ON GOLD:

Gold is a precious metal. With the recent stock market bed-pooping, gold has increased in value because that's where people invest during tough economic times. But today I want to focus that the fact that gold is a soft metal - that it is, to use a term I learned in 9th-grade science class - malleable.

Gold can be shaped fairly easily (compared to, say, iron). You can make it into a necklace, you can make it into a calf idol, you can make it into a ridiculous set of teeth. Gold pretty much goes where it's placed. And that's great for gold.

This is where it applies to me (since this is the most self-indulgent blog in the short and storied history of blogs). I worry that I am too malleable. You don't think that person is a good actor? Me neither! You think this band is awesome? Me too!

I just worry that I am being shaped too much by outside influences and not by any inner drive. When I read about great people, it seems like so much of what made them special came from within. And since I (selfishly) want to be a better person, I wonder where that drive is in myself. I think I need to strike a better balance between respecting other's opinions and losing myself in them. The saving grace would be that it's friends' opinions that shape me, and that my friends are, by and large, good people who want the best for me.

FRIEND: Try this salad dressing.
ME: Salad dressing?!?!?! Blergle blerg bloch!

Okay, okay, maybe I'm not "gold malleable." I am, however, "gold precious" and "gold valuable."