Persona.
Art : Beauty.
By Sakuan.
Sunday.
A word from James.
Feelings are natural, they are there to be had, I have had them before, and I am pretty sure you have heard of them too at some point in your life and if you are human enough you have surely experienced some of them, they come in a variety of ways. Just because they are there and are unavoidable does it make it right to base our entire existence on them? Do we let them shape where our lives go? Should we let feelings shape where our society goes? Should we make laws based on feelings? Are feelings even practical in reality? Are feelings supposed to shape our whole existence as human beings? What are feelings? Are feelings real?
I might be wrong, I probably am but I don’t really care about that because life is life, and whatever it is, it is, that is all I can say about that… for now. The ability to wake up and laugh then cry a minute later is phenomenal, mainly because in a span of a few seconds you have gone through a wide range of feelings. Why do I need to conform to what you want me to be, and why is whatever you want me to be the right thing and whatever I want to be the wrong thing? Explain to me how you are right and I am wrong, we are both human beings and yet here you are thinking you are above me. We all defecate, so no one is pure, from the ugliest man to the most beautiful woman, we all excrete, and that only makes us human beings, and being human means we all have a lifespan of about one hundred years and that’s only assuming mother luck is on your side. Being old is the goal so I don’t get why some young people shame older people for being old, you are hurting their feelings while boosting your acquired ego forgetting that being old is the whole point of life, it is the overarching goal of existence…
Monday.
A word from Mindy.
Pretty is good, or so I think. I have been told I was pretty before, more or less, attractive. At the time I was young so I didn’t know how to take it, I’ll tell you one thing though, I took the praise for granted because it was new to me, I wasn’t prepared for that encounter and now I would like to think that I am prepared. The difference is, now that I’ve grown up I have to take everything said to me with a grain of salt, I can’t be naive, somewhere a wolf might be in sheep’s clothing, “You’re so pretty.” Yeah right, nice try. You always have to be on guard with whatever it is that you do or listen to. You never know people’s intentions with you, and some of us are unlucky as we are betrayed by those close to us.
To some, being called pretty is a confidence boost but to others, it is a sign or a warning that they should be more careful with how they move or how they present themselves, especially when self-doubt runs a person’s life, it is quite hard to believe that poor little old you can be seen as pretty. “How can I be pretty, I am never pretty, they must need something from me, why else would they call me that? They are trying to serenade me to get me to do something for them, they are trying to get something out of me, it is time for me to be more careful.” That is a thought that can go through someone’s head when they are given a “compliment.” Self-doubt or a lack of confidence in themselves or in their ability can be destructive, I think artists call this the impostor syndrome, I have had brushes with this from time to time in the past when it came to whatever it is that I was doing, it still visits me from time to time, I swear to you right now it is not a confidence thing…
Tuesday.
A word from Kyle.
The law is something to be thought of, let us think deep about this thing we call the law, it helps, it keeps us safe and it doesn’t need to be violent at all, and yet in some cases it is violent and unfair. The law is not the problem, well in some cases it is but in most cases, the people who enforce it are the problem. Get a power-hungry person to judge those who break the law and now we have a problem in our hands. A tyrant is the name I was looking for, we all make mistakes and if you think you haven’t you are bound to someday, it is a human thing. I have a feeling of what power over something or other people can feel like, power and authority over someone can be overwhelming especially when the law is on your side and you are the enforcer. A good example is a police officer, they help and I thank them for that, but you have some who have taken their jobs to places where they shouldn’t belong, and you have some who abuse their powers, and that warrants outrage from those who the police officer is supposed to be of service to. A lot of these bad-hearted police officers’ actions go unpunished especially if it is not blatant, and sometimes their offenses go unpunished because punishing them means that the police institution in that respective region is admitting to wrongdoing and as we all know from our own personal experiences it is hard for any human to admit to their wrongdoing even if they are in the wrong, let alone someone who has power over a group of people. Admission of wrongdoing only raises more unnecessary questions about how the administration conducts its duties, they see things from their perspective and not from the perspective of a citizen, a human being. The law can be tricky, for those who enforce it and for those who are expected to follow them religiously…
Wednesday.
A word from Molly.
Right, wrong, they all look the same to me, that is what I think and there is enough proof of that around the world in that little statement than I would like to admit. This is not what we want to hear, this is not what I want to hear, and we all want everything to be defined to the detail, it is never that easy. I don’t want to think that there is a world where I can be right and wrong at the same time with the same thing. You can be right here and wrong over there doing the same thing, what does it come down to? I wonder. Let us take for example the United States of America, you have fifty states, and different states have different ways of living with different laws, and you have to follow these laws, but there is one problem about that, you have to know the laws in order to follow the law, states differ in laws, in some states, you can smoke marijuana and in some, you can’t. This clearly proves my point, you can be doing the same exact thing and be in the right on one side of the country and be in the wrong on the other, so who is to say what is right and what is wrong and how come you are a bad person if you break the law over here and you are not a bad person if you perform the same activity over there? How is that fair? I think at this point it is fair to assume that right and wrong all look the same to some extent. If a country can’t come together and agree on a universal law that all citizens have to follow, what makes you think the world can come together and live in peace under a defined law, this is never going to happen because it all comes down to interpretation and cultures, some want to preserve old cultures and some want to grow and do better culture-wise. There is always going to be something, there is always something. We think they are wrong by how they live and they think our lifestyle is wrong, who is to determine who is in the right and who is in the wrong, not me because I know nothing, I am just a needle in a truck full of haystack… so please pardon me for not knowing any better…I have pride in my ignorance, it keeps me out of trouble.
Thursday.
A word from Sam.
There is only one way to fail, and that is to stop. That is what I think about failure and I don’t see that as being complicated at all, is it? When you stop is when everything crumbles, at least from my experience when you stop is when you have decided that you can’t do it anymore, that is when you quit, and trust me you don’t want to be known as that, you don’t want to be known as someone who quit, and not just to other people but you don’t want to be that to yourself, you have to do yourself a favor and keep on pushing. You have to try, you might fail the first time but it is only a failure if you look at it as one, at least you tried there is someone out there who didn’t even have the courage or the opportunity to try, so you are only a failure if you say you are. Let us say you tried again and failed the second time, again that can only be considered a failure if you say it is because there is someone out there who quit after trying once, you didn’t you did it the second time, how is that a failure if you are trying, how is it a failure when you keep learning new things with every try. You can’t stop because at one point you are going to look back and imagine or wonder where you could have been if you kept on going with whatever it is that you were doing. That is the worst feeling anyone could ever have, that feeling of regret as some would call it, the confusing thoughts that one goes through, the pain of not knowing what could have been, the unfortunate circumstances you find yourself in that make you think of what you could have done different, all these things piled up together on you can drive you insane no matter what you are or who you think you are in life… We judge ourselves as failures based on goals we set, some of us achieve these goals and most of us don’t, and no one ever sits down and really think about what they consider a failure, most of them are not failures, sometimes our expectations are too high that we lose focus of reality. There are over a million eight-year-olds today who wish to be the president at forty-four years old, the reality is when they turn forty-four, out of all those millions only one of them can become president, but if a few million lose focus on reality like it is bound to happen, they might see themselves as failures if they don’t become a president at forty-four…
Friday.
A word from Stacy.
Deceit is such a crazy thing, we’ve all been told by a caring community that lying to others is not a good thing, every child knows or is supposed to know that lying is bad. Despite this being the case, we all still lie and justify it some way or another that it was warranted and in some cases we are right and in some, we couldn’t be further away from the truth. The more concerning and dangerous issue arises when we lie to ourselves, it comes when we tell ourselves that we are doing something for our own good when deep down we all know that is not the case, if we know we are wrong why do we still do it? There is a thing about being rebellious that completes us one way or another, why is it that when we are told not to do something we tend to do it and the urge to do it tends to rise? The worst thing you could do to yourself is lie, telling yourself you are something that you are not, the voice keeps on talking telling you all these things about yourself and if you believe them then this could affect you one way or another depending on what it is that you are telling yourself. Sometimes this is not entirely your fault but it is your life so at the end of the day no matter how bad or unfair your life is you are responsible for it, some people get it way worse than you, no matter who you are and where you are at in the world, and despite all that it always comes down to you and what you are going to do about it. Are you going to let the voice in your head win or are you going to stand up and speak your mind, I know what I will be doing and that is all that matters. Life isn’t fair, so I wonder, am I supposed to live and accept everything as it comes because life isn’t fair or am I going to try and get myself together to try and change the outcome of my life, I don’t know what the real answer is…and as I am trying to figure that out life still goes on. As the old saying goes, time waits for no man.
Currently reading [Women by Charles Bukowski]
