Tuesday 1 June 2004

Pic of the day: Picture from the anime Daa! Daa! Daa!. This preschooler says: "Now I feel like a grown woman."

To err is normal

Each time I upload an entry, I habitually read through the year-ago entry, and the two years ago entry and so on. This means that I have probably read through my 4-years-ago entry at least three times before. Despite this, it is not uncommon to find errors even there. Not just dead links, which are a part of online life. No, spelling errors, grammar errors, even words that seem to have been replaced with another word entirely.

The problem is of course that I cannot read what I have written. Instead I read what I meant to write. As my memory of this gradually fades, the actual text becomes more visible.

In the same way, I am sure there is a layer of illusion over our lives the whole time, from childhood to old age (if any). It may fade a bit over time, but it never really ceases.

***

Many years ago, I stayed over with a friend who is a language expert, and he had a book I enjoyed reading in. There was mention of an experiment in which people (well, students I believe) were asked what attributes they considered most important when choosing friends. Unsurprisingly, they mostly mentioned various personality traits, and did not consider looks very important. Later they were tested, and asked to pick friends from a set. By and large, they preferred the good looking ones. Later they were asked again which criteria they had used in picking friends. There was a very close match between these answers and the first answers, what they would have done. But there was near to no match between these two sets of answers and what they actually did. So, they did not know even afterwards what they had done. Father forgive them, indeed. And how would I possibly know if I was like that myself? At least I don't pick my friends. My friends pick me. That's something. But they still tend to look pretty.

***

I meant to write some wise words connecting this topic to the long entry I wrote yesterday. But now I have no idea what I planned to say. Oh well. Perhaps I will know what I should have said, in a few years.

Oh yes, there was something about people being stupid. Right. I guess I could have had more friends if I liked hanging out with stupid people. But I don't, even though they contrast me favorably. Even in City of Heroes, I dread to team up. Most people are so ignorant and so impulsive, it becomes way too exciting to team up with them. They make one error after another, and they don't even see it. Even when you point it out, they rarely see they did it wrong. But of course, I rarely see that I do anything wrong either. Could it be like that in real life too?