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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....