I came to a rather sobering conclusion today: frustration in life will invariably increase. As I’ve grown older, I’ve watched myself become more set in my ways; somewhere along the way, I started doing things a certain way and these methods have just stuck with me. And as I accrue life experience, I continue to head down this path of asymptotic convergence to some set of traits and behaviours that epitomize my being. I feel as if I’ve already passed the inflection point of such a trajectory as I find myself tackling problems always with the same approach, relating to people always in the same way, and seeking to satisfy myself always doing the same sort of things. I’ve become entrenched in "my way" and--irrespective of what others like or want--that's apparently what I've become.

When I see something that makes me go, "huh" I analyze it to pieces, breaking down the pieces as small as I can go with what I know and play devil's advocate with myself until I run out of arguments. I do it because I feel most alive when I'm thinking--I personally find much reassurance in Descartes' cogito. This is something I realized a while ago and I've found myself doing it so much more than I used to. Sometimes this carries over into how I relate to other people and I know some people don't like talking to me because of this. They mistakenly conclude I'm just being negatively argumentative, a little too much of a caviller.

So whence does the frustration come? It comes from near certainty that I will further veer off into eccentricity. When we see old people do the funny things they do, we chuckle to ourselves, attribute the kookiness to old age, and move on. No one tries to change anything about it because we all realize how futile a task that would be. I acknowledged this morning that I'm well on my way down this road. As it is now, I get frustrated when people don't bother or want to look at things the way I do. (Perhaps they are set in their own ways too.) Thankfully, still being in grad school, there's a higher chance that people around me don't mind thinking and discussing things once in a while. But if I ever move on into the real world, I can see this being a pretty big problem. Add that to the tragic mental stiffness ageing people develop that prevents them from easily adapting to the modernities of the day (unfortunately parallelling their physical decline which can be frustrating in itself), I can picture myself being one miserable curmudgeon in the not too distant future. I have such a great future to look forward to.