Where will I be in 10 years?

My last year of school has just begun. We’re calling it the beginning of the end and I expected to be freaking out. Strangely enough I’m not. It’s almost like I’m ready for whatever comes next. I’m standing in the face of countless possibilities. So whats a better time to try and chalk out what my life might look like.

I don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll do. But I do hope that I’ll be happy doing whatever it is. Whether I end up an author, opinionated journalist or whatever else it may be there are somethings that I certainly see.

I see myself sitting in a friends-esque cafe chatting and laughing. I see myself discovering the world, satiating my wanderlust. I can imagine the candid conversations I will have with people I have never met and will probably never meet again. I see myself falling in love and out of love and hopefully in love again.

I know that these predictions are just the fantasies of the dreamer within me. Too idealistic to be true. And even with some stroke of luck this is what my life ends up looking like it will come with a dose of hardship.  I just hope that ten years later I’m as happy as I am now.
This post may be a far cry from what my life looks like in 10 years. At the very least it may be something worth looking back at as a point of comparison. As of now the only thing that I do see in my future is studies. So until next time. Whenever that is.

 

ANGER

Some say the world will end in fire. But so much of the world was created by it. Anger what a wonderful and terrifying emotion. It can destroy. It can create.

So many people think that the world would be a much better place if everyone would just stop being angry. Angry with their lives. Their parents. Their jobs. Themselves. It just leads to frustration, at least that’s what they say. Just let go. Be calm.

However they don’t realize that the moment you stop being angry, you stop caring. So what if that child is being bullied? So what if you don’t get what you deserve? So what if that woman is being raped? Not being angry means you accept the way the things are and that you agree with the status quo.

It not less intense emotions that bring about change. It’s not displeasure that will compel you to protest. It’s not annoyance that will make you fight for change. The French revolution was not a result of people being unhappy. The feminist movement was not fueled by irritation.

It is pure unadulterated anger that forces people to fight and to ensure that something changes. Without anger there would be no change. There would be no democracy, there would be no women’s rights.

Yes life would be easier without anger. Will there be world peace though or will there just be people accepting subjugation and exploitation.

“We didn’t start the fire . We didn’t light it. But we tried to fight it.”              – Billy Joel

Why I Write

I write because the characters in my head need to have their story told. Their lives are far to exciting to be ignored. So I have to muster up the courage and tell you about them in the best way that I possibly can even though sometimes the stories in my head may come out all wrong.

I write because it makes me think. If I’m looking for something to write about  I end up paying much more attention to whats happening around me. It is from everyday situations and conversations that I get ideas for my next post, story or article.

Mainly I write because I have a lot to say. Writing lets me sort out everything that is going on in my head and finally get what is important out. Nobody has the time to listen to everything that I have to say but hopefully people will bother to read what I do end up writing.

I write so that I can connect to people whom otherwise I would never meet. I write in the hope that someone living a life that is entirely different from mine can find something to relate to. People say that they read to know they are not alone, I write to know that I am not alone.

I write so that I continue to believe that I am creative. I write because eventually I want to write somebodys favorite book.

Pinterest Quotes that just don’t make sense

Pinterest is a place filled with DIY projects I will never be able to do, rooms too pretty to have been lived in and way too many quotes. Sure I love quotes myself. Few words that say so much, whats not to love. But some quotes on pinterest just don’t make sense and here are a few.

“Never give up, ever.”

Sure if you want something you should try very very hard to achieve it. But sometimes it is best to know when to take a step back and say that ok I’ve it all that I had and it’s just not working. Infact somebody once told me that after giving it your all if the project doesn’t work its not your fault. Too many variables are out of your control.  They do say that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

“Trust no one.”

People will betray you and people will break your heart. However heeding the advice of this particular quote won’t protect you it will just ensure a very lonely life. Trust is something that has to be earned but how can anyone even hope to earn it if they’re not even given a chance. So in response to this quote I’ll just say, let some people in and make some friends. You won’t regret it.

“Better days are coming they are called saturday and sunday.”

Okay so I have believed in this for a significant part of my school life. But recently I have started enjoying school more. I think that this is because I finally like all the subjects I’m studying. So instead of waiting for the weekend we should enjoy our weekdays more. Instead of hating monday we should try and do something fun. I think that if you love what you do it ceases to seem like work.

So despite this little rant, I really do love quotes. Yes, even the pinterest ones and I will keep repinning them. These words fueled by teenage fantasy do catch my fancy more often than not. Even though some people think that they are meaningless I think that they are a cute and quirky way of expressing yourself.

Judgements and Labels

Something that I do and I think most people do is judge people. We usually make these judgements because of a singular incident and with a solitary glance. Without thinking twice people seem to have already formed opinions about other people. This tendency of mine is something that I have only just become conscious about. Many time I catch myself judging someone and I say to myself (in my head) that I don’t know a thing about this person so I should stop thinking that I do.

The problem with judging someone is that we don’t give them a chance to show us who they really are instead we make mostly baseless assumptions about them. And thats not even the worst part, as soon as we judge people we start to classify them. We put them into boxes and label them. A singular trait defines their entire personality. It’s almost like deciding who a person is based on what they like to eat, who their crush is or something just as absurd a that.

This entire concept is so constrictive. It reduces a person to a handful of traits. It prevents us from looking at the big picture you know the entire person. It sometimes also forces people to act in particular way so that they can be put into a particular box just so that they can fit in. I don’t know if this is specific to kids in school because I’ve certainly seen it there. This is harmful for anyone who is even slightly different. Anyone who does not fit into these neat little boxes, and frankly who does?

Big Talk

It continues to astound me how we spend so much time talking about stuff that doesn’t really matter. Like do we really care about Ariana Grande drinking coffee or what Kim Kardashian names her kid. And we spend so little time talking about what actually matters. It seems  like there are not a lot of people who prefer small talk to big talk, and that is something I’ll probably never understand.

To anybody who is still wondering, yes I would rather talk about aliens, gods and why we are actually here. Okay eventually curiosity does get the better of me and do end up gossiping and you can never really escape small talk. It’s not all that bad but surely talking about stuff that actually matters must take precedence. I understand that you can’t completely do away with all forms of small talk but I really do wish that we would spend more time talking about things that matter.

I’m not saying that all conversations need to discuss theories and the supernatural in fact I think that the best conversations oscillate from being absolutely ridiculous to being rather intelligent. I feel that because of small talk we leave a lot of things that actually matter unsaid.

On being an INFP

When I first heard about the scarily accurate Myers Brigg personality test, I just had to try it out. It did not disappoint. As you can tell from the title I am an INFP. We make up a tiny 4.5% of the population and no other personality test has described me so accurately. Forget about zodiac signs this is how we should begin to identify ourselves.

The INFP characteristics that I feel accurately describe me are idealistic, open minded,  passionate and that I like to think that I’m creative. I hate conflict. Not only did they get the qualities spot on the also got our weaknesses. I hate dealing with data, I strongly dislike criticism (even though I’m trying to learn to appreciate it) and I do tend to take things personally. I have also read somewhere that we all have a want to do something extraordinary in this life. Like Virginia Woolf says “I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond daily life.”

 The part that spoke me the most was that all INFP’s wanted to be authors when they were children. Becoming an author has been a lifelong dream of mine. I have also read that we are better at expressing our thoughts in writing than verbally. That is so true, I feel like when I’m speaking I have to worry about so much other than what I want to say and when I’m writing it’s its just the words that matter.

Also if I don’t want to do something it’s difficult for me to put any effort into it. Like my school assignments aren’t neat because the only reason I do a lot of them is because I have to and not want to. Apparently we rant a lot, if I care about something I feel the need to talk about it. One site even managed to figure out my make up preferences, it light to the extent that it may as well be non existent.

I guess that at the end of the day it’s important to remember that we are not a personality type. Our personality type is just a fraction of who we are. People of the same personality type will probably be drastically different. It’s just a way to find out a little bit more about ourselves and validate some things that we feel.I’ll end with a quote that describes us, “All that is GOLD does not glitter; not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not reached by the frost.” J. R. R. Tolkien. I especially relate with the not all those who wander are lost.

They’re not just books

I planned to write this post a while ago, just after I went to the book fair but I didn’t get around to writing it just then. So here is a post that’s long overdue.

I have never been surrounded by more book than I was at the book fair. And that’s saying something about someone who frequents bookstores and whose favorite place in school is the library. There were book of every kind, genre and topic. Fiction, art, design, fashion, food in fact name a topic and you’d probably find a book about it. There were the books that everybody had heard about and there were books that practically no one had heard about. It was fascinating to just flip through some of those books.

This fair got me thinking of the impact that these books have on us. A single book can influence the thinking of a thousand minds. It can completely change your perspective on an issue that you thought you knew about. Sometimes it can impact an entire generation. Simply put it give one person the power to impact the world in a small but significant way. There have been studies conducted on the influence that Harry Potter has on children. Therefore, it has been scientifically proven that reading Harry Potter makes children more accepting of the diversity that is prevalent around them.

Personally some books help me get over bad days, others have had such a strong influence in my life that they have changed the way I think and others have helped me become who I am. I guess that is all that I want if I do end up becoming a writer. I don’t want to influence generations, I just want to influence people . I just want bring a smile on some faces and ensure that they know that they are not alone. Anyways, whats a better way to escape this world than to enter another one?

Why can’t people change with the times?

I have just given in an english project that the teacher insisted had to be hand written. Why? I have no clue. It’s easier for us to type it out and it’s easier for them to read it. This way they can concentrate on the content and deciphering my hand writing. This entire hang up that some people have on technology is something that I just can’t understand.

Technology is increasing at such a rapid rate that is tough to keep up with. Scientists are inventing something new everyday like we just found out how to unboil an egg. I don’t know when we’ll need that because you can’t accidently boil an egg but anyways now we know how to do it. But most of it is really useful, they make our lives a hell of a lot easier so why wouldn’t you embrace it.

Yes its true that we are dependent on technology but is that such a bad thing. As long as the content of our project is good does it matter if its typed or written. As long as we’re reading does it matter if its a physical book or an e-book. They’re just different ways to do the same thing. The only constant is change and frankly it happening faster than ever.

Rewind.Pause.Play.Stop.Fast Forward

I don’t think that life would be perfect with these, at least not for me. I know that I would press pause and rewind a little too much and never just press play. I would become so consumed with trying to perfect my life that it would suffocate me and I wouldn’t be able to really live.

Without all this I already have a tendency to fret about what will happen tomorrow or at some other point in the future, if I could pause I will probably never be able to make myself do things that make me nervous and I’ll never get over my fears.

Rewind will probably be worse than pause. I will end up living in the past and not the present, either trying to relive the good moments or trying to improve the bad ones. Instead of reliving old memories, we should be out there making new ones.

At first I thought that stop was suicidal but I read somewhere that it supposedly means stop the pain and I think that in it’s own way that is also bad. The good and the bad together is what makes us us, and if we erase half of it we just wouldn’t be the same.

If I could fast forward, I would just end trying to speed up the process of getting to the next big moment, the next amazing thing and in that I will probably miss out on the small things that make life amazing.

So, I guess that all that’s left is play and really what else do we need in life. We need to live in the moment, take things both good and bad as they come to us and remember that you will never live this moment again.