Thanks, Leibdawg. You always know the perfect things to say to get the crazy kids to become even crazier.

Hum. The above is what happens when you give 18 year olds an unsupervised crack at an open bar. Yeah, we were uber-cool that night. Sipping on whiskey. Hanging out with Hollywood big-wigs and movie stars. Dancing with crazy production chicks. Wait. That was all Noel.

That summer should have shown me what I was missing from my life. Ah, well. We live. Sometimes we learn.

—–

But I digress. Back to Leibs. Here is a teacher who knows how to encourage a gal. I first met him in a philosophy class my junior year of high school. Yes, Carson High had a philosophy class, and yes, my 16-year-old self was already digging all of that trippy shit.

Leibs is all about deconstruction and thinking outside of the box. Since we were only high school kids, this got him in trouble often. Especially whenever we talked about God. Several kids sat behind me and hated even the slightest deviations from what they learned from their parents or at Bible study. I always wondered why they were even in the class.

I think Leibs was in love with my brain. He probably loved everyone’s brains, but he always made me feel particularly special. In one response paper, I wrote that I considered myself a cynic and lamented the fact.

He wrote me back, telling me that cynicism is a wonderful thing, but only if it is tempered with hope and understanding. That certainly changed the way I viewed the world.

However, that does sound rather contradictory. The main tenet of cynicism is that one is inclined to have a strong distrust in the integrity or sincerity of an individual or his motives. How could one continue to be understanding and hopeful if it seems as if the entire world is motivated by self-interest?

Perhaps if one accepts this self-interest as fact, one may be able to look past it.

Hum. That still doesn’t sound right to me. But eh.

For me, cynicism is more about a certain type of awareness. I don’t let it rule me or the decisions I make. It does not prevent me from making friends or deepening existing relationships. It’s a heightened sense of things, a realization that there are very few in the world who may really love me without expecting everything in return.

Meh. I lost my angle here. And that’s why I’m a terrible writer.

Peace out, nuckas.

(via snip-snap-beep.blogspot.com)