Faragon's blog

I was just thinking a little while ago… (And no, it didn’t hurt as much as I would have expected, I should do that more often!)
I was thinking about TV shows I like, Red Dwarf for instance. This is rather strange humor, the first season is really blunt, and it becomes progressively more subtle. The entire series is brilliant if you ask me.
Each of the caracters has their own hilarious features. I like them all, but I have a soft spot for Lister and the Cat in particular.
It’s strange, I have a sense of humor (or at least I like to think so), but I don’t know where it comes from.
Red Dwarf is not something I can imagine either of my parrents will like.
I know for a fact that my brothers hate Monty Python, but I think most of their stuff is very funny. I guess that family doesn’t really have that much to do with it…

I asked my wise confidant what he thought of the matter. His immediate answer was “surroundings”. According to him, your surroundings make up your sense of humor. This makes sense in a way, as you look at the cultural differnces in types of humor. On the other hand, is my sense of humor Dutch?
I read a lot of English books, some of them comic novels, some of them just normal books. I watch a lot of comedy, I listen to a lot of comedians.
My friends know me a bit, they recommend certain things, I like them most of the time. Does that mean that they influence my sense of humor. or do I surround myself with people with the same sense of humor?
Do the jokes that I come in contact with direct me towards more of the same jokes?
Even my wise confidant didn’t know what to say on this matter.

Lately, matters like this keep my mind pleasantly occupied.

I know for a fact that the human brain is perfectly equipped to fool itself. I have been in a situation over the last couple of weeks where I was in a limbo. Every time things looked a certain way, I would imediately think of excuses to think that it was suposed to be like that. If things looked the other way around, my mind would fill itself with ideas that reflected that that was the only right way for things to be.
Why does the human psyche do that? Is it a female thing?
Why do we like to interpret things the way we want to, instead of just the way they are?
And how are they really, if we can only look at them biased to begin with?

An aquaintance of mine was diagnosed with some mental ilness a little wile ago. Prognosis… very bad.
His wife was trying to get him to find other “friends”, as the one “friend” he hung out with a lot just made things a lot worse. His therapist told her that he would continue to seak out “friends” that would tell him what he wanted to hear, him not seeing this particular one wouldn’t make any difference in the long run.
I was reminded of this whole thing as I sat in a bar discussing friendship over diner.
I think we all do the same thing, some more, some less, but we all do. I like my real friends to be honest, even if what they have to say makes me unconfortable or even hurts me. It needs to be said. When I feel bad, I’m more likely to turn to someone who makes me feel better than to someone who just tells me how it is though.
I misjudged someone like that earlier this week. I thought he would make me feel better, he didn’t. He made me feel incompetent for not sorting stuff out. On the other hand, he helped me a lot with that. He made me get my act together. Something that was a lot more useful than just comforting me.

Do our friends surround us because of some higher plan?
I think so. I think we get to know the people we get to know for a purpose. Bigger purposes, smaller purposes, but always to learn from eachother. I don’t think that there is one person that you are meant to spend the rest of your life with. I think there’s just a couple of them that you can learn from and enjoy being with for the rest of your life.
It’s just pure luck if you happen to find one of those friends for life that becomes your partner for life too. Pure luck and a big effort, because like with any friendship, you actually have to make an effort to get everything out of what’s in there.
It’s easy to be friends when life is easy, but when the going gets tough… Real friendships get going.