Monday, April 03, 2006
My 21st Birthday, Decision Making, and Law Breaking
On March 12th I turned 21 years old which is a pretty big milestone especially in college culture. It has been long overdue, I have anxiously waited for my 21st birthday for well over a year and being 21 has certainly had it’s benefits.
The night started in my room with Cachaulo and Austin we watched some Seinfeld and enjoyed White Russians and Parrot Bay, not together that would be pretty gross. After a couple of good hours hanging out with two of my best friends we gathered a group of guys and drove to a motel room that Leland had rented for his friend Mikey who had the same 21st birthday as myself. There I enjoyed a couple of beers and got a chance to be with more of my really good friends, Pearlman, Sixer, SOB. From there we walked to the bars and I was beaming with anticipation. It is strange how you picture a place that you have never been to but only heard about over and over again. I think that the way I do that with places I also do with people.
People always say that you should not judge a book by it’s cover or something of that extent to say that you shouldn’t judge someone based on how they look or based on a first impression. But I think that is a valuable skill. In life you have to make decisions and sometimes those decisions have to be made without perfect information. I am not afraid of using all of the information I have available to make decisions. If the information is what they look like then I have to make a decision based on that. That is why I believe it to be a valuable skill to accurately access a situation or person with little information. But like in the case of what the bar looks like I had a picture of it based on the little information I had. After I visited those bars I had more information and I changed my idea of what the bars looked like. That is the key to making snap judgments about people, is being open minded and willing to accept more information even if it is contradictory.
So I visited three bars. I kissed the buffalo at the pub, I listened to good music and had good Irish drinks at Conor O’Neils, and I ate peanuts and had shots at the walrus. It was a great night spent with great friends. I went to bed feeling great, I woke up in the morning feeling great, my only regret of the evening was that sometime during the night I must have vomited and I ruined my mattress and box spring.
Overall I would say that turning 21 was fun but even better than the night itself has been the freedom of not having to violate laws that I do not believe are just. I always had a moral problem with violating those laws (drinking/gambling). Part of it is that even though I think the laws are stupid, I understand that I live in a democratic society and part of living in a democratic society is having to follow laws that you might not agree with because a majority agrees with them. So I am glad that there were laws that I was not following with some moral objection that I do not need to break anymore.
The night started in my room with Cachaulo and Austin we watched some Seinfeld and enjoyed White Russians and Parrot Bay, not together that would be pretty gross. After a couple of good hours hanging out with two of my best friends we gathered a group of guys and drove to a motel room that Leland had rented for his friend Mikey who had the same 21st birthday as myself. There I enjoyed a couple of beers and got a chance to be with more of my really good friends, Pearlman, Sixer, SOB. From there we walked to the bars and I was beaming with anticipation. It is strange how you picture a place that you have never been to but only heard about over and over again. I think that the way I do that with places I also do with people.
People always say that you should not judge a book by it’s cover or something of that extent to say that you shouldn’t judge someone based on how they look or based on a first impression. But I think that is a valuable skill. In life you have to make decisions and sometimes those decisions have to be made without perfect information. I am not afraid of using all of the information I have available to make decisions. If the information is what they look like then I have to make a decision based on that. That is why I believe it to be a valuable skill to accurately access a situation or person with little information. But like in the case of what the bar looks like I had a picture of it based on the little information I had. After I visited those bars I had more information and I changed my idea of what the bars looked like. That is the key to making snap judgments about people, is being open minded and willing to accept more information even if it is contradictory.
So I visited three bars. I kissed the buffalo at the pub, I listened to good music and had good Irish drinks at Conor O’Neils, and I ate peanuts and had shots at the walrus. It was a great night spent with great friends. I went to bed feeling great, I woke up in the morning feeling great, my only regret of the evening was that sometime during the night I must have vomited and I ruined my mattress and box spring.
Overall I would say that turning 21 was fun but even better than the night itself has been the freedom of not having to violate laws that I do not believe are just. I always had a moral problem with violating those laws (drinking/gambling). Part of it is that even though I think the laws are stupid, I understand that I live in a democratic society and part of living in a democratic society is having to follow laws that you might not agree with because a majority agrees with them. So I am glad that there were laws that I was not following with some moral objection that I do not need to break anymore.
