I think one of the worse aspects of growing up is the pressure to choose - choose what you want to do, but also what kind of person you want to be. For those who grew up without stable role models, this might seem particularly hard. It’s difficult to know how a good person behaves when you haven’t known many. Nobody is perfect, so you’ve got to decide what you want to work on and what you’re willing to live with. Although I know I’ve got my lifetime to do this, the world is speeding up so much and I feel left behind - one of the worst emotions, I think, is loneliness. Being separated from your peers because they aren’t really your equals. I find, sometimes, that on top of stress about being broke and college and friends and family I feel a swirling anxiety about the world itself. About how little control I really have. It comes up primarily when I feel really lost, when I begin thinking about life and death because I’m so scared of what comes next and I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it. Then I feel the urge to, at the very least, have control over myself.

I lament, too, how the world swells so suffocatingly during the transition to adulthood. As a child, Sunday afternoons merely evoked a warm mystery to me: the world was cozy yet full of adventure. I now feel jaded, like I know the world. As an atheist I don’t think there is much beyond humanity, and it makes me sad. Yet life and all its garbage feels all the larger for how much I depend on it. How much I need college and money and marketable skills, even with all the social and political issues I may rebel against. Life feels so scary and yet empty. I’ve become more interested in politics because it feels like the only way to do anything good for the world. I've learned much more about the inequalities facing the economic majorities and ethnic minorities, and that brings me despair as well.

In the great disillusionment that is adulthood also bends love: this mystical force, praised by God-knows how many bards and writers and movie directors, is suddenly challenged by the realities of the first long-term relationship. The love of your life is just another person with issues, and so are you. Maybe you’ve learned to hide your feelings or maybe you’re too excitable. Maybe they wait too long to speak their mind or maybe they chew food like your deadbeat dad. Of course this doesn’t diminish love: some may say it only makes it better because it is continuously tested. I guess it’s just hard to accept how crude life is, far from either magic or sense. It's difficult to adapt to the world when none of the things you value (unless it's capitalism ha) are really present in everyday life. I find that it's hard to be artistic or creative when murder is rampant, when whose family you're born into does more for your life than talent or work ethic. Is all that matters money and politics? With the first you survive and with the second you help others do the same. I don't know.

The craziest thing you can do

Is be poor

And stupid, too.

I've been told I can

Anything is possible

I wake up early

Study late

But I'm not revolutionary

No scholarship for me

I can't be Will Hunting

When teachers here barely make a living

I can't be Mother Theresa

Because at 17 I don't have the charisma

If I can't

Volunteer and have a job

Be class president and have a perfect GPA

Captain the track team and debate

Should I just GTFO? lol

The real privilege is affording to be dumb.

And thus henceforth I shall create a nest effervescent

Of mine iniquitous no-job slob lyfe

Whilst I make some friends

I hear it's tough for graduates

Getting broke for something worthless

Well, I can't even do that

But I also can't get a job

So I'll play nice and fit right in

My mind wanders and dances

In wreaths of fauns

Like a halo for that loved one

How I love him

His likeness shutters my eyelids

Inscribed to form my mind

The sulci of this sweet world

He knows me not,

Nor I him.

It matters not with such an angel

For company.

He will one day leave me

Wings beating a melody

Softly

And I will turn from him

Seeking reality

Slowly

Now we waltz

You are glory

Twirl and spin and spin and whirl

Fingers in your hair

Make me happy

Life is beautiful

We can all agree

Yet dreams are wonderful

Let us yearn.

That magic

Keeps us alive.

There is melancholy

In the image of the hand

That never reaches

Despair in the tremble of its fingertips

Strain and fear for Tantalus

But think of the beauty of the untouchable

Turn around

And see the sparkle, the hope, the glimmer in the eyes

The imagination is a welcome magician

The mind plays tricks

And we fall willingly

Because the human experience is to accept

Mediocrity.

So close your eyes

And walk, traipse or gallivant

Through a world unseen

The perfection of impossibility

And rejoice

‘If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.’

I love this quote because, as a teenager (and, well, an inherently-tribalistic human in general), I can sometimes feel pretty lonely and excluded. This reminds me that my own perception of myself is really what matters most.

The ocean likes the clouds.

It tries to fly just like them,

Reaching out heavy hands

That crash in frothy shrouds.

The ocean loves the moon.

It hurries to her

Like a child clinging to his mother’s legs.

But she leaves ever so soon.

The ocean hates the land.

It tries so hard to smash it into pieces,

Break it apart to chase the moon -

But there’s too much sand.

The ocean is ours, pure and blue.

It's always there for the return

Of the wanderer seeking his sea of fog

Let's not

Watch this beauty burn

Man is meant to rebel,

To dominate and create.

Dogged, we cower no longer.

Slaves freed, kings lost -

Here comes deliverance;

At the least, blissful ignorance.

Humanity hardens,

Strikes and punishes.

We stand, stronger.

A child to a leafy beast;

A daughter to her preacher;

An employee to the corporate money.

We all once seize

The opportunity, the power.

Stick it to the man.

The star glitters divine

Yet the toad lives

Just fine

(Merci para having gelesen haec)

The very first time I read a chapter book, I remember feeling distinctly amazed. The book had surpassed all of my expectations – not because it had a superior storyline or really deep characters by any means (after all, it was the ‘Magic Ballerina’ series). No, instead, I felt blown away just because I could not fathom for the life of me how in the world someone had managed to create an entirely fictitious world. That is one of the things that amaze me most about humans – we are so incredible in our ability to not just learn, but to think. The very fact that we can imagine and create entirely new worlds, universes, and peoples out of thin air is, I think, a sign of humanity’s remarkableness. Whenever I’m feeling down, this fact reminds me of the infinite possibilities of life.

Now, I’m an atheist, and I am aware that some people (like Oprah, for example) feel like that takes the wonder out of life. I myself first felt such a deep disappointment when I was around eight years old – the music video for ‘California Girls’ by Katy Perry came out, and I immediately thought ‘wow, I want to go to California!’; I was elated and unquestioning of the existence of a world with cotton-candy trees and Snoop Dogg for a God. Then, my sister broke the truth to me – such worlds didn’t and couldn’t exist. That was one of my defining moments: I realised that, if such worlds didn’t exist, why would God? However, after that, I read a collection of letters from a Chinese immigrant about his love for California, for her valleys, waterfalls and blue skies (don’t ask me where I found that). It struck me then, knowing the truth about the state’s dismaying normalcy, that normal trees and just nature might be more wonderful than I’d initially imagined. That’s why I think Oprah is wrong. Life can be and is wonderful even without a divine being to rule over it. I think that the whole point of death is for it to eliminate life. And I am perfectly content with this, because everyday I am blown away by the magnificent potential of life, of people. I mean, how is it possible that we invented languages? Learned a language as babies, with no reference point whatsoever?

It might be naïve of me to believe most people to be inherently good. I think it makes perfect sense. Yes, we are sometimes driven by selfish or malicious intent, but the rest of the time, we are motivated by a desire to ‘be the good we see in the world’, to be noble and proud of ourselves (unless we are pathologically unable to do so, in which case we should seek psychological help). Nobody really wants to benefit from things without deserving them, as is shown by our ability to feel guilt and remorse. This is evident even in Christianity, which often purports that we are sinful and shameful beings. The best-known example of this is the seventh verse of the sixth chapter of the Book of Galatians in the Bible, which states ‘whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap’. I know that the world is especially hard for some people out there, e.g.: Saudi Arabian homosexuals, the oppressed people of North Korea, and, last and never least, the well-known Starving Children in Africa. I also know that there are always good people trying to help those in need: non-profit organisations, created by groups of averagely- and genuinely-kind people, which save lives every day, helping refugees and sending food to strangers. This is proof enough to me that people are better than we think, and it inspires me to be better.