Youthful Life: X

Truth - Life is complicated and life is simple. Life is a constant struggle to figure it all out. What's the meaning of life? What is our purpose? What are we meant to do here? Does any of this matter, are those questions irrelevant, and are we significant in any meaningful way? The further we go in life the more we have to wonder what it's all about. Does anyone know? Is it the same for everyone? What am I like this , and how did I end up here? "I am convinced that most people do not grow up...We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies, and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are innocent and shy as magnolias." Maya Angelou What am I doing with my life ? There's that question that creeps up and threatens to strangle you in its clutches of  existential dread from time to time. It's that meta moment where you are painfull se...

Truth - stories are how we communicate. Stories matter more than we may ever truly know. It's through stories that we create our truths and come to believe what we believe. It's by the storytelling of others and their craftsmanship of the narrative, richness of the plot, and vivacious characters that we come to have our worldviews. Stories have an immense power if only they are allowed to be told. Representation matters, stories matter, we matter.   "There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously ...

Truth - People need closure. It's such a human thing - to want answers, to wonder why, and to pursue finality. We want to know the reasons things happen or don't happen. From how sinks work to the existential questions of free will and divine purpose. Nothing plagues the human psyche more than the disappearance of people, no matter how it happens. Death, departure, or evening ghosting - disconnecting irks us to no end. Here's to all the flakes, catfish, and timewasters - this one's for you; we're done getting ghosted. " Oh, what a void there is in things" Persius One of the biggest critiques I have for this day and age is our avoidance of conflict. It's not new, but with all our avenues of communication, it's become arguably both easier and more complicated than ever before. Of course there's the classic actually avoiding people, but with the advent of social media and our potentially compulsive need to document the entirety of our liv...

Truth - No two people are the same. While that may be an infallible truth, we are more alike than we sometimes like to acknowledge. In another sense, there are just many things that make us unique as there are things that make us similar. We're exceptional but not the exceptions. We're complicatedly simple and also simply complicated. We're special and we're not special. "You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old" George Burns The rhetoric targeted at the millennial continually seems to get worse and worse each year, or maybe I'm just more cognizant of all the stereotypes others put on us, and the ones I was part of creating for myself. Millennials are hailed as the generation of narcissism, superficiality, social media, entitlement, idealism, and restlessness among other things. My issue with those stereotypes is not that they're necessarily wrong, but rather that they are remarkably limiting and leave little to no ro...