Youthful Life: X

" I'm lost in space and I want to find a way home. Nobody else can get me back to the planet,  so I have to do it myself.” Susan Vaught Sometimes we have to save ourselve s. Sometimes we have to be our own heroes. Sometimes we are the only ones capable of enacting our own rescue. To this day, I think one of my favorite moments in modern film history is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban  when Harry casts the patronus charm to repel hundreds of dementors, and literally saves his past self. He even says he knew he could do it because he had already done it. Sometimes we are the only ones who can help us because we are the ones hurting us. Sometimes happiness, joy, peace, love, and light at least for us, ourselves, is a choice away. Sometimes the release from bondage, incarceration, solitude lies with us and us alone. What would you do if you had the key to saving yourself? Would you use it? It seems like a rhetorical question but people are complicated, and someti...

"I'm an off-the-charts introvert. To me, being around groups of strangers is exhausting. I've had to sort of train myself to think about two tactics: finding common ground  and invoking humor." Sam Yagan There are times where I love being me - which more and more is my mode of operation, and for that unabashed self-love I am grateful - and there are times where I wish I could take on the qualities of others around me. Being social is one of those situations. From the outside people read me as comfortable, charismatic, and confident. I tell a lot of jokes, can light up a room, and connect with just about anyone, but what people don't see is how anxious, afraid, and awkward I am, or at least how I feel. I use humor as a defense mechanism, focus on other people to avoid talking about myself, and, worry constantly about whether or not people like me. I have spent so much of my life living in fear of not being liked, namely because of internalized racism and th...

" I don’t believe rape is inevitable or natural. If I did, I would have no reason to be here. If I did, my political practice would be different than it is. Have you ever wondered why we [women] are not just in armed combat against you? It’s not because there’s a shortage of kitchen knives in this country. It is because we believe in your humanity, against all the evidence.”  Andrea Dworkin For once , I don't really know how to start this post but I have a lot of thoughts. Bear with me as I just go ahead and write them. I think about the ways in which I have to come to understand how to be articulate some of the more amorphous concepts that float around the concert experiences I have. One of those being this idea of emotional labor - both a term created/used in feminist theory, and in capitalist ideology. Emotional labor is basically a self-awareness of being able to consciously manage and process "appropriately" your emotions. I interpret it as being able to...

" The only limit to your impact is your imagination and commitment." Tony Robbins   I think I have commitment issues . The entire idea of permanence sends shivers down my spine. It just seems so ... final  - you know? I have spent my entire life always moving on. Everything I have done has always had an expiration date. It was always going to get better because I was going to leave at some point. High school and all its social clique induced anxiety ended, college and its adventures in pretentiousness and depravity ended, grad school zoomed on by, and you get the point. Now I'm in this phase of my life where things could be permanent if I wanted them to be. There is this new possibility that I could stay, that I could choose to be here, and to do so indefinitely. People around me are getting engaged, buying houses, having children, etc. and then there's me still waiting to move on, like I have always done. I don't think I know how to do anything else. Those...

"Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the  deepest expressions of pure love." Rusell M. Nelson Devastation , destruction, despair, and death - darkness looms, and depressive sentiments run rampant. The world seems so dark, decrepit, and dangerous. Well, it is, and it isn't. It all depends on our perspectives. Depending on who we are, the context with which we are able to exist and persist, and our positionality the world may or may not seem so bleak. Perception truly can be everything. Perception is reality. But is reality perception - or rather, whatever we declare it to be? More and more, as we are inundated with graphic images, grim news, and the gravitas that things are different for different people, this phenomenon of selective mourning has come about. That is the notion that we pick and choose what we mourn.  Don't get me wrong, in a practical sense, it makes sense that we feel more closely connected to certain ...