But is it better to let never exist?

Clearly you believe that, in the case of commitments you doubt you can honour, the answer is a resounding yes. Even if that exchange on Kenmore did make it seem as though, in general, your opinions were exactly the opposite. 

Welcome home

Of course I'm happy to be home. Excited to see friends and family, and glad to find comfort in the familiar. But this time I also feel sad, that in some perhaps distinctly limited---but very concrete---sense this will soon no longer be home. Upset, angry even, because I feel like my home is being taken away from me---but really there is no reasonable or good target for this anger. Part of me is defiant---it doesn't matter, this will always be home; or: what does it matter? The world is my oyster---; part of me is already grieving over what it sees, rather overdramatically, as imminent exile.
Last evening I thought about the upcoming flight home and the words that would greet me as I passed through the immigration gantries at the end of that long journey. Never have those words felt so deeply charged, or provoked such conflicted ambivalence. I really felt like---still feel like---screaming and bawling and crying. It's not terribly reasonable, and when I've had time to calm down and actually reflect on it for a while it feels rather like making a mountain out of a molehill. Then again, all that reasoned reflection doesn't make---hasn't made---this profound sense of loss go away.
Maybe I should just come to terms with that. That, no matter how I spin it, my identity---the narrative I have built of myself, of who I am and where I belong---will be---has been---fundamentally shaken. That I should not---cannot---simply pretend that things will carry on as before. That perhaps that identity wasn't nearly as solid or sturdy as I thought it was, and that I should rebuild a stronger one where the old one collapses. 

Oh well

What the hell

"Oh hello!!!"

Anger and outrage is all very well, but maybe it's more useful to investigate the causes---calmly and systematically, though insistently nonetheless---and address them. Ignorance and myopia and bigotry are scourges, I agree. But they are scourges which we should aim to eradicate, not merely condemn. Unless public condemnation be part of that process of eradication---but honestly I cannot see it being the entire solution in and of itself. 

Not even sure why I'm angry or whom I'm angry at

But I am. I think it's a sign that, no matter how hard I try to rationalise it, my heart emphatically does not want to uproot itself anymore. 

三十六计，走为上计

sauver: to save or rescue.
se sauver: to bolt or run away.

Only a crazy person would do that

Senator Daniel Inouye served in WWII and was seriously injured while attacking a German position along a ridge in Tuscany.  He stood to throw a grenade into a machine gun nest, when one of the gunners shot him in the stomach.  Inouye ignored the wound and killed the machine gunners with his Thompson SMG. 

Instead of getting out of combat, Inouye continued the attack and destroyed a second machine gun nest before collapsing from blood loss.  After collapsing, Inouye crawled toward a third machine gun nest to continue the assault.  As he prepared to throw another grenade, a German RPG severed his right arm.  He used his left hand to remove the live grenade from his dead right arm and tossed it into the machine gun nest. 

After destroying three German positions, being shot in the stomach, having an arm severed by an RPG, and nearly being blown up with his own grenade, Inouye got up and ran around the ridge, shooting at the remaining Germans with his left hand.  He continued to do so until he was shot in the leg, fell off the cliff, and was knocked unconscious at the bottom. 

When he awoke in a hospital, his friends told him what he had done.  He replied, "No.  That's impossible.  Only a crazy person would do that."

as told by Josh Stein, via Quora 

This is probably why I dislike extroverts (and should stop)

Because I spend more time---or at least think I spend more time---in a conversation asking questions about the other person than saying things about myself, and I---subconsciously, at least---expect others to reciprocate. And you get annoyed when they don't, and see it as a case of their monopolizing the discourse for their own ends. Except, you know, that's probably not the most helpful way to think about or deal with this. Especially not when you start to go into long cycles of resentment, variously directed and undirected anger, self-loathing, and rinse-and-repeat. 

Calc I Haikus

(i)

The derivative 

The derivative is hard

Good luck GPA

(ii)

Lemurs live the dream

They don't do derivatives

Math is really hard

(iii)

The lemurs jumped from

the space shuttle and began

skiing down Diag

(iv)

Flying through the void

Leaving behind the ground quick

Always fly: shuttle

(v)

Nothing is as odd

as skiing down the diag

that has no real hill

---from the overworked students of section 001.

Ick!

I didn't particular enjoy writing college admission essays---the whole idea of "selling oneself" just didn't quite click. I understand what it is and why it would be necessary, but somehow just. Can't. Bring myself to do it. People should't make judgements about other people based on a small amount of information cherry-picked and presented to them in a short period of time under intense pressure. Such judgements seem to be almost certainly doomed to be bad judgements, on the whole. But well. Such is the way (parts of) the world work at the moment ...
And now I find myself on---not quite the other side, but another side anyway---of the table. Not making admissions decisions, but having to give my evaluation or impression of an applicant based on a small amount of information they cherry-pick and present to me within a short period of time under pressure. An evaluation or impression which will then form part of the small amount of information that the people who actually make decisions will actually see. I'm not particularly enjoying it either.
Talking to those people was fun. Having to evaluate them, not so much. I could be just brutally honest. Some of the applicants I interviewed were really interesting people and had interesting ideas, and those I thought really deserved a shot at admission. Some others just seemed like lost high school seniors. But I feel bad writing that. I don't know whether that would be quite enough to torpedo their chances of admission, but it's certainly not going to help; and looking back, I was probably more like one of them than like the people who had ideas and interesting things to say.
Meh. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet and do that (in more diplomatic language.) I'm sorry, but at the end of the day I'm not responsible for the dizzyingly low admission rate.
I guess what you really should do, if you feel bad about hindering these kids, is to address the issue of educational (in)equity more broadly and think about broadening opportunities and access to education at a level comparable to Princeton ... 

In which I feel vindicated

A proprement parler, il n'y a pas de certitude; il y a seulement des hommes certains

Charles Renouvier

Le cœur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point

Blaise Pascal 

And so the wheels of the world turn

... as Chilean Ambassador in 1972, Neruda spent most of a three-hour meeting with President Georges Pompidou designed to negotiate Chile’s foreign debt discussing Baudelaire instead.

--d'ici

Expand your comfort zone

You're comfortable in your solitude. There's nothing wrong with that. If anything that's a strength, not a weakness. But you should also learn to be comfortable around people. 

Finely-tuned apathy

Does it strike you that there is a slight resemblance between (a) what you regard as your parents' mildly unhealthy attachment to you, (b) what your students might regard as your being too demanding / micromanaging in your concern for their grades, and (c) what you perceive as someone caring too much about what his class thinks about him?
In all of these cases, there's one party which holds itself responsible for some aspect of the other, expects that to be reciprocated to some extent by some form of appreciation, and is duly nonplussed (and a little upset) when that appreciation does not quite materialise---but have they taken into account how the counter-party feels about this whole rather paternalistic setup?

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty,

in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence---too weak to live, too cowardly to die.

(Emma Goldman, Anarchism: What it really stands for)

Part of a conversation I'm having with 2012 me

I believe that nation-states are legal fictions and artificial constructs, whose current shapes and peculiarities are but accidents of history. Lots of people---most people---would disagree, perhaps vehemently so. But that is only because of a lack of clear thought, often encouraged by politicians and regimes for reasons of their convenience.
Certainly there should be some sort of apparatus to give a coherent organization to society, and the modern nation-state, where it works, does this very well. But also we should recognize that nation-states, as such, are nothing more than conventions of convenience. Why should we get so worked up and excited about mere conventions? I don't understand.

Well as you quite rightly point out there is no one natural way of organising human society; what we have is, perhaps, not as good a solution as could ever exist, but it is what it is. Accidents of history and mere conventions by agreement they may well be, but the fact of their existence, the miracle, minor or less minor, that they have been conjured, willed, brought into existence, is surely worth something,
So, perhaps, these things are worth celebrating and worrying about. Though, also, it behooves us not to take them too seriously, for there are, ultimately, higher and more important things in this world than country. 

Hier gaan over het tij,

de wind, de maan en wij

(the Dutch, at Neeltje-Jans on the Oosterscheldekering)

Now I really want to see that plaque. It is a little bit out of the way though ...

Both bitter and serene

'The next day I woke up with the feeling that I was myself at last. A great calm, at the same time both bitter and serene, spread through me. I no longer had to struggle between my Russian and my French identities. I accepted myself.' 

(Andrei Makine trans. Geoffrey Strachan, Dreams of My Russian Summers, 183)

You're missing the point.

Yes, it hurts to care. But that doesn't mean you should just not. And it certainly does not mean that you should systematically construct a worldview that will justify why you should not.