Try this: take a picture of yourself with your phone, look at the picture, flip the phone upside-down, look at the picture again...

Make upside-down eye contact with yourself...

When I do this, I find my imperfections much more tolerable. It might have something to do with the psychology of facial recognition--maybe upside-down faces are simply less recognizably human, and our innate wiring has a bit more trouble analyzing them. Makes you realize how easily perception can altered, and makes you wonder how skewed your own perception of yourself really is.

Sometimes I think about how an intelligent alien would perceive me, and how I would perceive it. Humans are complex organisms, and an intelligent alien would be a complex organism too--and our biologies would be very different; I doubt we'd be able to make heads or tails of each other.

You guys realize that we're just walking blobs of flesh, right?

Sometimes I feel depressed about my face. If I were the last man on earth, I'd feel depressed for entirely different reasons.

I'd enjoy some aspects of the apocalypse; my confidence would be off the charts for example. I'd be the most attractive guy on the planet! And I'd also be the best cricket player around. There would be no need to worry about appearances, because I would be the standard. I could stroll around the barren streets like I'm on top of the world, singing and dancing and jubilant as could be. There would be no one to impress but myself, and no one else to compare myself to. I would be completely and utterly free.

But I'd get lonely very quickly; as much as I dislike human interaction (at times), I would miss it more than anything in the world--and I'd have the entire world in my palms, remember; but it wouldn't be worth a cent if there was no one to share it with. I'd wish to undo the extinction of mankind before I could even come to enjoy it.

Of course, when the all my human friends returned to me, and the world filled up again, would I relapse into the dark feelings of my past? Would my insecurities and anxieties emerge from the rubble? I really hope not. If I could feel free, confident and powerful as the last man on Earth, why couldn't I maintain that mentality when everyone returned? Would I start to compare myself to others again, and worry about the state of my face, and feel inadequate in front of the girl I love?

I'd like to think that experiencing the utter loneliness of being the only survivor of the apocalypse would change me as person. I'd also like to think that I could change myself right now, without having to go through the extinction of mankind. Do we have that power over ourselves? Can we change our perceptions?

In the end, it helps to remember that happiness is just the product of a chemical in our brains. The only thing anybody in the world cares about is chemicals. It's the only thing that keeps us going.

Maybe a special someone out there can get my chemcials pumping, and maybe I could the do the same for her. Same for you guys/girls.

Thanks for reading.