A Better Son/Daughter

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

-Oscar Wilde

People always give the advice to “be yourself.” But what if you have no idea who you are? or perhaps you’re unhappy with the person you are? I love Oscar Wilde (watch Salome’s Last Dance on Youtube, super bueno), but his statement needs qualifiers.

It’s difficult to go into every social interaction with a concrete identity; in my opinion it makes socializing more difficult. “Being yourself” is a lot of pressure. Thinking about if what you say or do accurately represents who you are can be crippling. Worrying about whether you’re “being yourself” is futile, though. Of course something you said is something you would say, you just said it.

Forming a sense of self that is not apt to alterations is dangerous. Allow yourself to change freely. If something you said or did is unsettling to you, accept that it happened, but do not define yourself by it. Move on.

Each experience we undergo affects who we are, so it makes sense that who you are one day won’t be who you are the next. If you go into a conversation trying to be the person you were a year, a day, or even a few minutes ago, you will feel constricted to uphold that image. Instead, think of yourself as a new person every moment, and in each moment strive to be the person you want to be.

Imagine you meet someone new and they’re very into being active. You would love to be active, but currently your after-work routine consists of watching endless re-runs of Friends. Don’t let you’re present lifestyle keep you from being who you want to be. Obviously don’t lie, but it’s okay to show enthusiasm for something that is not usually part of yourself.

Everyone should always want to better themselves. This is not possible if you are constantly trying to be the person you created in the past.

It’s not about being yourself, it’s about being who you want to be.

So I’m back. I took a long break for school; I didn’t know how to justify spending hours on tumblr when I had loads of work to do.

But now I think I’ve found a reason.

Last night, I cried for the first time in a long time. Nothing in particular happened; no relationship problems, no tragedy, no sappy movie, no come-down from a drug. Just a mental come down. It felt like this beautiful high I had been experiencing for the last few months had collapsed in on itself. Usually, emotions seem like they escape the realm of my language capabilities, but I am easily able to pinpoint my mood last night as sorrowful. I submerged myself in all the things I normally think about from a distant position: poverty, war, famine, child abuse, racism, psychopaths, etc. Essentially all of the things that can swallow person’s “soul” if they dwell on them too long. Imagining the pain of every individual that has ever suffered obliterates a person’s love of the world—their will to live. The negative aspects of the world threatened to drown me. Acknowledging that there will always be pain in the world is unsettling; especially for an idealist like myself.

Until last night I had hid from myself the truth: that the world will never be what I want it to be.

Yet,

Just because something is impossible doesn’t mean trying is useless. Working towards a goal is is what matters most. Humans would died off long ago if everyone stopped caring about living because immortality is impossible. Everyone will die, yet people still attempt to avoid death. An “all or nothing” mentality is fatal. So instead of letting myself be overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of pain, I’m going to do whatever I think will help make the prospect of world peace seem a little less impossible. I want to help people find their own way to be happy, so they can in turn help others. I don’t want to tell people what is right and what is wrong; I want to encourage people to deeply consider their happiness, morality, and how both affect the lives of others. I hope that by sharing my own thoughts on happiness and universal morality provoke you to think in new ways completely unique to yourself.

Apparently the Chinese used to say to their emperors “Ten thousand years,” meaning that they wished their emperor’s rule to last for 10.000 years.

To all of you that are willing to challenge all impossibilities,

Ten thousand years.

-L

Anonymous asked: are you going to the beatles: the lost concert" movie when it comes out next month?

I don’t watch TV much so I didn’t even know that was a thing. I’ll check it out, but lately I’ve been having a hard time watching movies. I get bored too quickly. This sounds like it might keep my attention though

gniklawyaj-deactivated20120613 asked: favorite band?

Modest Mouse.

-I like songs about drifters, books about the same.
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane.-