Hezo Kittie

Tonight fucking ruled. But beyond the boozing, live music, and kicking it with LA's finest, one tiny thing could've possibly harshed my buzz, and would've if this was last year.

Not one of my absolute closest friends here (and their immediate friends) called me to invite me to the party.

It's one of those things where I would've seen them, and subsequently would high five the group half heartedly, spending the rest of the night congregating but trying more to figure out if I actually had friends here or if I'm just a body.

It would've been a total cop out on my part, for two reasons:

1. (Small) Flip it the other way; I didn't call them to invite them to the party either.
2. (Big) I don't trust our friendship.

But that's not what happened. I shook my shit like a salt shaker and everyone was just their usual amazing selves.

And here's why love isn't just a change in disposition: I didn't shake my shit while smiling through my teeth. Throughout the entire night, I never once doubted these people.

The counter-argument would say: "Well, you're being pushed around by your friends. That kind of stuff shouldn't happen if you can truly call them your friends."

And my humble response would be, "You're right that I should ask them [completely neutrally] why they didn't call me, and by that I mean it objectively and not with a whining, 'I EXPECT SO MUCH FROM YOU!' hidden agenda. But you are absolutely wrong that I am letting them have their 'way' with me by pushing me around. The real way I would be pushed around by my friends [as well as everyone else in my life] is when I let what people do to me affect who I am.

"If my day was dictated by the amount of compliments I received, the number of times my friends called me, and the number of hours my friends hung out with me, I would be a slave to what everyone else does."

Think about it: a 'good' day would consist of whether someone complimented me or called me to hang out, and a 'bad' day would be when my friends had a picnic but didn't invite me. I guess this is where free will comes in, because I can't believe in that. It's fatalistic and dictated by external things. To me, every day is a good day because every time I wake up I get to love. And that's why I actually don't give a fuck what they say.

Honestly, I am slightly scared sometimes that I will lose everyone I love (because of external factors, or change, or distance, or anything), because Dostoevsky probably got it pretty damn close when he said that hell is being unable to love, and I think that fear is pretty hard to overcome. But... so far I haven't encountered that situation. I'm not really sure what I'd do.

This isn't just pointless philosophical masturbation where people argue about things for the sake of argument; this is real life, at least it is to me. Practical reason.

On that note, here's the actual philosophical stuff.

I guess I need to figure out how trust fits into love, because that seems to be the theme. Maybe I'm down with the basic "Kant + some other stuff = Aristotle" formula. In a nutshell (I think), Kant stresses honesty and respect as absolutely necessary for a rational group of people. I'd say trusting is an aspect of respect, but in more Kant style language, in a hypothetical world where no one trusted anyone, would we survive? Fuck no we wouldn't. Just imagine it. It'd be chaos, and everyone would just end up dead. So based on that rationality, trust is necessary.

Kant didn't care if you liked what you did or not, you just had to do it. Aristotle said you actually have to want to do it when you do it. So, if you did it but you didn't want to, that's not good enough. Ehh... pretty strict by anyone's account. Sometimes you gotta force your hand or something. But I definitely believe where Aristotle is coming from. At least in terms of how I can see it, choosing the decision to love, once we figure out what love actually is, is not hard at all.

Damn, I can't wait to figure out more crazy shit through experience and listening and whatever. Except I think I'm doing all the wrong things for the right reasons. Hmm....