Idealism

It's one of those mornings where Iwake up early for something which gets cancelled, but since I'm awake it seems like too much of a waste to go back to sleep. I walk around the empty house wondering what to do and I guess I inevitably drift here. (Incidently, I'm starting to find my house an emptier and emptier place. It's... sad, somehow)

I saw Street Fighter and Watchmen yesterday, and I doubt many will agree with me when I say both were awesome movies in their own right. It's not that my tastes are getting superficial by enjoying a senseless beat-em-up film like the former. Movies are... pretty much the only way I get that kind of thing these days. What rather amused me yesterday was the amount of people in the cinema after the film bitching about how they'd just wasted $10 on the worst movie ever, and how it made a better parody then a film in its own right. Sometimes altering (not lowering) your expectations makes you a much happier person. There's nothing but the win to look forward to in Tekken, but you can lose a match in SF4 and still feel that pure unsupressed joy in connecting the Shinryuken, RD or Final Atomic Buster. I suppose that's why I still play games at this age. I don't play sheerly to win every match I enter, but neither do I play with a lacklustre attitude that makes me indifferent to the outcome. It isn't a job, nor is it a hobby. Its the small moments that come on a daily basis, sometimes so small that I barely acknowledge it, that make it all worth while. Same goes for music. Nothing else can replicate that. What you put in influences what you get.

Last night I questioned Rorschach's decision to die for what he believed in rather than live a lie he helped to perpetrate. Sure it's an age-old utilitarian millions-for-billions debate, where everybody has their own view on what's right or wrong. Actually no. Most people don't really know where they stand on this. I least of them. What we say hypothetically means nothing when we're not actually put in that situation. Rorschach understood very clearly where he stood, and he died, as far as the world was concerned, a meaningless death. Sure there's that notion of nobility, martyrdom in dying for what you believe in. I think I'm oversimplifying Rorschach's psyche in this case, but it's to make a point. I woke up this morning wondering if I was still like that. Stubborn, uncompromising and more willing to die than accept a different way of life than what I believed in. I suppose that's how people still see me. It's too daunting an image to shatter anymore. But now I have a decision to stop fighting needlessly and just go along with the current, and go into something that I never believed before two weeks ago that I could do. I'd like to believe that I've stood up too long when standing wasn't easy, and maybe it's time to shelve that self-destructive pride and lie down for a bit. It... doesn't really mean that I'm betraying what I believe in, the very fact that I made the decision to flow with the current as opposed to those who just get sucked in by it makes a difference. Or at least, I'd hope so. You could argue that the end result is still the same, that an accountant is an accountant. But then again, I'm not making that decision for You now, am I?

A good game isn't measured by a win or loss, kills or deaths, points or goals. It's measured by the feeling of doing all you can with what you have, regardless of the outcome. And at the end of the day if you find that it wasn't enough it will never exactly be the best feeling in the world. But there is sweetness in bittersweet, if you choose to taste it that way. And I suppose there is joy to be found in everything, if you choose to look for it.