0 Zen and the Inquiry of Values

Values are, uhm, valuable. And we value them. I'm sorry I can't just start it.

No one is born with values. You're born a blank sheet and your life is filling that sheet in with whatever design you want your life to be. You decide on those designs by how you are raised, the enviroment you're in, the experiences you experience, the life you learn shapes what you value.

I've learned a lot from reading and from experiencing second hand other people's experiences.

• Flexibility/Adaptability: Because seriously, it is in our nature to change and evolve and if you can't handle it, life will not be fun for you.
• Independence: Same. There's nothing wrong with depending on others. in some cases, you're even required to. However, it's seriously going to hold you back in life if you're always waiting on someone or for someone. The same thing goes for living. You can't just life for someone else.
• Growth: Growth=evolution, innovation, all of those good things that enable our world to continue to change and improve.
• Leadership: Because if everyone's a follower, we're only going to be going round and round in miserable little unimaginiative circles.
• Helpfulness: This goes along with my duty to not be a douchebag rule.
• Knowledge: A lot of my values pertain to advancement. Knowledge is no exception.
• Logic: Being objective is the best way to act most of the time, not matter how subjectively you feel. Can I use subjective in that way? Is that correct?
• Perceptiveness: I believe understand others is how we improve our life. Not understanding is like a recipe for disaster.
• Practicality: This just make sense.
• Nonconformity: Because a world with only the same thing doesn't leave room for black nor white nor the complicated shades of gray and that's just a shame.

0 Zen and the Art of Watching Highways

Zen is defined by wikipedia as being a round-about translation of the word "absorption". I'd agree with that. I feel like zen is the state of taking everything in and just allowing the world to happen. Absorption is actually a good way to put it. When one truly lets things be and takes in the world around them, only then will they have a full understanding. 

I guess absorption is the best way of defining it because of where I find zen myself. Zen for me is when I stop thinking and just take things in. Because of circumstances I cannot control, I usually end up getting rides from others whenever I want to go somewhere. Those drivers are always taking the expressway because why wouldn't they it's convenient and accessible and I leave on the south side so going anywhere is a pain. 

When I'm not sleeping on drives to anywhere, I'm staring out the window at nothing in particular. Those stretches of time when we're flying down the highway are some of the best moments of my week. In the car, I am nearly cut off from the outside world of commitments and homework. I am alone in the silence in my head, only able to reflect. Highways don't have much landscaping, minimizing the visual distractions that would bring my mind out of its neutral state. Watching highways allows me reflect on the world around me. Watching highways allows me to find zen. 

0 Parents

An Open Letter to Parental Units:

Hello. I am sixteen and an only child. These facts are listed here in order to clarify that this if the first and last time my family is having to deal with puberty and teenagedom. So no one has any experience in what's going on in my household right now, nor will anyone ever be able to put this information to use.

I think the biggest thing that parents need to know is that it's not going to be easy, period. Although I've articulated this to my parents before, they seem as if they have yet to get that yes, I understand where they're coming from and yes, ill probably feel the same way when (if) I have kids one day. But no, I'm not going to agree with you now because I'm in the moment and this is not me with my kids. This is me thinking of the current and the present. We're to going to agree and that's that. It's not supposed to be easy so stop punishing me for not making it so.

Also: parenting books are not the end all for advice. What you have to realize is that children doing come in a set amount of favors. There's not only like 10 kinds you might end up with. We are a blend of personalities, morals, and ideals and more. So stop trying to treat me like the cold you've read about in your books. I've read those books too and let me tell you, I'm nothing like Sally NoName so stop trying to be Mrs. Smith. It won't end well for anyone.

Also: your child will not learn just from you. You will not be their only teacher in life. A big part or growing up is learning and discerning truth for yourself and by assuming or manipulating your child into only learning from you, you are actually stunting their mental growth. Stop being surprised when they don't have the same exact morals and beliefs as you. And stop being condescending and believing that they'll come around eventually. When you say things like that, you're only exhibiting the fact that you think that they're being silly or stupid or naive or whatever it is that you think.

Also: your child is not you. Stop expecting them to be.

I could go on but it's getting more rant-y than philosophical and it's a good idea to stop before I fall too far behind.

0 And we all have a duty to our country

So sometimes I don't like people. At all. And people are like that. We don't like people. Though that may stem from personal pet peeves, a lot of it comes from society ignoring its civil duty not to be a douchebag.

Now you may be thinking, "Syd, why do you think you can dictate how someone thinks?" And you're right, I can't. If you want to think evil, dark thoughts, go for it. The issue is when you express your thoughts and in the process hurt someone else. You can think whatever you want as beautiful. You can think whatever as not beautiful. The problem starts when you make someone else feel ugly.

And that's what's wrong with the world a lot of the time these days. People try and succeed at making others feel ugly because they don't exactly meet their idea of beautiful. And that's crap. Utter crap.

Civic duties are duties you have to the world and society around you. That's like waiting your turn at stop signs, moving along quickly in lines, being ready at the airport and the like. This also extends to being polite when being served and actually trying to be a good worker. There are some things that I'm really picky about (don't get me started about gum and food in general) but everyone can agree that it all boils down to not being a jerkface.

A lot of the issues come from people being selfish or rude or impolite. You don't have to care about each other but it's not your job to make life worse. Everything would be better if people just was neutral to each other at the very least.

Now you may also be asking, "Syd, why should I be nice to people?" Well for one, I don't mean nice. I mean decent. And why shouldn't you be decent? You don't know these people, why would you have any emotion towards them? Since you don't have a history with them, then you should be neutral. You should be neutral and try to make lines move as fast as possible. You should be neutral and wait your turn at the stop sign. You should be neutral and not be a douchebag.

A reason people are douchebags is because they're sure that others will be douchebags so they as well be one first. And this logic is flawed. It's a continuous destructive circle that is false. This is like pedaling backwards just to be going somewhere. Really, you should assume they are as be in return. This way, the wheels spin forward.

0 Poverty! I choose you!

So we are reading All Souls by Michael MacDonald which is a fascinating and tragic book abut his life growing up in South Boston. It centers around his family of 9 children and his single mother living in poverty and the result of that and his circumstances and the environment that they live in. Throughout the book (I finished it. I cried several times. I can't stand child death of mourning. The last few Harry Potter books killed me and continue to do so whenever I reread them), the family goes between being plagued by their poverty and reveling in it. Several people (the mother, mostly) makes questionable decisions that may have been the cause to their poverty.

This brings up the question of whether or not poverty is a choice. In the apparatus I'm typing this on, poverty is defined as the state of being extremely poor; or the state of being inferior in quality or insufficient in amount.

There is the aged belief that poverty and bad situations are all choices and laziness. Those who still subscribe to that belief think that it is up to that person to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work hard, that the only reason you are where you are is because the effort you have put out. These are the same people who still believe in the American Dream.

I believe poverty is something more. I believe that it may be a pit trap, a place where, once you've fallen in, the walls are high and slippery and there's no a to get a grip and climb out. It's a way of thinking that you can't escape even in your dreams. Poverty is a state of being. Regardless of the choices made in the book, as wrong as some of the decisions were, a life of poverty was so engrained in them that it was all they knew and all they could go off of. Of course their choices kept them impoverished because it was all they knew. It's like a virus, or poor dictionary for your spell check. Once you misspell once and you save it into the dictionary once, you'll always spell it wrong because that's the only way you know how to spell it.

In terms of background, I come from a middle class family where we've always had enough to sleep and a bed to sleep in and amenities I probably take for granted. I've never been poor so I'm speaking with the little I know, none from experience.

The question remains that even if poverty is a trap, how does one get themselves trapped in it. I can't answer that question because its different for everyone and I don't have experience with it. The most I can assume is that it's like how I get stuck with homework assignments. You procrastinate once and then again and its fun and you joke about it with friends and then you do it again and it becomes the only thing you know and can do until your grades are in the trash and there's no more light in your life. But I'm just guessing.

0 What do we want? Integration? Are we sure?

Living in chicago, its not hard to see racial differences. I go home, I see african americans. On the way to school I pass by differebt types of people living in differebt types of places. Going to sigh a diverse school as we do, it is easy for us to believe that the entire city is as integreated and mixed as we are.

However, that is bot the case. yes, the city is varied as one might say a candy shop is. But it is not integrated fully. Just as with the candy shop, we are separated in where we live. Sour candy is by its own while the rock candy lives in aisle seven and so on. The candy in the shop may be varied but they are not mixed together like a bag of mnns or skittles. The people are the same way. Yes this city has tons of people from different backgrounds, but they are not mixed together in the peanut mnms bag of life. This is not the question, but the set up.

The question is if we actually want it that way. I don't know how many are concious of the fact that they have segregated themselves in blocks and neighborhoods and, consequently, schools.l of a single background. I don't know how much of this was a choice or just not complaining with where we are. Whatever it is, I don't think we have something against integreating our homes as much as us merely not questioning what is already the case.

Once upon a time, we were segregated. Black people weren't allowed to live in certain areas. When they were allowed to live wherever, they moved into neighborhoods which promptly drew white people out those aforementioned areas in the white flight. And then some things happened in the middle and I am writing an opinion piece, not a report. The point is, we had been separated at an early point in history and at this point,I don't think people tralize that they are continuing that separation.

We accept certain things without question. Where you live is one of them. I live in a primarily black neighborhood and I've never really questioned why it is so. My parents moved there because it was nice and affordable and they thought they could raise a daughter there, which they did. I think these are the factors that influence where we move, not who is there, although that is important. Maybe its because I'm black but I don't see people as black people and white people. There's ghetto people and bougee people and there's people who are quiet and obnoxious and fight with their spouses. These are the peoplle that influence where you move and all races have them.

So I don't think we don't want integration. I think we just don't think of what were doing as segregation. If that makes sense.

0 The thing that scares me most is the creature in see reflected in the passing glass.

One thing that has stuck with me, really stuck with me, is something from the beginning. Maybe it's because it's one of the first things you read. Maybe it's because that's the modest alert I'm usually am while reading. Who knows. Whatever it is, Malcolm seeing the woman tell his father that he's, "scaring these white folk."

This is why his father was killed, in such a terrible terrible way. He scared the white people. You would think that the white people wouldn't be afraid of such an "inferior" person but no, he scared them. They saw him as a threat.

There are two parts to this which really have a hold on me. There's the fact that the white man was afraid of the black man here and then there's the fact that words were such a threat.

Starting with the former, in the time that the book is set in, it was basic (wrong) common knowledge that the black man was inferior to the white man in every way. False studies showed that the black race had less brain power and was incapable of intelligent thought. That's how they justified the lower positions black people were forced into.

Yet, these inferiority should have rendered anything the black man said as false, nonsense even. It should be like a baby's prattling or the rambling of someone who hasn't had enough sleep in a very long time. But this was not the case. Instead of ignoring what Malcolm's father was preaching, he was killed. I just find that, if not ironic, something morbidly funny at the very least.

Which brings me to the next point. The power of words. I've always been a big reader and, when I can push myself, a big writer. Words have and still mean a lot to me. Some people think that they're meaningless. For this, I cite the whole 'sticks and stones' saying. However, words can do a lot. They can inspire and uplift. And, with Papa Little's death, they can be a serious threat.

Serious a threat enough, in fact, that it was something worth killing a man (and quite brutally) over. I can't help but marvel at the effect that some strongly spoken words and people hearing them could have. Ip even these obviously inferior people with their menial words had a huge effect.

But I guess that is the dangerous part of then-black America. They were people who heard each other and words are powerful only when someone hears them. This goes with the communication issues that the original slavers tried to impose on their slaves. People are stronger together and to keep them from getting together, you must keep them from communicating. Papa Little's words were imposing one hell of a communication issue for the white people of that time. Unfortunately, his death inspired almost as much as his words during his life did.

These original word and this death and this fear may have started Malcolm the path that his life has taken. This has stuck with me, his beginning coming from people who were afraid of an ant enough that they didn't just stamp on it but throw it in the garbage disposal. Crazy as it is, this just fascinates me.

0 I used to rule the world...

It's been nearly 45 years since King's assassination and I'm not going to yesterday. 45 years is a long time and his death doesn't hurt anymore. What he fought for, however, still does. MLK Jr. was one of several leaders of the civil rights movement. He protested peacefully and ask for everyone else to as well along with loving your enemy. Isn't it funny, that a man who fought against violence and taking what you want was taken from this world by an angry man with a sniper rifle?

This great man was filled by a small bullet which, in any other situation, would have rendered his point obsolete, wrong. However, it seemed as if his death sent his message to a roaring and crashing crescendo. It's sad to think that there are kids who don't even now who he is. These are elementary school children who don't know why we get the third Monday in January off. It's sad, but unsurprising considering our current society.

Today, it is unheard of, peace. Well, that's not fair of me to say. It's heard of and usually ends tragically. Today, you see peaceful protest turn into police rallys.

Once upon a time, King ruled. He was an example of hard work and peacefulness and love. But today, he doesn't even receive a passing thought. He has become another forgotten figure of history. I wouldn't be able to say this before but I think it's safe to say now that King is no longer kit.

0 One Prime

Music is a part of nearly everyone's lives. Life gets interesting when the songs of two people's soundtracks begin to overlap.I have a fried, Jy, and I have a tendency to study or work with her. And when you work with Jy, the number one rule is her playlist or no playlist. Which I'm absolutely cool with because sometimes I need music to break me out of my loop of pop and RnB and old school soul music. One Prime was like a bridge to another world of music. One Prime is a playlist off of the beaten path and now I present to you my top three tracks from it.

Now a big part of music for me is the lyrics. I'm a very word orientated person. Lyrics mean a lot to me and I will suffer through a lot just for the perfect lyrics. Usually I look for lyrics that express things that mean a lot to me. My way or thinking or something. In the first song, "Kitchen Sink"

Are you searching for purpose?
Then write something, yeah it might be worthless
Then paint something then, it might be wordless
Pointless curses, nonsense verses
You'll see purpose start to surface
No one else is dealing with your demons
Meaning maybe defeating them
Could be the beginning of your meaning, friend.

I mean look at this! Look at these lyrics? When you hear the song, the first few times the words past through your speakers nearly faster than you can hear them. The more I listen, the faster I get. And it just seems so perfect. And then there's "Holding on to You", also by Twenty One Pilots. This one I'm less emotionally attached to but there are some gems in the lyrics. The first verse, as nonsensical as it may seem, starts out strong and

Fight it, take the pain, ignite it
Tie a noose around your mind
Loose enough to breath fine and tie it
To a tree tell it,
You belong to me, this ain't a noose
This is a leash and I have news for you
You must obey me! 

I have this habit of digging for answers to my life in media. "What I'm Looking For" is different for me. I first heard this song when I stumbled upon this comic someone had drew for it. I was in love with the words in the comic (I told you I'm very text orientated) and the song and the meaning in it. Instead of just posting the lyrics, I've picked some choice panels. I really recommend following the link and reading the entire thing. The work is beautiful

 

I heard it last summer and for this point in my life it's incredibly appropriate. Generally I look for answers in my songs but this is just like saying that it's okay that I have questions and I don't think I can't not love it. And it's a good message we all need. You won't know where's you're headed or your destination but you must keep going. .

0 Hiding from ourselves in each other...

"No Exit" is a wonderfully deep story about the pits of hell without the general fanfare expected with it. The premise was brilliant, with the well-known quote the thesis and the rest of the book the support. "Hell is other people." This is show through the characters themselves. Each of the three have carefully cultivated pasts and personalities that are born to get under the others' skins. Estelle is Inez's past victim  while Inez is the woman who took Estelle's man after her death. To Estelle, Garcin is the man she coveted and ruined her life with and to him she is his wife, his victim and Inez is one of his many critics. And it's absolutely great, the fact that the characters link up with each other like that. It's absolutely perfect.

But something they don't address but I think is evident is hell is ourselves as much as it is other people. The three are tortured by who they are and where and they're memories as much as they are tortured by each other. If not for themselves being themselves, the others would have no effect on them.

I think that's why I truly enjoyed No Exit, because the underlying theme there. Anywhere can be your own personal hell because you can have it be so.