,291,666,666.6 repeating in the last hour. Why should i care, anyway? Why does time matter in the first place? What is time, anyway? It time an attempt at keeping things orderly and without change?

Well, congrats to you, if you stuck with me all the way through. (Note to self: That was a rhyme! I didn’t even realize it when I wrote it! Now, add in another line rhyming with it! >>) like you so often do! Now it’s almost 2:30. God, I should be utterly tired, but I’m not, really. I feel a lot better now with my feelings out there, though I’m just one of those little people out there in the huge universe. xD

Love ya!
Cora

*starts ranting again* What is the importance of the meaning of a name....