February 17, 2005 - The topic of 'topics' comes to mind tonite. I've had a lot of things running through my head that I want to write about, such as integrity, the news, sharing, friendship...but I think the pinnacle of these things falls under the umbrella of being topical. It's as if when we meet someone we immediately try to find out things about them so that we can assign them to a group in our mind. When we go somewhere, we try to reference it in some sort of comparison. When we read something, we relate it to something else we have read. When we do this, we are putting it into some sort of group or topic that later we'll reference back to. I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I like to keep expanding my knowledge and adding more topics. In that sense, I'm a collector of topics. On the other hand, I feel like I am unable to let things stand on their own, without reference, without comparison. In that sense, I feel like I am missing out on something incredibly delightful...a raw experience that someone else may be able to have because they have the ability to look at something with no bias. Maybe this is a sign that I'm losing touch with my childhood, the time when everyone explores and doesn't have categories to put anything into. When everything we experience is a new category, a new book, a new topic. I look forward to a day when I can see something again with a fresh pallete.