Youthful Life: X

" There is nothing so cleansing or reassuring as a vicarious sadness." David Rakoff Onward - a word for the year. It's time to move on. It's time to move. It's time. Onward we go. Letting go of things or people who do not serve us can be one of the most challenging and liberating things we can do for ourselves. We can spend so much time trying to rationalize, make things or people fit, hold on when in reality often the solution is the simplest, that people or things are not supposed to be there and we need to let them go. I have found that some simple distance is exactly what is needed to recognize the lack of reciprocity. How different do we feel to be separate from people or things. If we notice there's a shift in our contentment, peace, or joy - for the better - that's a clear sign that whatever we've taken a break from is probably a cause of some unnecessary stress, hardship, or discontentment. What's the logical solution? Let it go.  Walk away...

"Sometimes, how you ingest this idea of masculinity as projected onto you by the world could be the difference of life and death." Barry Jenkins We're bad with emotions , well most people that is. We don't know what to do with them. We keep them bottled up. We let them out in messy ways, usually accidentally. We're all over the place. We are emotionally unstable. Why? You tell me. Maybe you don't know, or maybe you do and you're not willing to share that truth with yourself. We are socialized in a myriad of ways (family/upbringing, friends, school, religion, media, etc.) to act and to not act. That is the impact of being taught to suppress your emotions. It might not have been direct but all the times you were told to stop being sensitive, to grow a backbone, to be strong, to stop crying, to get it together, to be man up, and the list goes on and on were the negative reinforcements of an ideology that asked you to shut down a critical part of your...

"Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact" William James Toxic. It's this new way to describe people and the malicious behaviors/words they spew. It's the go to word for how people are articulating their big moods, goals, and mindsets for this year - removing toxic people from their circle. Distancing yourself from people who bring you down, make you feel bad about yourself, and cause you nothing but hardship, anguish, or anger will never not be commendable. There does, however, come a point where branding anything or anyone who does not make you "happy" as "negativity" undermines the integrity of that duality. Especially in this political time and space that we find ourselves in, more and more people seem to be removing anyone who does not share their views from their lives both digitally or in reality.  And that's not to say that letting go of people whose ideologies, opinions, and beliefs are dehu...

“Rejection is inevitable. The goal is to minimize it.” Keith Grafman Language is a constantly evolving sociopolitical construct. It changes with the locale, culture, and context in which it is used. Words take on new meaning. The world of relationships and romance has been revolutionized itself with the onset of digital mediums through which to communicate. With it though has been borne a potentially toxic culture of miscommunication, micro-communication, and no communication at all. No one really knows how people will utilize inventions, and oftentimes users dictate the uses of products more than creators do. People are both predictable and simultaneously an unsolvable enigma of the most epic proportions. They exist both in the centerfold and the marginalia. They are creatures of habit and wildcards played to disrupt the flow of things. People can be cruel regardless of intent just as easily as they can be kind. Time for a vocabulary lesson, this time on breadcrumbing, windows...