Making the Best of Things

I tend to have a revelation once per month; its effects tend to last two or three days, and after that their influence may continue, but only on some deep subconscious level. And, if modern psychology (as I understand it) is correct, thought and feeling are merely the interaction of hormones and nerves, and objective reason is impossible, so these revelations probably have no lasting significance anyway. At any rate, I had a revelation yesterday. It was the afternoon; I was sitting at my laptop in my pyjamas, with a white and dark green blanket over my shoulders, hair dishevelled, reading Mrs. Radcliffe's Sicilian Romance (which bears a funny resemblance to the sort of stories T. and I came up with when we were little), and listening to Telemann's Violin Concerto in D major. This violin concerto is one that I've heard ever since I can remember. When I was very little (three or four) and I listened to it, I was generally in a dark room and therefore could more easily picture in my mind Enlightenment-era paintings of airy trees and elaborately dressed people and stately grey buildings that I'd seen on record covers, and photos of cembali. I didn't know that all of these things come from the eighteenth century as a historical fact, but I associated them nonetheless. So while I was listening to this music I thought about being in Berlin as a baby, and other things.

Altogether I'm beginning to connect the Berlin of 2006 to my home in Berlin when I was a baby, and to feel that I was always meant to live here. Of course I was more or less happy in Canada, but I think that I do have a slightly different way of looking at things from the people in my school (for instance), and that I would never be able to develop as much as a person there as I can here, though I would probably be a lot less complex and mature if I'd always stayed in Berlin.

Anyway, the revelation was that I have basically everything that I need and want here, and that I should take advantage of it. I can easily meet interesting people, travel anywhere I like, take music lessons, learn languages, see old buildings, and read books on every subject. The problem in the past has been that, though these possibilities (if more limited) have always been there, I've always felt that I had other things to do (e.g. homework), and in the end did next to nothing. Of course this doesn't mean that I want to spend the next years having fun with someone else's money while others have to work; it means instead that I want to do the things that will make my life a happy and productive one, without feeling that they're disagreeable duties or that I don't have time for them.

Another part of the revelation was that I've been rather overambitious. I want to be knowledgeable about everything right away, and have not been making sufficient allowance for the fact that some things I will only understand and appreciate when I'm older -- some literature, for instance. This ambition has made me more snobby than I would otherwise be, too. While I'm glad that I have set my standards high for manner, morals, and knowledge, I see now that it would be more comfortable for everyone if they were slightly lower.

So, I'm not sure if this all makes sense, but the essence of it is that I think I am finally in the right surroundings to become the cheerful and reasonably well-informed individual that I was meant to be, and that I should start to work now in good earnest -- whether it's at writing, or going to university, or something else.