Just... life
Writing in this thing is my form of zen.
Ever have that feeling, all through the day, all these thoughts running through your head, stupid silly random things that you couldn't possibly articulate? Well, I sort of compile all of those things in the best way I know how when I write, so I guess here goes.
I'm listening to Bad by U2, which is slowly becoming one of my favorite bands. Their earlier stuff is a lot better than their later stuff, though in my lifetime Vertigo, How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb has received way more media coverage. That's not to say I don't like it.
My favorite thing about them is their political message. I subcribe to the school of thought that everything in our lives in somehow linked to the body that is governing us, who has the ultimate power? Politics. If we want to create great change, remake the world to fit our vision it is necessary to (eventually) shape public policy. I guess that's why I want to do what I want to do: I want to be the person making that public policy. I found Bad from a speaker's presentation today, during her video on poverty it played. It's fitting, the lyrics and everything.
It makes me feel so helpless when I see all that going on. I want to help so badly, I just don't know how or when. They make it sound so easy, yeah, I have money to donate, but the thing is, money only goes so far. If I could, I'd take my senior year off and go spend it in a country where I could help people, one on one, tutoring children perhaps. It's such a huge feeling that supersedes everything in my life, what else do we have? In a hundred years, it's not going to matter if your ipod was scratchless, you had the latest and greatest clothing, it won't matter who you dated, nor what college you got into, or which you didn't. We have nothing to strive for but making the world a better place. I think I lose sight of this in my whirlwind life, I never get to stop and really think about what life is about. People tell me to be altruistic, but if we aren't altruistic, we have nothing, absolutely nothing. If we don't help people, we'll never succeed as a species. We leave these people to die, to fend for themselves, the UN has been hesitant to declare the genocide in Sudan an international emergency for it would compel nations with "better things to do" to give money to these people who are not living on a pool of oil, who have no gold to offer in exchange for food, clothing, whatever they need. What can possibly be more important?
My whirlwind, I like to think of myself as a little ball of energy. I bounce around and smile and sing and dance and whatever, but where can I bounce to in order to make the most of me. My whirlwind unfortunately, is being directed to college at the moment. I was reading through some application stuff and one of the questions is, "What do you do in your spare time? List hours per week, weeks per year, awards and achievements, etc..."
Damn, I thought. In my spare time, I read, I take pictures, I do things where I don't have to achieve the highest level of being, I can just be a normal teenager and forget about APs and SATs and SAT II. We've manipulated the system, through a pattern of supply and demand, into an entity in which we have to monitor and sculpt even our SPARE TIME (which in definition and title should be SPARE and NOT USED) to make ourselves as appealing as possible. Everything we do, we must excel at. I believe in achievement, above many things, but not in everything. I'll die if I have to be the BEST at reading fluff romance novels, the BEST at taking pictures of things I think have interesting patterns, textures, the BEST at curling up on my couch with my cat and a book that I don't have to write an essay on. Why are we doing this? We force it upon ourselves, really, we force ourselves to get a 4.5 gpa and a perfect SAT score, and because we can offer these things to Harvard and Stanford and Yale and Princeton, and because we, as teenagers, can offer this in such high volumes, the colleges can say jump and we jump like a fucking trained dog. Because Harvard has tens of thousands of students apply each year, most of them absolutely wonderful people, intense and deep and driven, they can choose the best of the best, the creme de la creme, and force the ones below that to settle for something else.
I want to try everything! I want to do everything once, I want to experience everything the world has to offer, I'm lucky in a sense, I feel like it's served up on a silver platter, I just need to know how to take it, but because the colleges I want to go to are looking for students who are "angular," excelling in one area, winning awards and leading in that one area, I can't. I can't experiment. I can't thumb my nose at the system in good faith, because I want to be part of the system, and really that creates a sense of... hypocrisy.
So what are we to do? Flounder? Sink or Float, I guess this is my life, the one I get, and so I'll do what I can. I'll do what I can.
We all will.
That saying... The world is our oyster, I guess it's true. But at the same time, we should be the world's oyster, we should let ourselves be picked at and pried apart and be utilized for whatever we have to offer.
Even when I wasn't a vegetarian though, I never liked oysters. Too much sand. Damn filter-feeders.
Ever have that feeling, all through the day, all these thoughts running through your head, stupid silly random things that you couldn't possibly articulate? Well, I sort of compile all of those things in the best way I know how when I write, so I guess here goes.
I'm listening to Bad by U2, which is slowly becoming one of my favorite bands. Their earlier stuff is a lot better than their later stuff, though in my lifetime Vertigo, How to Dismantle an Atom Bomb has received way more media coverage. That's not to say I don't like it.
My favorite thing about them is their political message. I subcribe to the school of thought that everything in our lives in somehow linked to the body that is governing us, who has the ultimate power? Politics. If we want to create great change, remake the world to fit our vision it is necessary to (eventually) shape public policy. I guess that's why I want to do what I want to do: I want to be the person making that public policy. I found Bad from a speaker's presentation today, during her video on poverty it played. It's fitting, the lyrics and everything.
It makes me feel so helpless when I see all that going on. I want to help so badly, I just don't know how or when. They make it sound so easy, yeah, I have money to donate, but the thing is, money only goes so far. If I could, I'd take my senior year off and go spend it in a country where I could help people, one on one, tutoring children perhaps. It's such a huge feeling that supersedes everything in my life, what else do we have? In a hundred years, it's not going to matter if your ipod was scratchless, you had the latest and greatest clothing, it won't matter who you dated, nor what college you got into, or which you didn't. We have nothing to strive for but making the world a better place. I think I lose sight of this in my whirlwind life, I never get to stop and really think about what life is about. People tell me to be altruistic, but if we aren't altruistic, we have nothing, absolutely nothing. If we don't help people, we'll never succeed as a species. We leave these people to die, to fend for themselves, the UN has been hesitant to declare the genocide in Sudan an international emergency for it would compel nations with "better things to do" to give money to these people who are not living on a pool of oil, who have no gold to offer in exchange for food, clothing, whatever they need. What can possibly be more important?
My whirlwind, I like to think of myself as a little ball of energy. I bounce around and smile and sing and dance and whatever, but where can I bounce to in order to make the most of me. My whirlwind unfortunately, is being directed to college at the moment. I was reading through some application stuff and one of the questions is, "What do you do in your spare time? List hours per week, weeks per year, awards and achievements, etc..."
Damn, I thought. In my spare time, I read, I take pictures, I do things where I don't have to achieve the highest level of being, I can just be a normal teenager and forget about APs and SATs and SAT II. We've manipulated the system, through a pattern of supply and demand, into an entity in which we have to monitor and sculpt even our SPARE TIME (which in definition and title should be SPARE and NOT USED) to make ourselves as appealing as possible. Everything we do, we must excel at. I believe in achievement, above many things, but not in everything. I'll die if I have to be the BEST at reading fluff romance novels, the BEST at taking pictures of things I think have interesting patterns, textures, the BEST at curling up on my couch with my cat and a book that I don't have to write an essay on. Why are we doing this? We force it upon ourselves, really, we force ourselves to get a 4.5 gpa and a perfect SAT score, and because we can offer these things to Harvard and Stanford and Yale and Princeton, and because we, as teenagers, can offer this in such high volumes, the colleges can say jump and we jump like a fucking trained dog. Because Harvard has tens of thousands of students apply each year, most of them absolutely wonderful people, intense and deep and driven, they can choose the best of the best, the creme de la creme, and force the ones below that to settle for something else.
I want to try everything! I want to do everything once, I want to experience everything the world has to offer, I'm lucky in a sense, I feel like it's served up on a silver platter, I just need to know how to take it, but because the colleges I want to go to are looking for students who are "angular," excelling in one area, winning awards and leading in that one area, I can't. I can't experiment. I can't thumb my nose at the system in good faith, because I want to be part of the system, and really that creates a sense of... hypocrisy.
So what are we to do? Flounder? Sink or Float, I guess this is my life, the one I get, and so I'll do what I can. I'll do what I can.
We all will.
That saying... The world is our oyster, I guess it's true. But at the same time, we should be the world's oyster, we should let ourselves be picked at and pried apart and be utilized for whatever we have to offer.
Even when I wasn't a vegetarian though, I never liked oysters. Too much sand. Damn filter-feeders.