Youthful Life: X

Truth - Being on your own can be absolutely mortifying but it's one of the most satisfying things you have to do in life. Every single day leaves things up to you to choose. With no one else around, you ask yourself in those moments who you are and especially now that no one else is watching. What kind of individual do you want to be? What's the impact you want to make in your communities? What do you look like in these changing contexts. Things never stop changing, all of it is temporary but that time is all important nonetheless. Call me a sojourner.   "People change and forget to tell one another" Unknown Does anyone else talk to themselves or is that just me? The past few days, at least for me, have been nothing short of chaotic. I don't think I have ever been so scared in my entire life. Context - I moved to Cleveland for graduate school. From the outside though, everything looks perfectly fine but in all honesty, I have never felt so out of place, d...

Truth - there is a storm, no rebellion, scratch that a revolution coming. There is an uprising going on as we speak. There is a battle cry ringing out across the nation. Look for it but it will be in vain. Forget your TVs, radios, and newspapers - it won't be covered there. The revolution will not be televised. Turn the lights off, listen well, and take to the Internet or the streets. You are with us, that is this radical idea that human beings matter, or you are against us. The in-between - those who are silent, your silence has spoken for you and it says something sinister. It says I do not care and therefore am no different that the oppressors. It all has led up to this. This is the minority report.  "The minorities are no longer okay with being minor" Let me start with my gratitude that goes to two specific groups. People of color, keep doing what have been doing. You were drafted into this chaos by virtue of your birth and your skin color. Know that your e...

Truth - I stopped pledging allegiance back in high school. The words didn't ring true for me and honestly they never really had. The words of the pledge, the hands over the heart, the recitation in unison, and all the pomp and circumstance that come with it didn't make sense. Why would I pledge allegiance to a flag, government, and to a republic that failed to recognize the existence of all it's people, including me? I pledge my allegiance to the people who make up this great nation. With them lies power, greatness, peace, hope, and love. For them, I write and dedicate this post and my allegiance.  " They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Benjamin Franklin As a kid I always wondered why we remade to repeat the pledge over and over. Wasn't one time enough? If I call you my friend and declare my loyalty to you one time is a all it takes. You should have no fear that I will ever for...

Truth - Sometimes people will say things to you that will stay with you for the rest of your life. It's one of those things that comes seemingly out of the blue and it's all you can think about. No matter what you do or what you say, you can't get that one person's comments out of your head. Maybe it's because you vehemently disagree with it or maybe because it's one of your biggest fears. Either way, the impact is the still the same and for the time being you're caught in the trap of other people's opinions. Criticism, jealousy, and envy can be show up in the most discreet ways. This is green eyed monster.   "The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves" William Penn   Have you ever had one of your friends tell you that it was too hard being friends with you? Have you ever had people let you know that you should be doing less? Have you ever questioned the validity of others' criticisms of you? Definitely I hav...

Truth - There's no way that you can ever fully be prepared for the real world. We live in bits and pieces of it as we move through life. No one actually gets to experience it in its entirety. The little sliver though that we do get to live through is more than enough. Each day we enter and exit different parts of the microcosms that make up their terrifyingly beautiful world. It's a great big world out there. It asks us to figure it out but never stays the same. You know those nights that people talk about having hit the bottle a little too hard, that's how life can be sometimes; stumbling through the dark, slightly intoxicated. This is sobering up.  " The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love" William Sloane Coffin Jr. To be quite honest, I don't quite comprehend how people make friends outside of college. It's now that I'm out of my little universe(ity) that I realize how facilitated the experienc...

Truth - it may sound cliché but life really is a journey and its one of epic proportions. From start to finish life keeps you on your toes. You can never really know what's going to come up next, if you did then you'd miss out on all the suspense. That's the aspect of our lives that makes our stories so great, the ambiguity, the anxiousness, and the not knowing. We're tasked with taking what comes our way and working with it the to best of our ability. No one ever life would be easy or predictable. Time to write our own new epic - this is odyssey. “Be strong, saith my heart; I am a soldier; I have seen worse sights than this.”  Homer the Odyssey Does anyone else have vivid memories of their high school English classes and reading story after story to no end. They may have ruined my love for reading (apparently I have a problem with authority) but there definitely are certain stories I remember well. Homer's the Odyssey is one of them. Who can ever forget ...