I just got off the phone. I was speaking to someone I don't know because the person I had rung was refusing to speak to me. So the 'go-between-guy' relayed messages and such, and of course undeniably put his opinion into the story at any given time he could. It was during this time I found myself defending my honour, or something of the like, for something I had done before I'd met this person. And in all honesty don't recall telling this person of it anyhow.

So I found myself almost innately leaping into a cumbersome rant on passing judgment and how our actions don't define us. I ridiculed and belittled him and his hoard of heckling mates I could hear in the background. I pulled out every intimidating argument and impressively articulate insult I could think of. I regurgitated all the spittle of self-righteous propaganda that I'd thirstily sponged up throughout my teenage years, and I was proclaiming them with conviction.

I was, of course, fighting a battle I could not win. Regardless of who was right or who was wrong, we were arguing on different planes. I was not about to dumb myself down in aid to win, nor was he able to retort with arguments that matched mine. We were talking different languages, yet it appeared only I could see this.

All this, however, is not the point I had intended to make. The point I come to, is that what I was arguing, I'm not entirely sure I believe anyhow. I was on autopilot. Someone was questioning my choices in life without the chance of my justifying them. I in turn argued that I'd not been given a chance to justify them, and wasn't entirely sure, in fact I was almost certainly arguing, that I needn't have to justify myself to anyone, least of all to someone I don't know.

But, if our actions don't define us, and how we do or don't justify them don't define us, what in that case does?

Is it not true that our actions and naturally the consequences of these actions imprint us with some stamp of notable change in personality or otherwise? And if they did not, we would all invariably be the same, because is it not our experiences, deemed by our actions that somehow build our characters? Be it good or bad.
-Jack

< - >

did you miss this?
bittersweet - 2008-07-02
Furious - 2008-02-24
and it only gets shitter from here on in - 2007-10-12
fucked it up well and good - 2005-26-12
Some sort of a resurrection - 2005-05-15