What brings you forward the most, what hinders you in living life like you want to do the most is other people.
Show me your friends and I tell you who you are.
Every human being is basically worth the same as every other human being.
But one can't live like that, you can't *like* everone the same. And it seems that I found my major criteria for liking someone. Phantasy, of course, but also how the person deals with his or her phantasy. And maybe even more important: Ideals. I want people to think about who they are, where they stand and where they want to go. I want them to have an idea of a perfect self, who they ultimately want to be. While judging people it seems to be more important to me what the person wants to do and not what he or she currently is doing or even what he or she did in the past.
I want to be able to know a person and their ideal self. Better yet if they are aware of their own personal ideals and try to reach them, consciously. I am a sucker for free will anyway. Conscious decisions, yes. It's like everybody is a raw diamond, some are washed and maybe even cut a bit by parents, old friends, social status etc. But mostly we'll have to make ourselves shiny. Cut stuff away to free the inner fire. And did you know, if a diamond cut is too shallow, light is lost out the bottom, if it's too deep, it escapes out the sides. Nice metaphor, eh?
There's of course a side effect of this: I'm a fan of truth, too. So if someone keeps on telling tales about his or her ideals without ever trying to reach them, it's just that: tales. That's like planning what to do if you had a million dollars or if you could be fifteen again, but with the knowledge you have now. That's not really wanting to learn more, to improve. Actually, having no ideals is better than having them and not doing anything about it. Because if the first is the case, maybe you never got the notion to think about something like that and you still have the potential to become a cut diamond.

By the way, the age of fifteen seems to haunt me these days. Everywhere I look characters are fifteen and decide for the first time who they want to be. It's such a crazy age, such a chaotic time of finding, losing and being in-between. I don't envy my sister at all for having to go through this starting the end of next year. I'm much happier to having discouvered my first laugh lines around the eyes this morning while smiling at the mirror. Like every line makes me a more refined person, completes me somehow. I'd rather live in an old house with history and the traces of lifes lived in it than in a sparkly new one, and isn't the body the house of the soul? But yeah, easily said since the scales were very nice to me this morning. I'm getting there, wait and see, I'm achieving an over ten year old goal.

You should always expect more from yourself than you do from others. So it's okay to want them to think and plan, in my case, because I'm doing that very, very much indeed. But I also want people to be less egocentric, and I'm not sure if this is in fact fair.

I'm still mourning because I had to bury my idea of a perfect flat sharing group. It could have been so much more, it could have been living art, pushing each other further along toward happiness, being true to ourselves, really seizing the days. If only all four of us would have been willing to dare change. Risk losing something to gain even more. If only our priorities would have been the same. But alas, it wasn't to be.
I get cranky when I have to think for others, plan for others. Don't ever tell me you're too busy to think about keeping up with the things you more or less promised to do. Communication, people. Tell me we'll have to rethink some chores and I'll be all ears and smiles. Just don't do them because it 'just doesn't work' and I'll be beyond pissed. I'm noones training ground, not without explicit permission.
And I have to say, I'm totally floored if you're not doing your utmost to care for pets which are so very very vulnerably dependant of you.
On the other hand I learned that I'm able to tolerate some things I'd never thought would be okay for me, like people too afraid, absolutely disoriented, helplessly fighting the windmills of their minds. People thinking about the past, about should haves, would haves, could haves. Dismissing people far too early, expecting the worst of them, of the world in general. People fighting with their ideal selves about the right to be here, people at war with themselves. I know these kinds of struggles, intimately, so of course I'm able to tolerate them.
But here's the problem: I can't tolerate closed minds anymore, I can't stand people using up my time and my energy while nothing is gained, spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically... even in the long run. I don't want to be taken for granted. I don't want to run after you to ask you repeatedly if you'd maybe let me help you.

But isn't that very egocentric behaviour? I shall never stop asking that question. I hope I'll never do too little for people without meaning to. Okay, that sounds weird, I mean, sometimes you start syhing back from someone, but that's on purpose, because that someone hurt you, deceived you or just slowly walked away from you on a different path of life. (Btw: I know I myself have to do more to keep up with old friends, I really hope I'm up to the task these coming weeks)

Damn, I don't think I'm expressing myself really well, here. I wish I could write as well as I can talk. My point is, your ideals are part of your core, and if I see you having them I'll admire you and feel a lot more for you than without them. I wish everybody could see how your own ideals shouldn't crush you because they're not who you should be right now this very instant (and you don't fail if you aren't). They are a part of you, part of what makes you special and worth more and beautyful.
That doesn't mean I can't like people without ideals or with very tiny ones. But I can't love them.

Ideal Fuchs right now is way above my current reach. She's flying higher, seizing more, ignores all the stupid things occupying my time and my thoughts and, of course, still twelve pounds lighter than I am. She humbler and more relaxed, too. Serene, maybe.
And maybe I'll never be her, not all the time, nonstop. Ideals aren't goals to reach, they are lighthouses to guide our way. And if I can just expand the time in which I'm nearly her, if I can just increase the days that are spent in her ways, I'm mightily proud of myself.
Dad tought me that trying doesn't suffice. Mom told him she'd be trying all the time and she never really was. So I'll have to take his hurt into account and change the lesson some: Lying about trying doesn't suffice. Really trying does, though. The path is the goal etc.

The narrow ridge I'm walking is being proud of trying, but without growing arrogant about it, without stopping on the path unconsciously. Looking down on other people does that to me. High and mighty, helping them oh so fucking generously. I have to look up to other people. I have to concentrate on what I can learn, not on what they can learn. That's a much happier way of thinking anyway, because I can't make anyone understand anything but myself. And I don't need no more self confidence, really, I somehow seem to have gained loads of that in the past few years.
Thing is, I'm trying to surround myself with people that are like me or a bit above my level of achievements. That makes me *sort* people. That makes me impatient with people that lack, in fact, life experience. I really have to stop that. It does me no good to think like that, it rather tips me over to one side of the narrow ridge. I have to concentrate on my core more while letting others be. They'd make it easier to reach some goals, but they can't hinder me, not really. Yeah, I still wish for a synergetic effect, but I can't let that be my excuse. Waah, waah, nobody else dreamt my dream, so I can't follow it? Fat chance.

Januaries generally don't like me, and I don't like myself in Januaries. That seems to be because I actually do make New Year's resolutions, well, I rethink my general resolutions and goals, take stock and the like. But every February I look forward again.

...

Oh thank GOD the sun came out *just* now! Three days of sunshine in one and a half month is way too little for me! Makes me brooding, makes me tired, makes me sad. YES! The sun came out! Up, up and awaaaay!

I think I should translate my entries again.