handwriting

handwriting

One of the ways to gain insight into a person's character is through their handwriting. Sometimes, I write like this or sometimes I write like that but their are fundamental consistencies in the lettering and spacing that show some insight into character. Although I have no particular knowledge about what my handwriting reveals, one thing I can do is examine how my handwriting has changed. For a fact, I know that it has changed, quite rapidly actually. Although not consistently so, it used to be smaller, neater, simple and rapid. It was not particularly neat, but the page demonstrated a general attention to proportions and space. In the past three or so months, my handwriting has become messier, larger, and sometimes undecipherable. However, I like the way it looks better than before. For the first time, without deliberately trying to alter my handwriting so that it fits me better, I feel like it a good reflection of how my mind moves my hand and pen. I think that handwriting can be used as a medium to understand oneself, because it is unconscious and revealing. If I were to give personality to such handwriting, I would say it is reckless but deliberately so. Some neglect. Although unrefined and messy, it seems focused as well. The large letters and lack of attention to its legibility contains a sentiment somewhere between desperation and excitement and contains a general mood of narcissism.

I can't read much into my handwriting, I can only project what I feel about myself and attach it to certain flairs of my changing handwriting. There are things I am more certain of about myself. Four character traits I desire to be more implanted in my personality. These are: compassion, humility, focus and diligence. My handwriting doesn't show lack of compassion (maybe it does whatever) but this is something I feel must be changed.

A somewhat recent phenomenon I have noted: I am generally disinterested in most conversations. I believe it to be a combination of my inherently selfish nature and lack of common interests.  My narrow minded focus on things I enjoy also plays a part, as well as my lack of both understanding and desire to understand most people's daily lives and struggles. On a very basic level, I simply don't empathize with most people, nor do I really care to. This is not to say I don't like talking to people. I like talking to a few people about certain things. I like being witty and pushing people to reveal more about themselves. But most of the time these days, I don't understand the point of so many conversations. We talk to be understood and listen to understand. And these days, I don't care to understand, so I don't like to listen. Unhealthy issue this is, but at the same time, it feels natural. Regardless, my desire to be more compassionate is strong, despite feeling more than ever so absorbed in myself. I believe this disinterest to be very revealing of my lack of compassion.

Let me break down this issue in a simple way. I think it is very natural the way I feel because I don't relate to the conversation topic at hand. This is normal, right? People become bored when things are not about them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but "being relatable" essentially means that it in some way feeds our ego (by relate something outside of us to ourselves). Similar interests, similar stories, similar something relative to my life, because that is how we understand things -> through ourselves. I learn about why people become who they are and in turn, it may reveal something about myself. Awesome people carry traits which I envy or admire/desire to be like. Perplexing people carry this potential. I like the music and movies I like because I feel like they speak to me, or demonstrate skill and talent which I either envy or find respectable. Thus, foreign things are uninteresting. I noticed this ironic trend. I am interested in people because they either reflect or carry a potential to reflect something about myself. My narcissism shines through my interest in other people and makes it feel fake.

So, I just don't relate to the things people talk about because my span of interests are becoming increasingly smaller. Yet, I want to care about people even if there is nothing to relate. I want it to be ingrained in my nature; to care and be compassionate about the lives of people even when I am not interested. To be compassionate is so difficult because it is contrarian to my inherently narcissistic self, in a place where I find outside similarities to be weaning away slowly. But I must. Where to start is interesting, because normally I always start with myself for anything I do. I think that compassion is bred within humility. In order to love someone without self interest, that self interest must be smaller in the first place.

But humility is an evasive trait, like all great and good traits. One way which a person is able to become more humble is by knowing himself. One is able to know himself by facing himself. One faces himself when he is desperate. The cause of desperation is from the outside. However, how one responds to the desperation is an internal choice. By consistently making the right internal choices -- choices of mindful compassion, inner strength, perseverance and unselfish ambition -- he can habituate goodness within self. Moments of desperation create such profound characters. Without these moments which we can face ourselves and habituate goodness, it is only natural that we foster dullness instead. Amongst my demographic, desperation is less. It is not that my peers are drole, it's that their lives are drole. A job, a educational pursuits dicate the weekday actions and release from such pressure colour our weekends. Ambition of greater things lie in between the two and permeate the personality with vibrant colours, but it is more or less drowned by daily droleness. So boring so boring. So boring a life with no desperation. Such colorless souls born out of habits of boredom. However, boredom is also a form of desperation, because it is one of the ways we face ourselves. Reactions to boredom are telling. The first desire is to escape the boredom by doing something else and interesting ourselves in something less boring. It seems like being alone with our thoughts is difficult. Because facing ourselves is difficult. But how can we habituate good habits without facing ourselves in moments of desperation, no matter how small that desperation? With enough of a certain thought or action, it can be habituated.