Youthful Life: X

Truth - The human experience is centered around community. We are not meant to be alone. In fact, community is critical to our survival as individuals, both in practicality and psychologically. In extreme circumstances, prolonged isolation from others results in the deterioration of the psyche, cognitive functions, and grasp on reality. We figuratively, and quite literally need people. The sustained relationships we form are essential to our existence and persistence throughout the entirety of our lives. And so let us commune.   "What it meant to me: a happy life, of course, companionship, of course. A common objective,  I think." Denis Thatcher   Behavioral styles speak to our most common ways of being. They predict how we act, interact, and communicate. For me, my introverted nature can be a challenge to overcome, particularly when it comes to forging and maintaining relationships. I am someone who loves to be invited to things but takes even more pleasure in...

Truth - How we are effects who we are. Everything that we do, and the things that happen to us have an impact on the ways that we proceed. We as people are collections of experiences, memories, and emotions. This amalgamation of all that we determines how we show and where we show up. There is a reason for our actions, our words, and our understandings of the world, and everything it. Truly reflecting on and processing through those root causes is a lifelong quest to understand the enigmatic simplicity. What are you looking for? "We don't know all the answers. If we knew all the answers we'd be bored, wouldn't we? We keep looking, searching, trying to get more knowledge." Jack LaLanne   "What are you looking for?"  It's the question that always comes up during any type of dating situation. Honestly, what kind of question is that? It depends on the person. All I know is that when I know, I'll know . Why do I have to know what I want in a...

Truth - Each period of life is marked by pivotal events, but possibly even more so the presence and the absence of those around us. People play such critical roles in our lives. The ways that people move in an out orbit to us truly is a synchronized performance of the most marvelous proportions. As some move closer in proximity, others retreat. There we are in the center of it all, pushing, and pulling on the heavenly bodies of those around us. What happens some come too close - are they burned in the process? What about those that or depart from our gravitational field, are they forever lost to the cosmos? How do we account for drift? "We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end." Blaise Pascal The world is a funny place. I find myself more and more moving through it and being in awe. The world is truly an elaborate labyrinth that one barely ever makes much headway in. I think of all the ways I make my world small, more m...

Truth - Our skin tells a story. It can reveal the years worth of lived in the form of hieroglyphs disguised in the musings of finely etched wrinkles. It can tell of our hardships in the rough wear of calloused palms, gently bleeding knuckles, and dirt enhanced nails. It can convey our narrative of  barrages of blood drawings, stitched scars, and gnarly bruises. It also shares our culture, heritage, and some of the communities we belong to in addition to that common history. What does your skin say? "The very definition of 'blackness' is as broad as that of 'whiteness,' yet we're seemingly always trying to find a specific, limited definition." Issa Rae I don't know. I just felt compelled to write this ode of sorts to my skin, to all people othered because of their external physicality, and as a challenge to those who still believe skin is a valid unit of measurement for the value of a human life. My skin is me and yet I am not my skin. Who wou...

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...

Truth - Looking back is critical to helping us look forward. 2016. What a year. Let's let that statement marinate just a little bit. Who would have thought a year that brought us a flurry of amazing musical achievements in album form would pretty much be garbage in every other way possible. I kid, I kid. Perspective really is everything, and hyperbolizing about an abstract concept doesn't do anything to change it. It's when we stop, take a look around, and learn from our surroundings, with a little bit of review, that we know what to do next or at the very least what not to do.   "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." Barack Obama Can we please have a small discussion about the ways in which this year, namely 2016 aka the year the of our Lord's departure from this Earthly purgatory, has taken on its own persona and been anthropomorphized ...

Truth - Each and ever person experiences life differently. No two people's lives are the same. What we want out of life also varies and yet - it doesn't. We all define happiness in different ways but the commonality what we strive for can be broken down. Life is about passions, talents, gifts, love, laughter, hope, and growth. We want to live a life that has meaning. We want to change the world and to be remembered for it. We want to matter to others. Life is an existential crisis of epic proportions. Somehow we figure it out, and then again ... we really don't. We're whole and fractured. We're surviving and dying. We progress and we're lost. We are broken but not shattered. "Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it." Kevyn Aucoin  ...