stuff that's moved me

, Will Kahn-Greene | share this (mastodon)
Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts over a long span of time. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date, the code doesn't work, the ideas haven't aged well, or the ideas were terrible to begin with. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

There has been a long list of things that have moved me. Like when you're playing harmonics on a guitar, the other notes vibrate in sympathy. While I don't recall why I originally added this topic to my on stuff list, it's one of those topics that's easy to come up with one or two things on the spur of the moment--and then spend the rest of your life thinking about.

I think the things that move me the most tend to be sudden and unexpected and usually while I'm busy trying to get something done. Rarely do I find things that move me while I'm sitting still enjoying the placitudes. Sometimes it's a connection. A sudden realization of an isomorphic mapping of a group of things that allow me some insight as to the relation of the items in the group. Course, I'm talking about items in the non-thing sense--they could just as easily be feelings or thoughts or visual abstractions.

Maybe someday I'll reach a point where it's important to make a list of the things that have moved me. Partly because I require moving again, or maybe because the list will move me and bring insight as to the things that move me. I guess, kind of a meta-moving.

Updates:

12/9/2004: Everyone has stuff that moves them, so I'm not really sure how interesting this "essay" is. I think it's a good idea to add some data points.

I was really moved the first time I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind but not that moved the second time I saw it.

I was really moved when my dad told me he really admired the fact that I'm working on getting into grad school. I definitely don't have a good feel for why, but I was moved that he felt it important enough to send me an email about it.

I was moved when in January of 2004 (or maybe February--I forget specifically), my grandmother called me on the phone to tell me goodbye forever (she was really sick with cancer and a dozen or so other issues) and that she always cherished the moments we spent together and thought that I was a really good person. Then she died a few days later.

There are more but this is good enough.

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