Friday, February 21, 2014

Quote of The Day ~ Unknown


                 Street art is good. I found this quote spray-painted on a wall or bridge or door, it doesn't matter where; the place is long forgotten now. I actually remember smiling at the tragic beauty of it all...
   
"What're you going to do?"
"I don't know.... Something important, something that'll change this crappy world, you know?"

Isn't that everyone's goal? To change the world? At least, it's every high-schooler's goal; every time I asked that question, I got an answer somewhere along those lines.

But what's the point? What's the point of working so hard to make the world a "better" place? What is "better" anyway?
                Faster cars, faster computers, less exercise, more comfort, more knowledge of things we made ourselves. Is that what we're working towards? Making the world a place where every single one of our needs are met instantaneously and comfortably? I, for one, would hate that.
                         It's all so maddening to me. Doesn't everyone see where we're heading? Doesn't everyone see that little by little (the cutest phrase in human history omg), we're destroying what the world was meant to be and making it some..concrete jungle!

I'm not against progress. No, quite the opposite; I love progress :) I love the fact that I no longer have to dress up and go to the outside world to contact other people, I love that I don't have to go to the bookstore to buy books...

But I also hate that. I hate the fact that I talk to people through the virtual world more than I do to them real life; I hate that my favorite second hand bookstore owned by my favorite book-expert (ask her about any book from any century and she's got all the answers :) is going out of business because of Amazon.

Progress = change.

Change is cool. Buuuut if change happens too fast, it's also kinda scary. I think we need to slow down and think about what our change could mean, how it could effect us.

Today may not seem like the worst place (time?) to live in. But actually, it is. Remember the last time you fell asleep with the wind brushing against your face? Or the last time you walked out into your back yard, bare-foot and in your PJs, in the middle of the night just because you couldn't sleep?
               These are some of the things people just don't DO anymore...At least not on a oh-just-another-day basis.

We can't keep changing to make a better world. We already have the best world. We just have to stop running towards the future for a second, and just look.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Quote Of The Day ~ Paulo Coelho

                          Okay it's been more than a week since my last "Quote of The Day" post. I figured that since it doesn't say Quote of Every Single Day, I didn't have to do one every day. But I felt terrible about it all the same. I've been hiding from this page all week. Actually, I've been feeling like a total failure. But two whole dozens of cheesecake-muffins and one pizza (which I baked but didn't eat. Yes, they were that bad) later, I feel better. This is MY blog, I get to write what I want (oh the freedom of owning a webpage!).


Bucket Lists. That's the first thing that comes to my mind when I see this quote.
                         People are always talking about holding it out and having fun after. I hate to be pessimistic, but what if there is no after?

The idea of saving up when we're young to have the perfect retirement annoys me. It totally contradicts the commonly used (to the point of annoyance) phrase, 'Live While We're Young'. However, even the cliche-ness(?) of the phrase cannot take away it's truth. The young years turn out to be the best years of most people's lives (I'm sure it's not just my grandparents who used to recount their youth more than actually talk about the present). I always got the vibe that old people considered youth a treasure.
                    So why waste youth? Why waste it to worry about later? Why not live while we're young?
At 21 (22?), too many people are worried about a sustaining job; a job that'll pay not just the bills (because that would actually make sense) but also the mortgage and prep school for the non-existent kids and a retirement home in Aruba. 
             That's not what you're supposed to care about at 21 (or 22), I think that the 20s are the perfect time to figure things out, do what you want to do with life. They're that time when you're unencumbered; you can follow your dreams, because there's nothing and/or no one holding you back. It's just you against the world.

Don't make bucket lists! Do things when you're young. Because Bungee jumping at 80 isn't really advisable :)

Monday, February 10, 2014

Quote of The Day ~ JRR Tolkien

         I'm on my way to school and I'm driving like a crazy person (I'm already late...as usual) when I see this adorable quote on the car in front of mine...it totally made my day and I don't even know why...


              This quote makes me think of all those people who demand of me of my "ambitions" a.k.a my college/career thing, those people who look disapproving when I say that I have no idea what and where my first job is going to be. I think that living is about lingering about to smell the roses...I mean what's the point of walking through a rose garden if you run through the entire thing and don't smell a single rose? (I think someone said that already haha) 
                  I hate it that we have to make plans for life....and these "plans" aren't general ideas, they're more like elaborate blueprints that need to perfect down to 5th decimal place. What's the fun if you know exactly what you're going to do every single moment of every single day? I don't think that making goals and working towards them is the way life works. I mean yeah...making short-term goals to reach your long term lifetime-achievement-thing is a good idea for organizing....but living in the moment is wayy

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Quote of The Day ~ JK Rowling

           It's my second day trying to keep a (late) resolution and I'm already tired haha. Well I'm sure it just needs getting used to..

It's our decisions that make our life, it's our choices that make us.
It all seems so simple, just pick a path every time you reach a fork in the road. But it's not. There's always that creeping thought of "what if I'm wrong? what if the other path was better?". A lot of us linger at the fork in the road... but I think the secret to not lingering is knowing that there is no better path.
                   Because there are no right and wrong decisions...(this is life after all, not some obscure Calculus test- this wasn't even meant to be a joke...NEVER guess on a Calculus test). Every decision you make is going to be the one for you, it's going to be the one that makes your life.
         That's why decision making shouldn't take that long at all, just trust yourself and pick a path and just know that this one is the one for you, know that this one's going to make your life, your life

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Quote of the Day ~ John Green

Okay (they really need to accept that the word is spelled as OK), I've decided that I really need to start doing Quote of the Day posts.
                       It's kinda (they need to accept that 'kinda' is a word too :/ ) like a late New Years Resolution along with my No Jeans For a Year resolution (which, not surprisingly, I haven't broken yet haha).

Okay here goes nothing: (is it weird that I've never really understood that phrase?)


That's what my philosophy in life has always been...What is the point of not striving for excellence when you can? Why don't we all want to be remembered? Why doesn't everyone want to change the world? Why is it that everyone mourned for Paul Walker for days and no one even thought about the other guy in his car?
         But then I thought, what is remarkable? What does it mean....that word, remarkable. Remarkable doesn't mean remembered does it? No. Something remarkable is something that makes you feel happy when you're done, that warm fuzzy feeling of "I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing". Being you is being remarkable.   
            I know the world regards that Harvard-graduate-and-married-to-someone-10x-hotter-than-most-people-and-earns-more-than-90%-of-the-worlds-population as a "remarkable" person. But I think that a remarkable person would be that ignores everyone else and tries to be him/herself. Because being yourself makes you happy. And being happy, really happy, in a world like this is very remarkable indeed
               And I mean that in the least pessimistic way... It's just that, it's hard to hear yourself think in the loud loud world, it's loud enough to get in everyone's brains. The noise of everyone comes in waves and it washes over us, it washes over us so and makes us forget that it's not us thinking but everyone else. The world invades our minds and sometimes we don't even know it. What would be remarkable is doing what you really want to do, knowing what really makes you happy; not what makes you happy because it makes everyone else happy. I think that its really remarkable to wade through your world invaded mind and find what you really makes You happy. 
            So yes, there is no point in living if you're not going to do the remarkable, that is find yourself and do what you want to do. After all, being remarkable wasn't being remember-able, and it wasn't leaving a mark...it was being yourself and being happy :)