Tuesday, November 12, 2013

I Celebrate Myself

Individuality. The idea that you, yourself, are a single functioning unit in the vast collection of human beings. Like a single blade of grass, you exist on your own unattached to the "larger picture" known as the human existence. You are a being who conjugates thoughts and experiences and extrapolates emotions from those experiences. Ironically this idea is lost in the sea of thoughts which you form individually, or not.
We often lose our sense of individuality with the influence of society. The line between what we think and what is forced upon us by peer pressures and subliminal advertising is often blurred. Opinion oppression and expressive massacre consistently occur on a regular basis where that man who wanted to spend his days living in Alaska or looking at grass was deemed useless and wasteful of his life and others time. Time becomes a currency. Time is of the essence. Time, time, time. Nobody has time to fathom that their time should be spent wisely making the most out of their time alive. The most becomes material. Who ever dies with the most toys wins. We acquire this mindset that true fulfillment is in objects and happiness comes from a TV or computer. We use these things to distract ourselves from the constraining life layout that is forced upon us from our very beginning. to go to school in a white room with a square desk and memorize facts that we can regurgitate on standardized tests in order to accept whichever job pays the most so that we can buy more cars clothes and TVs and pay taxes and die. Although that life may hold precious memories in its own and could possibly form an adequate life for many, it is not how we should think. Life is not a formula where person + education = job = money = things = happiness. Our lives are wasted trying to work for money to achieve material happiness for our selves and our families, but once it is achieved, it doesn’t last. We forget that we once enjoyed ourselves without all this stuff. We forget that there were things we liked to do outside of the life layout that was set for us by society. We begin to forget that we can form thoughts and opinion of our own.
Walking down the street in a rush, because you are always in a rush, with your mind preoccupied with things that you need to do, daring not to make eye contact with the people walking next to you. But once you look up and make the quickest glance with the slightest smile which takes less than an ounce of your energy or thought but potentially reminded that person that not all people are selfishly fixated on their own lives. That person could potentially smile at another stranger having the same effect. This may or may not continue but for those who see, they begin to think, why are we not nicer to each other? And that is a thought many of us think. Why are we not nicer to each other? is it because the world is a cruel place and you cant survive if you’re nice, or maybe because society has conspired against us, or because man is not supposed to be kind he is supposed to be great, or because the idea of continuing this chain of living a lifestyle with tiring monotonous work with little reward to appealing? Those some of these claims may be true, we have the individual ability to break the chain and rewrite the world. We see that a field of grass is actually made up of millions on individual blades. But unfortunately, this idea can be and is reversed so that one bad apple spoils the bunch. We are so quick to emulate those who are bad because if they are getting a leg up we want it too, even if it is in a negative way. And so it is easier to continue a trend.
And so we decide. Do we want to revolutionize or do we want to survive?

1 comment:

  1. I really enjoyed your writing! You evoked a lot of thought in whoever read this (myself included).

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