Tag Archives: life
Vulnerability.
Written by Kamilah Carter
At the core of my identity is a strong belief in humanity.
Despite the disaster and deceit seen on the tv,
The damage, the pain, and all that is broken,
I can’t help but perceive a beautiful complexity
In the fragile threads of our tangled lives.
But sometimes I have a hard time believing in human beings.
Individuals have broken my trust what feels like a thousand times,
And now I am among the walled in,
The hiding, the hidden, the wounded,
Those who are still relearning how to ask for what they need.
We are all reduced to this tragic state of infancy.
From which growth is hard earned, earnest effort:
Bravery.
I know that I am full of contradictions,
But please don’t mistake them for hypocrisy,
For my most valued lesson is this.
There are no rules, no paths, no adequate metaphors for life.
We make what we make of it, and that rarely makes sense
And though this may confuse the human mind,
It causes the human heart to flourish,
For logic is as likely to be meaningless,
As a serendipitous connection will be deep, despite the overwhelming statistics
That insist it won’t be.
And although I plan my life according to the rules I’ve declared mirages,
I do not live according to plans alone
I live with intensity,
Intense fear, hope, love,
And from this stems my vulnerability.
For it is easy to do things the easy way,
But what is the point of apathy anyways,
There is nothing there to gain.
So breathe deeply and contemplate,
Forget time and live at a pace that is both exhilarating and terrifying
And then slow down to take in the scenery,
For the landscape we’ve created is both treacherous and grand
And whether you think that that is beauty or tragedy, it is striking.
Live not for happiness alone, but for meaning, for discovery
For the camaraderie of sharing 99.9 percent of dna with strangers.
Walk not an easy way, but where you want others to follow,
And walk softly.
But don’t be afraid to break things either, for that’s the key to progress.
This is my philosophy.
Look what I found in my Drafts folder!
I think there comes a realization in most peoples lives that it isn’t really all that hard to find someone. However even someone fantastically ideal who tells you all the thing you want to hear, isn’t necessarily the one. Often isn’t, even. In fact, that person can be a fantastic friend who has many admirable qualities and yet all of this won’t cause a relationship to form. As Erica Strange put it “friendship is a strange mix of alchemy and circumstance” but I think relationships are even more so. We seem to often fall for people who differ greatly from our idealistic imaginings. People who won’t tell us what we want to hear, who make things more complicated, hard even. Yet, if you feel it, none of that matters. As my friend said yesterday, even the flaws of someone dear to you are spoken of fondly, and seem to dissolve, disintegrate if they are clutched. It is hard for some of us to criticize those we care about. Yet this is my view, and if I’ve learned one important thing from my encounters with love it is this. Humans are both extremely different and extremely similar. While we all tend to yearn for the same things, we express ourselves in a million ways, we communicate in a million ways, our reasons, associations and goals differ greatly. This is the beauty of humanity, the constant battle and balance of diversity and sameness. The oxymoron that is ever being on our planet who both individually and part of a whole make something extremely simple and infinately complex. Ah, love and life.
John Green, you are oh-so-quotable.
What a lovely human being.
She spoke words that would melt in your hands!
There is this gap inbetween who I always thought I would be and who I am now. That gap is terrifying at times… but unjustly so. You can’t expect the way you always imagine life to go to be even a vague shadow of what actually happens. They are two nearly entirely different entities, and that’s not bad thing. So, it’s not fair to beat yourself up for dissonance between these two categories. I, for one, am not where I thought I would be – but that’s actually okay. Things have happened within me that I could not have predicted and, while some of them are not ideal, some of them are fantastic. The thing is, you can guess and you can estimate what your future is going to look like, but you shouldn’t be disappointed when things turn out differently. Events you could never adumbrate will take place, you will meet people you never thought you would know and slowly, ever so slowly, you will become the person you were always supposed to be, whether you had anticipated it or not.
This is wise. There are many beautiful surprises formed out of broken plans as soon as one learns to let go of the ache of fallen expectations.
This is a heartbreakingly beautiful photo set. The ache. The emotion.
I think I need to screencap this. Especially “SAY ‘NO’ MORE OFTEN.”
It’s always good to have one or two of these lists around
Quick Update
So, it’s exam week.
Well – that sucks. On the upside going home in less than a week and I even have a ride to the airport.
I think I pulled off over 80% on my math final. hoping, hoping, hoping that I did because it was a fair bit harder than I expected and the application questions were tricky, especially seeing that there weren’t really any of thosa on our assignments. Enough whining, time to focus on the last two Linear Algebra and Chemistry.
Yesterday after my exam Adam and Sean came over and we played Set. Keith showed up as well, of course. So the four of us played. The thing about set is that it takes a fair bit of practice to get good, but then you’re, well, set. So me and Sean who both used to play all the time CRUSHED the newbies. I won, bwahaha. Then we all chilled in Sora and Katie’s room for a while with Jeff, Dylan, Kevin and Kyle. At least until power hour was over and our don broke up the party.
My room is a mess of papers and I need to do laundry, make a Christmas card, pack, send said Christmas card, and ace, or at least do well on my two remaining exams in the next three days.
Oh, and I got a postcard from James Flynn today! Wheeee!
AND, Sean somehow stumbled on the perfect Christmas present for me, so despite math the last few days have been pretty happy. (Also heard Jason play the piano again – oh sweet summer shad memories).
Mmm, and donuts.
Okay, studytime, wish me luck tumblverse.
thoughts and feelings mixed together in to a mission
When I say I want to live a hard life I’m being 100% truthful. I mean, I don’t really want to live a hard life in an everyday sense that I’d rather things fall in to place and be happy all the time and all. That’s all jolly good. But on a deeper, and more important level, I want to struggle. I want to feel things in extremes, do thing in extremes, shift the balance of my perspective so that I can see the beauty in every moment, so I appreciate all that there is that is good, so I recognize a need to fight against all that isn’t. I want a life that gives me a perspective so loud that I am compelled to act and think and learn, and create impact. Spend time on things with meaning. When I say I want to live a hard life I mean I want to live a meaningful, interesting, complex life, and that I believe that is impossible without challenges, barriers, difficulties to struggle against. All these things make you grow, reassess, learn, get better, and that’s what I want. So although I would love to watch tv and take easy classes and all of that, I don’t think those desires are as important or as strong as the ones that guide me to do more. To always always always be in motion. and then stop abruptly. To mix things up and do things that are scary and be foolish, which can really be a type of bravery. No I do not want to suffer, but I’m willing to for a good cause. I will cherish complications despite hurt and confusion they may cause. I will accomplish all of this, not by looking for trouble, but by always trying to do more, be more, by trying new things, exploring ideologies, trusting people too much, loving, loving, loving, and sometimes just being. This whirring in my head and heart is summarized nicely by a dear, dear man.
“Live life.” -Rod Osiowy
So now I’ve set myself this challenge. I hope it’ll keep me on track in a good way.
