I Used to Believe

I used to believe that I couldn't walk without a guiding hand.
I used to believe that Dad knew everything.
I used to believe that a Band-aid healed all wounds.
I used to believe that the worst thing in life was waking up for school.
I used to believe that my friends would never change.
I used to believe that moving across an ocean would end my life.
I used to believe that guys would never like me.
I used to believe that I'd always be taller than everyone.
I used to believe that guys and girls couldn't be best friends.

I used to believe that marriage was always happy.
I used to believe that all kids really did love and listen to their parents.
I used to believe that no one would succumb to peer pressure.
I used to believe that everyone cared about their body and health and genuine happiness.
I used to believe that people cared when others tried to help.
I used to believe that things could be blamed on "phases."
I used to believe that people would constantly question what they're told to attain the truth.
I used to believe that people would confront their problems.
I used to believe that everyone was building to correct themselves.
I used to believe that no one lived in the delusion that tomorrow would just simply be better.
I used to believe that racism would die out.
I used to believe that knowledge today would actually be used to benefit oneself.
I used to believe that living without judgment is easy.

I am naive, not because of what I lack the knowledge of, but because of what I think I have insight in.

Breaking Free

Humans are built to depend on one another. I don't care what your views are on anything, but nothing would have gotten you to the point of being able to sit here and read this other than humans. You have been raised, fed, and trained, and if you have any heart, you will try to become the best you can be. Because of this great dependence on humanity, we subconsciously feel inclined to give in to it -- to bow our heads to this great, life-giving force that subdues animals and destroys nature to the point that the sources of our air is used to wipe your butt. Humanity is beautiful, with its success and development and moral prevalence. But it is also terrifying, and controls over your life, my life, our lives, past lives, future lives, the lives of everything on this world. We are growing up in an era in which we have become numb to humanity's destruction of the world, which is depressing. But despite the fact that we can see the trees being uprooted and the glaciers melting and many, many animals dying, we fail to see how we are hurting ourselves.

Individuality is biologically avoided. Human brains are wired through evolution to conform to others, simply because to our ancestors, this guaranteed survival. However, since the 1950s, we have been molding to one another even more. A consumer-ridden society feels a certain necessity to buy what their neighbors buy and stay up-to-date on all the newest products. It isn't on purpose, but everyone who is currently meeting standards is conforming. And because it isn't on purpose is why it is so dangerous. To avoid it, one must actually defy what one feels the need to do. To make a chemistry analogy of the situation, one must first overcome the hardship of reaching the required activation energy for a reaction to tumble back into its natural, new state. In other words, we must tear ourselves away from our current state before we bounce back into a new mindset and see us for ourselves.

Clearly, this could just be avoided. Everyone could simply drift along with the current state saying "I'm good with whatever" and never think about the issues in the world. No one would be put through the discomfort of feeling like they are distancing themselves from others or like they are "weird" or "odd" or just "don't fit in." Clearly, the preferred option is comfort. However, that is exactly the issue that is hurting ourselves. It's a purposeless, unintentional suicide. Being alive and living are two completely different things.

Being alive is breathing and eating. It's waking up to go to school without any heart in it, ticking along the social clock to marriage and kids who will relive your life. It's feeling meh about everything, limiting yourself, confinement.

Living is the rush of doing something you shouldn't (because YOU wanted to, not cause your friends make it cool). Living is going to Macedonia because why not, it's falling in love in something completely atypical like Austria, it's coloring your hair like a sunset and eating octopus tentacles.

Living is doing the abnormal that your heart tells you to do. And that you NEED to do.

Question everything. Live in the way that keeps you the healthiest and happiest. Tear away from the harness of society, and snap back like a puzzle piece that finds its perfect place. Stay logical, yes. But if you FIND yourself fitting in a "social stereotype," run away. Take a breather, cut yourself out of it, and come back as yourself. Because in today's society, individuality is key for all things, and progress depends on one's ability to see all things novel.

The first step that must be overcome is simply breaking free.

                                            

Express and Accept

I have never particularly enjoyed pictures like the one above in which there are many identical things with one different thing standing out that represents the "unique" individual. Why? Because everyone looks at the different one and thinks "Oh, that's me right there." Before there are misunderstandings, I do not mean to put down people's concepts of themselves being unique. Because I completely agree with them. I agree that they are the unique one. But if everyone is unique, why is individuality portrayed as if there was only one atypical example? Why isn't the picture above one with not only red and green apples, but also yellow ones, mixed with bananas and carrots and socks and balloons and matchbox cars, like an "I Spy" game? This is where our problems begin. The mindset that everyone else but yourself is the same.

Humans aren't stuck in some primitive mindset of eat, reproduce, die, but are rather constantly aware of thoughts, choices, emotions, relationships, victories and failures, gains and losses... And it's these things that shape us. We aren't gingerbread figures that can be decorated with Uggs and leggings, with rectangular glasses and coffee, with thick eyeliner and wrist-warmers to then go on to be called "typical white girl" and "hipster" and "emo." We're more like clay, with the hands of life taking what has been given to them to embellish and perfect what will one day become an individual with opportunities and dreams. And this individual will join in the celebration of life with the way it knows best: expression. Expression varies among people. Some play the guitar, some paint, some write. But others express in less defined ways. Some express through the ways they help their friends, the way they dance in the rain, the things they praise, the people they idolize. But no one can be stamped to express in one way. I can say my sister expresses through singing and my mom through cooking and my boyfriend through the piano. However, while these are included in who they are and how they share it, if I were to phrase it in this way, it would give the image that my sister is all about singing, which she isn't. She's never even had a voice lesson. I, on the other hand, played some form of the clarinet for 5 years and will say with confidence that I never used that to express the person I am on the inside. However, I do express myself through doodling and talking to strangers and traveling and learning. No, I do not have just one way, no, none of these are things you'd know just glancing at me. Unfortunately, people refuse to have this sort of flexibility toward expression.

Back to the apple picture. Pretend that you are the red apple. You look around you and see loads of green apples. Green, being a form of the other apples' expression, becomes a grouping in your mind. You see one green apple and automatically associate it with other green apples. Your observation is done, you detach yourself from all the green apples and revel in your own uniqueness.

Now pretend you're a green apple. You look around and see others who have one thing in common with you: they express in green. This is interesting and you bond over your similarity. However, as you look around more, you see another apple, a red one. While this is different from you, you heard that the red apple was also eaten by a worm, like you, making it a little smaller than normal apples, like you. And indeed, you see the hole where the evil creature left its mark. You roll over to the red apple, introduce yourself politely, and start talking about your worm encounter, hoping that you two would be able to get to know each other through this. You express your emotions and memories, stop talking, and wait.

The red apple glances over and says, "Go away, green apple."

Right now, what we have been raised to do is to be the red apple. We are trained to observe people through their obvious means of expression, from dress to hobbies to those they surround themselves with. And once we draw those conclusions, we scoff at how they are such conformists, how that's their identity, and how that identity won't ever be compatible with ours. Everyone should be a green apple. Look for similarities, and accept that though one form of expression isn't shared that there is much more to that person so one shouldn't stop looking. Our social inclinations are dangerous and must be fought. And if truly nothing can be found to be similar between you two, then at least see the beauty in the difference. Don't change for them, but appreciate how easily a world this small in a universe so big can make so many different people that you actually meet someone in this lifetime who is unique to you like your are to them like everyone is to everyone. Maybe people are more like sandwiches. If life made you turkey while it made that stranger BLT, you may be repelled by each other's differences until you're aware that both of you have lettuce, too. Or you may drop your pretentious wall of rejection and realize that you're completely different in every way possible, laugh, and become best friends from it. Be aware of these expressions, and bond with and accept them.

Modern Religious Tolerance

The world we live in is extremely belief-oriented. Unfortunately, while this does provide variation among people, we allow it to control too much of our relationships among people. I am of the opinion that what one believes in shouldn't depend on family and social norm, but rather what makes one a better person.

Being that I live in an extremely Christian area, the South, I have witnessed and suffered from the oppression that a lack of acceptance has caused. I grew up going to church irregularly, spending my nights praying out of fear that if I don't believe in a supreme being that God will smite me or send me to hell or something. I wasn't becoming a better person, but rather I was just living in a terror of developing past my image of Catholicism. My parents are nonbelievers, but have grown up in environments that support giving the opportunity to breach in opinion to what we want rather than what they tell us. I think this is an aspect that many of us would benefit from by accepting. I'm not trying to persuade anyone to become Atheist. I'm trying to persuade everyone to be able to see past what they believe.

Unless a big man comes down from the sky and announces himself to be God, or Vishnu greets us with a four-armed handshake, or Thor runs around the world terrorizing us in fearsome Viking ways, no one has proof of there being a greater presence watching over us. Just as non-believers have to admit that there's no proof for there NOT to be one. In fact, no one is positive. The first and most difficult step is to recognize this. People are proud and do not care for themselves to be wrong. Also, the reason for religion today should be recognized as different from what it was back when the Bible, Koran, or the Book of the Dead were written.

The world was a mystery to the less knowledgeable millenniums ago. In order to provide explanations to anything impossible to observe to the naked eye (be it as large as space or as small as bacteria), theories were formed, as can be seen from Greek mythology, which had a specific god for specific observable yet unexplained aspects of our world. The same applies to other religions. As ridiculous as we find that seasons are caused by an old lady losing her daughter to the lord of the dead every winter, try explaining to someone that the beginning of humanity was a man made out of clay and a woman from his rib bone, or that a human spirit's limbs became different castes of people, or that there was a huge explosion that suddenly made all of everything. It's all vague and illogical. And all holy texts and books have been used as backing for scientifically incorrect or immoral actions and claims. Religion has caused more pain, suffering, and war than anything else in the world. This isn't the way religion should work today.

If anything, one should chose to believe what makes one a better person. If the knowledge that an eternal punishment would await your for bad actions in your life makes you pure and kind, then those teachings are what you should believe in, since they work for you. However, as was the case with me, others don't have these reactions. This should be supported and complimentary to each other. Everyone has arguments for why they believe what they do, but at the end of the day, no one's opinion will be changed by having beliefs of someone else shoved in their face. Instead, why not share them to have other perspectives and to mentally grow open to other ideas? Once this barrier is overcome, so much else will be easy to adapt to, and the closest thing to peace EVER will be achieved.

As phrased well by one of the most scientifically noted and remembered people in history, "True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness." This man was none other than Albert Einstein, a firm believer in a religious mystery and humility that all people must have when explaining the world, while still being atheist. We all agree on the span of our lack of knowledge, and while some have different arguments for non-grounded elements, we can all agree on the fact that it will never all be explained. So rather than trying to argue over something that will never have a solid answer, use variation to make each other and oneself better, not enemies or discriminated. Religion shouldn't so much be a dictator of one's life, as a push and support system for better decisions and a deeper understanding of the treatment of one's internal health and each other. And this doesn't just mean having a god as a priority, but can just as well mean the lack of one. If religion was used in the right way, everyone would win.