Given Away

Just moments ago I was reading my speech book when a thought came into my head, and it refuses to leave until I write it down.

We give ourselves away to so many things in life, whether we realize it or not we are constantly investing ourself into things. Our future, our habits, our friends, family, and Romantic interests. this thought at first saddened me because at some point in time I will have given so much of myself away that I am no longer myself. I was thinking of it as a one way exchange, I give and give until there is nothing left and I'm left as a shallow hull of a man.

It didn't take me very long realize that this was not exactly how it worked. It is more like a stock market, I invest in things for a future, whether I am looking for a quick return or a long term investment depends on the situation. Take a daily conversation for instance, I might simply agree with the person or go along with whatever they are talking about(an investment of sorts) for the hope of a short return in the form of my relationship with that person changing for the better. Or for a more long term investment one could look at a relationship with a girlfriend (or I suppose for girls this would be your boyfriend). I will invest a large part of myself into any relationship with a girlfriend because my ultimate goal with any girlfriend is marriage. This is a long term investment that has a lot of myself in it, whether thats good or bad I'll save for another time but either way I give a large portion of myself to that person.

This thought gave me peace because Its easy to think of life this way, once the stock market goes bad( i.e. a relationship) I can simply sell the stock and get over with it. But it doesn't work like this, there is much more to it. there is a stock portfolio of sorts, it keeps track of all of the things we have invested in and the world can see this portfolio. so when i simply go along with a conversation with the mentality of a quick turn around, it leaves a mark on the record that people will see as something that I believe in. this can be an interesting thing because although I know that conversation really didn't mean a whole lot other people make their judgments on my personality based on my portfolio of previous investments. this is turn will lead them to believe that this is what I like to talk about so when they come ad talk to me they will talk about this or that subject based on what my portfolio says I have liked to talk about(invested in) in the past. this will lead to more people believing this certain thing about me even though its not true, but when people believe something about you, you begin to believe that about yourself(I suppose this is where this whole idea relates to Speech, because this is one of our theories.)

aside from the previous point I like the analogy of the stock market for another reason. In the stock market you invest in things that are smart to do, you want to make money after all. often times we do not know what to really invest in so we invest into what we are told to invest into, why do you think that advertising is such a huge thing? these kinds of decisions stretch from things like careers to how we handle ourselves in love to what we want to eat that day. this is the part where I really had to slow down and ponder. What have I invested myself into? better yet, what have I allowed to tell me what to invest in?

I guess I'm going to have to come back to this.