Last night I had a dream about the sea. It was after a flood and the waves were aggressive and constant. While I was walking through and playing in the water, I ran across a random person. I began talking to him, and I told him how much I loved the water. And then I woke up...
First of all, maybe it wasn't a sea. It was under a bridge and it was shallow enough I could be in it. Second, this dream really baffled me, because right as I was about to describe the water was when I woke up. Meaning that I was at a self epiphany and it was disrupted, forcing me to consider the epiphany.
It's true - why do I love the sea and the water? Why do I love the beating waves? Something about the beating waves shows them in their true state. They are vulnerable, restless, and constantly changing. They are never complacent. They move on and change as they please, without regard to anything else. They are aggressive and come and go and do as they please. Yet they leave an impact on you that you'll never forget. When you leave the waves and go to lay down at night, you still feel the ebb and flow of the waves hit you as you drift to sleep.
Maybe that's why I like the waves - they are as restless as I am. They change as much as I do. I'll be honest, I really don't do well with permanence. I need to be constantly changing. I need the constant stimulation of the unknown. I dislike when the world is predictable. Paradoxically, I hate surprises, but I also hate permanence.
So maybe I missed the epiphany in the dream, but I see it now. I love the waves because they are restless and relentless. They inspire me to constantly move and change to get where I want to be. I could sit and watch the waves forever, because they are never the same as they move from one point to the next. They leave you impacted and breathless, and then move on to do the same to the next person.
The waves are everything I want to be.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
On Social Injustice....
Lately, I've been pondering a lot on first world problems and social injustice. Any teenager or young adult makes jokes about first world problems, like when your iPhone won't load Facebook or you don't have enough followers on twitter. On the other hand, the rest of the world focuses on the extreme physical poverty in third world countries. Don't get me wrong, I think it's absolutely devastating the conditions that people live in, especially when you consider the $50 a week Americans spend on Starbucks that could spent literally helping those families live in a palace. However, I think there's a definite first world social injustice that we all tend to ignore.
We live in a society of mass consumption and chaos. We move at the speed of light in a guided tunnel to serve ourselves and our own desires. After those needs are met, we occasionally join various social circles in order to meet a psychological need for interaction with others, but we leave the interactions at a surface value. In the end, we are at a distance from ourselves and those around us. We do not ever truly emotionally engage on a deeper level because of a fear that we will not be met half way.
On the surface level, we just say we are neutral. We say we don't care. For many people we can follow up our neutrality with stories of devastation about why we don't care, and why we don't have any emotions about a situation. We rationalize that not having emotions is simpler, because if you don't care, you can't get hurt. I've come to realize this is the great social injustice - that we all walk around pretending that we don't care, when we all share the same desire for someone to meet us in our vulnerability and to just care.
I wonder what the world would be like if we had no fear and we all cared. If we lost our state of neutrality and stated that we cared, and stated what our honest emotions were about our struggles. What would happen if we let someone in to our darkest state? What if we let go of the experiences that jaded us and trusted that there are those that are different and that care? What if we realized our past devastations are simply a faded memory that are used to make us better?
I will be the first person to admit that I've been in that state of neutrality followed by a myriad of experiences. Lately, I've just spent a lot of time thinking about it. Whenever you ask someone, what's your story, it all follows the same model. I grew up and there were struggles, but it was okay, then there's that one event that changes your entire existence, and since then you become numb to the world around you. We are all the same in that we have all had that one struggle that has defined who we are.
If we could share our stories, we would all be different. If we could all meet each other in the middle, we would find we are all similar, the world would be a better place. The social injustice of the first world where no one cares about anyone is just as anguishing mentally and emotionally as the physical poverty in the third world. I would never try to diminish the poverty of the third world. But every day people say that they want to help in some way, but there's a list of excuses, like not having money or not having time or resources to go to a third world country and build a house or to donate to a non profit organization. You could change the world right now by simply smiling at a stranger and asking, "What's your story?"
We live in a society of mass consumption and chaos. We move at the speed of light in a guided tunnel to serve ourselves and our own desires. After those needs are met, we occasionally join various social circles in order to meet a psychological need for interaction with others, but we leave the interactions at a surface value. In the end, we are at a distance from ourselves and those around us. We do not ever truly emotionally engage on a deeper level because of a fear that we will not be met half way.
On the surface level, we just say we are neutral. We say we don't care. For many people we can follow up our neutrality with stories of devastation about why we don't care, and why we don't have any emotions about a situation. We rationalize that not having emotions is simpler, because if you don't care, you can't get hurt. I've come to realize this is the great social injustice - that we all walk around pretending that we don't care, when we all share the same desire for someone to meet us in our vulnerability and to just care.
I wonder what the world would be like if we had no fear and we all cared. If we lost our state of neutrality and stated that we cared, and stated what our honest emotions were about our struggles. What would happen if we let someone in to our darkest state? What if we let go of the experiences that jaded us and trusted that there are those that are different and that care? What if we realized our past devastations are simply a faded memory that are used to make us better?
I will be the first person to admit that I've been in that state of neutrality followed by a myriad of experiences. Lately, I've just spent a lot of time thinking about it. Whenever you ask someone, what's your story, it all follows the same model. I grew up and there were struggles, but it was okay, then there's that one event that changes your entire existence, and since then you become numb to the world around you. We are all the same in that we have all had that one struggle that has defined who we are.
If we could share our stories, we would all be different. If we could all meet each other in the middle, we would find we are all similar, the world would be a better place. The social injustice of the first world where no one cares about anyone is just as anguishing mentally and emotionally as the physical poverty in the third world. I would never try to diminish the poverty of the third world. But every day people say that they want to help in some way, but there's a list of excuses, like not having money or not having time or resources to go to a third world country and build a house or to donate to a non profit organization. You could change the world right now by simply smiling at a stranger and asking, "What's your story?"
“See relationships they often remind me that I’m not afraid of heights or falling but I’m scared of what’s gonna happen the moment that my body hits the ground. I’m clumsy, yesterday I tripped over my self-esteem, I landed on my pride and it shattered like an iPhone with a broken face, now I can’t even tell who’s trying to give me a compliment.
I’ve never been in the military but I have this purple heart. I got it from beating myself up over things I can’t fix. I know this sounds weird but sometimes I wonder what my bed sheets say about me when I’m not around. I wonder what the curtains would do if they found out about all the things I’ve done behind their backs. I’ve got a hamper that’s overflowing with really really loud mistakes and a graveyard in my closet and I’m afraid that if I let you see my skeletons, you’ll grind my bones into powder and get high off my fault lines..” - Rudy Francisco
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