So long farewell, auf weidersehen, good-bye

I am writing this post to close this blog created for ILS 200. This will be my last post.

What I hope readers have gained from reading this blog is that this blog was made for a writing course, but it's a blog about people. Given the open-ended nature of each writing prompt, all of us bloggers were able to craft our posts around our beliefs, and our own personality traits and beliefs were displayed as a result.

That's what made this course so enjoyable. It's well organized and scheduled, but we were able to write about whatever we wanted if we were able to craft it around the writing prompt. Never before was I able to write an entire essay on my favorite show, Lost. At the same time, it wasn't a stupid essay, it was very much related to pathos and emotion.



What I'll take out of this course most was the rhetorical triangle. I think it's one of the most relevant and realistic things we've learned all semesters. I can definitely apply it to real situations and events, and I think it's a thing worth studying additionally in the future.

And with that.....

There's a sad sort of clanging from the clock in the hall
And the bells in the steeple too.
And up in the nursery an ubsurd little bird
Is popping out to say cook-coo cook-coo, cook-coo
Regretfully they tell us cook-coo
But firmly they compell us cook-coo
To say goodbye cook-coo...
To you...

PS: My favorite von Trapp singer is Liesel

Can language capture the enormity of experience?

It's a complicated question, but the answer is simply "yes". My first instinct and I think the first instinct of many would be "no", because it seems impossible to use words to recreate an experience. In fact, I think in our own lives we've failed probably 90% of the time in doing so. (Think about all those times you've had to say "guess you had to be there....")

But there are circumstances where language can effectively recreate an experience, or at least an aspect of experience. Without specifics, spoken language is the easiest way to do so. I think we all remember a time when somebody told a story that was so gripping and so intense that we actually felt like we were there. The images of the story flow through our brains like it's something we actually saw. That's a case of language recreating experience and capturing the enormity of the situation.

Every time I think of language successfully capturing true experience, I think of Tom Hanks in Cast Away. Most probably don't remember the scene, but there's a very emotional part where he talks to his friend when he gets back from the island. He's describing being there, alone, on that deserted rock constantly thinking about Helen Hunt. He said the thought of her "kept me alive".



Maybe it's the clever camera work, the emotionally filled language, or the dramatic presence of Tom Hanks....but whatever it is, that scene made me feel like it was me on that island, that it was me missing my girl, and that it was me alone, depressed, with very little hope to get back to the real world. In this regard, the language the writers of the film use causes the viewer to run through the events in their head, thinking as Tom Hanks would think, and this too is capturing experience in language.

So in short, yes....language can capture the enormity of experience. It's a delicate, difficult process that requires special circumstances or masters of language to pull off.

The next chapter...

As I write this last post for the semester, I am sitting on the dock behind my house. I take deep breaths of the fresh air as it blows over the lake that stretches out in front of me. The waves crash rhythmically against the side of the dock and it seems as if all other noises have ceased. This peacefulness temporarily calms my finals week anxieties and as much as I want it to be a week from now, when I will be at home again, in this moment, I wish time would stay still.

So much has changed in this past year. A part of me wishes things were like they used to be…when times were simpler and everything was comfortable…but the other part of me knows that I don’t want to go back. I have to move on from this point. I have to move forward.

I stare off into the distance and the sun begins to set. It’s almost cliché. This year’s chapter has ended and summer break is about to begin. I look forward to all of the exciting changes that await me.

Farewell…

Can language capture the enormity of experience?

Personally, I don’t believe that language is able to do this. The enormity of experience is beyond words and can often be indescribable. The closest that language can get to allowing someone to understand another person’s experience is when they have experienced a similar situation or emotion and can draw from their own lives in an effort to understand what is going on in the other person’s life. This, however, will never be precise.

Each person’s experiences are as unique as snowflakes. Even two people who go through the same encounter will take different things away from it, will feel different emotions about it (even if they are only slightly different), and will recall different things about it in memory. Each person brings his or her own previous experiences, knowledge, biases, and emotions to a situation and therefore goes through the experience uniquely. It is because of this, that no two people can ENTIRELY understand the experience of another person (although they may think that they do.)

Even words themselves are not precise and often have several meanings or connotations, and can be interpreted differently by different people. This variation can distort the true meaning of the experience to an even greater extent.

An example of the variation that language can have, though it may seem to be on a fairly superficial level, is in the French saying, “Je t’aime.” This phrase equates to both, “I love you” and “I like you,” in English. Picture a scale from 1-100, where “I love you” in on the extreme 100 end and “I like you” is on the extreme 1 end. There are MANY different levels of affection between these two statements—infinitely many one might say. How can all of these different levels be simply wrapped into just two (as we’ve done in English) or into one (as in French)?

Along those same lines, how can the emotion of love be wrapped up into one word? This silly four-letter word cannot possibly capture the enormity of the emotion and experience of what love really is. Those who are truly in love often describe the saying “I love you” as being extremely inadequate in describing the extent of their feelings.

Just look at how many great writers have tried to capture the experience of love, through language. It is like the holy grail of writing achievements. Many authors have gotten close, but they were held back from the start because of the limitations of language itself.

Please don't mistake me, however, in thinking that no one should try to capture experience through language, for it is this quest, in fact, that makes writing such an art.

Final thoughts

It is a really different experience as a class.

I have never regarded myself as a writer or anyone with great creativity. But in this class, I really appreciate that all of our assignments and homework are flexible and open that I feel that I have something to say at each time. There is never an assignment that I think is too far away from my experience and I think this is applicable to everyone. The things we talk about in the lectures and discussions are easy to connect to. They are also applicable to my other classes. But they also fall into a good framework.

I hope that this class could be a little more structuralized. The good thing about this class is that it is not a class that have been taught in the same way over and over again. It is really innovative and flexible and adaptable. But if we can be a little more informed of the class, that would be better.

Language and expereinces

Blog post topic: Can language capture the enormity of experience?

Language can bring us different experiences for sure. Through out this semester, we have experienced many fun things that language can bring us. However, to what extent can language capture the enormity of experience is debatable. I think this topic should be analyzed from two different angels: language it self and the audience's experience.

From the stand point of the language itself, I believe that literature can normally capture an author's experience if he or she is a good author. There are for sure books that can make us cry and laugh, change our emotions. However, think about the movies that are adopted from books, like Harry Potter. Movies are much closer to an experience in traditional terms and when we watch such movies, we are probably brought through a more realistic and clear experience. Another things about books is that, readers may get very different experiences from reading the same book. Therefore, the enormity of experience that language can capture may or may not be the one that the author wanted to deliver.

From the audiences' stand point, whether he or she can experiences closely what the author is telling also depends on his or her own life experience. For example, when we are younger, it would be difficult for us to be moved by books that are deeper with experiences that doesn't relate with what we have seen so far in our lives. Whether a reader can get the same feeling or can resonate with what the author is saying depends a lot on whether the reader itself have experienced similar things. Every book or advertisement have a targeted audience, whose experiences made them most easily to connect with them.

Language has its power and its magical sometimes because of the unexpected result that may come out of a reading experience because of different readers.

Social Media= Pathetic?

How did today’s social media become so pathetic?

This question is somewhat similar to the “chicken or the egg” question. Did today’s social media become pathetic, and THEN viewers began to respond to this type of appeal? Or did today’s social media become pathetic BECAUSE viewers only respond to this type of appeal? I think that our society has become almost numb to appeals that AREN’T pathetic and this is why media has been forced to use pathetic appeals.

If a non-profit organization, trying to raise money to help starving children in Africa, spread its message by simply stating statistics and only using a logical approach, not many people would donate their money to their cause. Because of selective exposure, we only notice information that is interesting to us. Our society has become so fast-paced that this type of approach would probably not even catch their audience’s attention. If that same non-profit wants to get donations, they need to catch viewers’ attentions…which is exactly what they do with their sob-story commercials with video footage of the starving children in Africa. So, don’t blame the media for becoming too “pathetic;” they were forced to become this way in order to keep up with what our society has become. Sometimes you have to pull on people’s heartstrings if you want to get things done.

Emotion and Language

To me, the only writing that is worth reading is full of emotion. Why would anyone want to waste their time reading something that even the author doesn’t care about? They probably wouldn’t. Emotion is vital to writing and it is the writing that can extract emotion from the reader that is the most successful and memorable.

I enjoy reading books for fun in my spare time, although schoolwork doesn’t allow me much spare time. Because of this time constraint, the business-side of me is extremely cutthroat when it comes to selecting which books deserve a part of my limited attention. If a book doesn’t capture my attention (which is usually correlated to how much emotion the author puts into their writing) within the first 50 pages, it’s toast, done, finito. I just don’t have the time or patience to endure a piece of writing that doesn’t give me a reason to care about it.

This would apply to school reading as well, except for the fact that I don’t have the luxury of putting down an extremely dull textbook, no matter how much I may want to. One thing I’ve come to find though, is that the textbooks that you don’t want to set aside, the ones that are full of emotion and that create some sort of reaction in you, are likely to make you stick with the subject (even if you wouldn’t have otherwise). So for all you academic departments out there who don’t have many followers, maybe you should start picking more passionate textbooks to give to your students.

The amount of emotion in books also determines how memorable they are to the reader. The only books I remember later in any detail (whether for academic requirements or for amusement) are the ones that had a strong pathetic appeal and elicited an emotional response from me. One of my favorite books of all time (that I read when I was 15) is Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale because of its passionate discussion of women’s issues, which challenged me to always question “the system” and changed the way I perceive many different things in life. It is because of this passion that I remember it with so much detail today.

This also applies to speeches, except that for speeches it is not only important that their words are emotional, but that their presentation is emotional as well. A monotone and un-enthused presentation will negate ANY emotion that may exist in the actual wording of the speech. In some ways, it can be easier to create an emotional response (whether in agreement or disagreement) from the audience in a speech, especially when there is an emotional presentation.

I experienced a situation like this just the other day. I walked by a man standing on a rock, yelling at the top of his lungs about God and how we can “all be saved” if only we join with him. I personally hated the speech and rolled my eyes as I walked by, getting a little frustrated that crazies are allowed to disrupt the peace and quiet with their rants on rocks in the middle of campus, but… I did notice him. He may not have changed my mind about anything, but his words and very emotional presentation stirred something inside me. So I give him credit for putting together such a “pathetic” discourse (pun intended).

It is also interesting to note that different audiences need different methods of presentation to elicit an emotional response from them. Take President Obama’s “Yes, we can” speech for example. That is a great speech just dripping with emotion, and with literary and rhetorical techniques galore. Its message (whether they agreed with it or not) reached many people who listened to him speak both on television at in person. His speech however, did not reach many younger generation Americans in the form in which it was presented. Interestingly, when the musician, Will.i.am put the same words to music and created a music video out of Obama’s “Yes, we can” speech, this same speech appealed to millions of people in this younger generation. Its YouTube video has been viewed 20,219,178 times since its post date two years ago. All it took was a different form of presentation.

Cognitive Fluency as Discussed in "Easy = True"

After reading the Boston Globe’s piece titled “Easy = True” by Drake Bennett, I was surprised at how frequently the argument that logos, slogans, and designs which are easy to decipher and comprehend tend to do better is demonstrated to be true. Companies employing those devices seem to generally be the ones that are most successful and most prolific (although there are a few notable exceptions). The idea of the success of things with “cognitive fluency” is very much straightforward and intuitive because we can all relate to the processes involved. It is also a very useful concept because it can be accurately tested and refined by looking at real-world cases and even by conducting limited experiments.

Perhaps one of the best examples of a successful company with an emblem that fits into the category of being cognitively fluent is Nike. The name, the logo, and the associated phrase (Nike, the swoosh symbol and “just do it,” respectively) are simple, easy to understand, and even easy to duplicate (indeed, there are few other companies with simpler associated trademarks). Employing tens of thousands of people worldwide and taking in billions of dollars in revenue yearly, Nike is certainly a world business leader. Because of this, it is a model for how simple and memorable associations make sense in the marketplace. But Nike is not alone. If one tried to recall phrases and logos that are attached to different businesses, he or she would find that most, if not all of the things that come to mind are short, to the point, and easy to understand. In other words, most would be quite cognitively fluent. This fact seems very much to be proof of concept for cognitive fluency.

This is probably does not strike many people as surprising. We have grown up immersed in the advertising culture and so we naturally associate these types of logos and emblems with successful companies. But we needn’t have had these experiences for the idea to be trivial to us. It is an inherently logical concept because of the mechanisms by which it operates. If we simply cannot understand something, it is almost impossible for us to remember it, much less associate it with a particular company or product. Likewise, if it long and intricate, we may lose interest before comprehending the full meaning, preventing the association from forming in the first place. In another way, we may form the association, but if we cannot remember it, it comes to nothing. This is another hindrance for complex trademarks. And finally, something that the article touched on specifically was our natural affinity for things that are easy and familiar. It quoted a very relevant saying put forth by the psychologist Robert Zajonc to help explain why this is the case evolutionarily, “‘If it is familiar, it has not eaten you yet.’ ”

Not only does the concept of cognitive fluency seem reasonable and widespread, but it is also a concept that can easily be tested. Through simple experiments involving groups of people and looking at trends and market behavior in the past, concrete evidence can be assembled to either support or refute the influence it has in determining the success of a company. That it is a testable hypothesis means that it, given sufficient support (which, as was discussed above, seems quite likely), could become an important theory in psychology, sociology, and economics and give us insight into the nuances of cognitive thinking and our innate preferences. On the other hand, if it fails to accurately predict the data, it could be definitively relegated to the status of an interesting but impractical idea. In either case, we can serve to know more about the ways we operate and how we perceive the world in which we live.

Respond to Easy=True

When I first read the article, especially the subtitle that says, "how 'cognitive fluency' shapes what we believe, how we invest and who will become a supermodel", it sounds outrageous. When I go on to read it, it first sound like a pretty revolutionary finding. However, when people come down to think of it, we probably have known about this for a long time and have been following this rule.

Think about marketing strategy. It is one of the main strategies when a company is designing its ads narrative, its brand name, or even the jingle of the advertisement that they will pick one that is easy for people to pick up. Some of it has to do with the melody of the jingle, the lingo of the words, but most importantly, they want to pick one that is easy to get into people's heads so they would pick one that is easy to read.

Think about why many people change their names when they enter the entertainment industry. Marilyn Monroe wasn't born as Marilyn Monroe. She changed her name for distinction, for the implication of certain names, but more importantly, people can't pronounce Norma Jeane Mortenson when they see it.

Use a example that I see in everyday life. My name is Mengmeng, which most native English speak would pronounce it as "mingming" kind of a thing, but actually, it is pronounced more as "mungmung". Yeah, I know it is confusing and many people tend to be afraid to pronounce it and this becomes a problem when I go to a career fair. After reading this article, I may be will consider having an English nick name for myself so that I don't have to teach people how to pronounce Chinese at every both. But if we back up for a second, I have also encountered many times that people remmember me because they actually spent time thinking about this name. Because I am not Mary or Abby (no offense to any one..), the employer actually remembered me. So what should I do then?

This can be linked back to the discussion in the article: "Disfluency is intriguing and novel and fluent things are familiar but also boring and comfortable." It seems that in the article, the scientists are yet certain about their conclusions yet and this cognitive fluency topic definitely remain an interesting topic for people to study about. Maybe I will wait until then that I'll decide whether I need a real English name or not.

Cognitive Fluency

At first, I wasn't sure what to think of the article "Easy = True" from author Drake Bennett of Boston.com. I personally think it's a bit of a stretch to try to associate how easy to understand a company's name is and how well it performs on Wall Street.

Perhaps that correlation doesn't necessarily mean anything, but by the end of the article it's hard not to be intrigued by some of the other implications brought up by Bennett. Specifically, I think the topic of fonts was very interesting. For me, it's definitely true that simple, clear font results in a more trusting response. Right away I think of the case of borrowing notes from a missed lecture from a friend. If their handwriting is sloppy and illegible, I probably have to pause often and the reading of the notes isn't smooth. In these instances, I find myself not even trusting that they took good notes in class.

On the other hand, if the notes are very neatly written or even typed, it becomes a lot easier to read. I'll transfer the notes to my notebook with confidence that the person was paying attention and is a good note taker. A situation like this is why the results of the font study listed in the article aren't surprising at all.

Another thing that interested me was the idea of "disfluency". As I just pointed out, I really believe that simple and legible fonts result in trustworthiness from the reader. It's no wonder that advertisements and politicians alike therefore use simple fonts and simple language when writing their slogans and ads.

I think in the right situation, however, disfluency can definitely be used in an effective way. Some high end and elegant products have sophisticated fonts on their advertisements. They'll use cursive fonts and fonts not easily read on a poster or billboard. The reason I think this works is because the advertisers don't necessarily want the ad to be simple and clear to the average. If they're selling an elegant product, they probably want the consumer to feel elegant while reading their ads. The consumers who are uninterested in the ad and think it's unappealing because of it's nicer and complicated font probably aren't a problem to the company. It's the feeling of being special and superiority for the people who do like their ads and buy their products that the company is trying to get. So as Bennett suggests, disfluency can work in some circumstances.

Overall, the article had a lot of cool points that I think a lot of us will realize are true in real life. I was personally drawn to the issue of font and trust, but there's certainly a lot more of the article that interested me.

Pairs Skating

With her heart pounding and blood rushing, the crowd cheering and speakers blaring, their coach nodding and fans watching, she took the ice with her hand grasping her partner’s, imagining the worst, hoping for the best, and knowing that everything was riding on this one moment, this one 3 minute moment, which would forever define her as a winner or a loser, competent or inadequate, successful or regrettable, famous or anonymous, and all she could think was, “He’d better not mess this up.”

Spring

Springtime again, the season of youth and rebirth seen in the young animals playing for the first time under the watchful eye of their mothers who have nurtured them through the dark cold of winter which the brilliantly shining sun has so valiantly defeated, bringing growth, happiness, and warmth to all things and only pausing to allow the gentle rain to nourish the earth which soaks up the life-giving water with vigor as a camel who, after long treks through the harsh desert, has come upon an unexpected and much needed oasis, the water sinking into the ground only to be soaked up just as quickly by the budding bushes and trees, making new leaves and flowers, between which the beautiful songbirds are perched, watching and waiting for morsels to bring back to their ravenous chicks who cheep endlessly, seeming never to be satisfied by the meager offerings of their parents; they must be ever watchful for the prowling cats who also have hungry mouths to feed, though the kittens seem more patient than their avian counterparts, and yet are not wholly content as they trot about in the shaded, wet grass under the porch where they came into the world not long ago, practicing their stalking and their pounces so they will one day be able to care for young of their own, continuing the cycle of life that begins for so many in this wonderful season.

Sentence

The one country that should do something is Germany, the engine of European economy, the strongest advocate for of closer European economic and political integration and its commercial policies increasingly determined by agreements among European Union members and EU single market legislation, the one that should bail out Greece out of its financial crisis.

Sentence

Jack thought of Locke as an intriguing man, physically handicapped but mentally capable, really old in age but truly reborn, deviating from society while always desiring structure and conformance, immeasurably wise but undoubtedly naive, violent and dangerous yet soft and gentle, constantly angry but always kind, immoral in his supposed righteous ideas, vitally important, inescapably meaningful, and truly miraculous, but insignificant, foolish, and pathetic at the same time.

All things at first appear difficult

This is a really old and common Chinese saying that you will still hear pretty often nowadays. It means that when people start to do something challenging, it is hardest to start to do it. I think this would be deductive reasoning since it is talking about a common rule for all things. It is not necessarily means that things actually get easier as things go along, but rather, having the courage to start something challenging is hard to do. Once a person gets on a routine of doing this hard task everyday, it becomes not as intimidating as it seems like in the beginning.
Therefore, the difficulty here means fear for challenge.

This saying in China right now can sound a little cliché simply it has become too common. Most of the time, people hardly put thoughts into it because it sounds like something we have already known forever. However, it is still very true and effective in my opinion. When people go through hardships or facing a challenge, they tend to truly relate with this. It still has the effect of motivating people. People use it for blog titles or day-to-day speech. It especially applies to things like entrepreneurship.

This proverb in Chinese language originally directly translates to " Ten thousand things start difficultly." Chines language articulate the connotation behind language and people are not use to write things out most explicitly. Also, the language tends to use many metaphors and other forms of rhetorics. For example, it is very common in Chinese language to use Ten thousand to represent everything. Numbers with similar function are thousand, hundred, and even sometimes ten. In old Chinese articles, two or three most of time doesn't mean the exact number. Examples like this can be found everywhere and all of these combined make the traditional Chinese writings pleasant to read. The English translation here clearly delivered the message however lost the beauty of the original language.

Therefore, the difficulty here means fear for challenge.

This saying in China right now can sound a little cliché simply it has become too common. Most of the time, people hardly put thoughts into it because it sounds like something we have already known forever. However, it is still very true and effective in my opinion. When people go through hardships or facing a challenge, they tend to truly relate with this. It still has the effect of motivating people. People use it for blog titles or day-to-day speech. It especially applies to things like entrepreneurship.

This proverb in Chinese language originally directly translates to " Ten thousand things start difficultly." Chines language articulate the connotation behind language and people are not use to write things out most explicitly. Also, the language tends to use many metaphors and other forms of rhetorics. For example, it is very common in Chinese language to use Ten thousand to represent everything. Numbers with similar function are thousand, hundred, and even sometimes ten. In old Chinese articles, two or three most of time doesn't mean the exact number. Examples like this can be found everywhere and all of these combined make the traditional Chinese writings pleasant to read. The English translation here clearly delivered the message however lost the beauty of the original language.

"Actions speak louder than words"

I think that this saying is a little cliché simply because most people have heard of it, however I think that “cliché” has too much of a negative connotation associated with it. Just because it’s cliché, doesn’t mean that it’s bad. I once heard someone say that clichés are clichés for a reason—it is because they are so true, that they have become so over-used. I think that this saying, “actions speak louder than words,” is extremely true, but even though most people have heard of, I don’t think that many consider it in their daily lives.

In my experience, people are fixated with words and what people say. We “hang onto” words and we usually believe them (even when we are given reason to do otherwise). When people “break their word” or don’t follow through on what they have promised, we usually overlook these faults when their words say that it won’t happen again. I think that we could all do to remember that “actions speak louder than words” in these scenarios. If they never actually DO anything, their saying that they will do it means nothing.

The physical structure of this saying is interesting as well. By using personification and having the nominalization “actions” speak, the act is emphasized rather than the person doing the act. This makes the saying universally applicable. It’s not important who does the action, only that it is done. It’s not selecting certain people’s words that aren’t louder than other people’s actions…”words” in general aren’t as loud as “actions” in general.

This saying is also rather ironic because we use words to “speak” and yet it is our actions, which aren’t used in speaking, that do the speaking better.

I think that this saying uses inductive reasoning because we usually start by looking at a specific event in our lives that happened some time before, and it is usually down the road that we realize that this statement is applicable to that situation. After we look at the specific scenario and the events that subsequently occurred, we usually see whether someone’s words weren’t truthful, and realize that we should have paid attention to the person’s actions instead of trusting their words alone.

Quote

In 1989, author Lynn Hall wrote the novel Where Have All the Tigers Gone?. The story is about a middle-aged woman who returns to her hometown to attend a high school reunion. Through the trip home and the reunion itself, she is able to reminisce of the past and notice how different her perception of the world and her childhood relationships are in the present. One of her summarizing resolutions of her life that has stuck with me ever since I stumbled across it, reads:

“We do not change as we grow older. We simply become more clearly ourselves.”

The quote itself does not really use any tools to convey its point. There is no humor, exaggeration, or repetition. The diction level is constant throughout, at a conversational level right in the middle of formal and slang. It is not a cliché; in fact, it’s quite the opposite. It works because it gets a reader’s attention by going against what we are supposed to think.

For this reason, my first impression and the impression I think most people have is that this quote is unattractive or wrong. It seems that one of the key, fundamental facts that we must learn to accept in life is that people change. Since childhood, we get the constant advice from parents, teachers, and mentors that “things change” and “people change”. It’s like it’s a way of rationalizing growing distant from former friends and not feeling the way we used to about others. This way of thinking revolves around the idea that everyone eventually changes from who they are, into a new and different person, and that’s just the way it is.

Upon further analysis, I believe that Lynn Hall’s take is more accurate than the traditional stance. Personally, I’ve experienced the event first hand. From the time I was in first grade up until about 7th or 8th grade, I had a very close friend that most people would have considered my “best” friend. We would literally do everything together and were truly inseparable. I honestly believed we would be lifelong friends. However, towards the end of Middle School it quickly became obvious that my friend’s priorities were changing. He quickly evolved into a shell of his former self, and we’d have droughts of several months were we didn’t even speak.

We still keep in touch to this day, but it will obviously never be like it was before we grew up. During high school, my parents would always tell me that he changed and they couldn’t believe it, and that it’s really unfortunate given how close we once were. But when I really think about the “changed” version of my friend, I come to realize that he’s been different longer than he was the friend I couldn’t be separated from. It may be time to realize that those years we spent as buddies were when we were just kids, and who he is now is who he truly is. It’s a very difficult thing to admit to myself and accept, but I think it is right.

The context of Lynn Hall’s quote is very similar to my situation, as her story centers mostly on her childhood relationships. When we’re kids, we’re so young, inexperienced, and naive. It’s easier to make friends and get along with people as kids, because life is simple. As we get older and are exposed to a bigger variety of things, it becomes clearer to ourselves what we want in life. This is how people grow distant from one another and how relationships imminently end.