Trust, and the stories of our lives.

What is loyalty? I find this to be an interesting question, albeit one that sets me ill at ease. Is loyalty that state where people will stand by you, regardless of the situation? But can we really expect those we consider loyal to stand by us through anything? If that's what loyalty was, one could never be loyal to two things, because they could come into conflict. If not that, then what is it? Perhaps it is supposed to be some kind of scale, loyalty and disloyalty. But that doesn't feel quite right. What's the middle? Can someone be only be partially loyal? What of those people who are loyal through another? Is loyalty given in trade really loyalty? And how do you really trust loyalty? You can only see it by example, but if those examples aren't ones which would test loyalties (and how many of those situations truly come up in our lives), how much can you see? It comes down to the same question as that of trust. Who can we trust, and how do we understand this? It always comes down to the same old conundrum: To know who to trust, you have to in some sense already trust them or distrust them. It comes down to something behind it all that we can't really see, I don't think. And when it gets to those murky unknowns, that dark, creeping doubt gets the chance to seep in.

Then again, that creeping doubt may come, and it's never pleasant, but over time it may lead you to looking and appreciating those things you -do- find as evidence. Those wonderfully unbiased, unscripted times where things simply show the truth. It leaves you wishing you could see that again, even though you know any attempt on your part to see that would make it scripted, but all the same, it is a comforting thing to find. People try so hard to avoid that doubt, and it makes sense. It's unpleasant, never really fun to get through. But all the same, doesn't it lead you, eventually, to something better than if you never had it to begin with? In the end, it's something like what you see in fiction: You need to suffer for your happy ending, and then wait for the sequel so you can do it again.

Music and balance

For as little as I listen to music, I still find a few songs, every so often, maybe just a line, that can just epitomize a precise feeling. More often than not it's not the meaning the song intended, but still, out it comes. I won't burden this with songs and lyrics, no real need for that. But sometimes I stop and wonder. Am I making mountains of molehills? I always sorta found the power behind the emotion in a song to be more than most any case where I relate to it. And how much is me relating to the song, almost commiserating with it, and how much is me letting it drag me down further? Sometimes up, yes, we can't forget the good, but I never mind being raised higher like that. A good many things add up to that for me. Even something like this, am I doing something worthwhile putting the words out here, or am I just sorta letting whatever is going on intensify? At one point, it really was no good. But now, I think I let myself run with my ideas a bit more. But is that progress, or just running in circles?

I think the circles are being run, but they grow each revolution. Success and failure teach you what to do and not to do, correct? So in going around, you can start to see what works and doesn't. If the same point keeps coming up, maybe you're just missing an angle just outside of your view. That's what I'd hope, at least. Strange, though. Because you don't run a race you've already won. If you're still wondering, you've not gotten everything done, I'd say. So it seems that letting yourself fall deeper is how you discover what there is to the situation at hand. And knowing is how we deal with the situation. We run to escape, but that only seems to truly come when we run from it, opting to stay further down. But that makes almost no sense as well. If we never reach for escape, we can come close but never enact it. Reaching for despair will never end it, despite allowing understanding. Longing for pain, or conflict, or any number of unpleasant things lets you know them on a deeper level, I suppose, but it does nothing to remove it. And this all assumes your knowledge is right in the first place. Doesn't it make more sense to strive to avoid that, then? But avoiding pain means never knowing what you're avoiding, leading to the whole problem all over again. A catch-22. Balance, like in so many things, seems to be the only good option. But that's pretty hard to get right too. So really, the only way to get it right is to stumble into it. Much as I hate to admit it, I'm not bad at stumbling into something good. Don't know if I can see how to do it on purpose, but there ought to be a way. If there isn't, this isn't particularly useful, is it? And I'd prefer to believe this is worth something, so I'll keep trying to figure it out.