I hate to think this is true, but it if motivates -

These are our glory days.
We are young, we are alive, and we can make this moment exactly everything we want it to be.
Make of it what you will. Will everything you can.

This is going to be personal and a little overwrought with emotion, but I feel the need to write -

Is it bad if I feel overwhelmed because so many positive things are happening today, but I don't know how to properly feel happy about them?

People have been so complimentary today, incredibly kind and things have been going my way pretty much since I've gotten up this morning. And I feel like I should be over the moon, but I don't know how to be. If I feel, I feel overwhelmed. And if I try to calm myself down, I feel like it's all white noise. It's all blunted and it feels wrong. It feels wrong to not be ecstatic, elated, or at the very least grateful, that my day is going this well.

I wish every day was like this so that I didn't have to feel this obligation to nobody when it is.

Absence of absence makes the heart grow fonder.

I can't decide if it's better to want things or not.

When I want, I am in pain. I never just want, I yearn. Whether it's for a designer scarf with a price tag I cringe to look at, or whether it's the approval of someone I admire, I feel like I have to have it. I have to have it or else my heart feels as though it'll shrink, shrivel so far into my chest that my nails will have to grow to the length of talons so that I can claw it out and slowly nurse it back to health. Or worse yet is when my heart feels like it's leaving my body. When it has its own mind to run away with its desires, resigning my lifeless body to to chase after its missing piece. I can never just want, I always have to need.

And when I don't want, when my heart is benign and I should be content, I am in disarray. I am lost and aimless, sinking deep and floating high. I have no impulses nor desires, no inclinations to choose. I am malleable and weak, but strong in my complacency. The static so powerful it's overwhelming - coming in from all directions at once with no rhyme nor reason. I can't be complacent, I'm only ever lost.

Writing a PSE feels like I'm on a dinner date with my laptop.

Writing a Personal Statement of Experience (PSE) is actually one of the most tedious things I have ever had to do - and this is coming from someone who has written more papers and worked in more groups than I can even remember in the last three years of my undergraduate degree. There's something extremely cumbersome to me about having to talk about my accomplishments. Most people love the opportunity to be able to expand on their duties in an organization or project beyond just the few bullet points that a resume permits, and I can obviously understand the value, but I just never know what to say.

I've accomplished a lot in my four years of undergrad, and I go above and beyond to build myself up to being an ideal candidate. I'm never not busy - I stretch myself in every degree and in every direction I can think of. But when you put it all in words, I can't help but feel that it's all disingenuous. I did all of this for me - not for the good of the school, the community, my transcript or applications. I did these things because I feel the need to fill all the crevices of my life with things that keep me busy, things that make me feel rewarded. And there's just no way to convey that in text.

Point at issue.

Even more than I want people to understand that sexuality is not a choice you make, and God knows how much I want this, I want it to not matter even if it were a choice.

Sometimes when I'm trying to fight for LGBT rights and my best defense is that sexuality is due to genetics and not a conscious choice that someone is making, it makes me sad. It almost feels like I'm saying we should take pity on those who were born with this defect and since it was out of their control, we shouldn't fault them for it. Almost as if I was comparing sexuality to a disability. It just doesn't sit right.

I want sexuality to be accepted, no matter the orientation. Sexual orientation, no matter what it is, should not be seen as a disability or anything that makes anyone less than anyone else. It's not a disadvantage and it's not a defect. So why should it matter whether it's genetic or a choice? Even if someone chooses to be a homosexual, why is that a bad thing?

The more we rely on the "biological" argument for gaining acceptance for the LGBT community, we are obscuring the real issue. LGBT rights shouldn't be granted because people of the community didn't have a choice. It's not a disability that we need to compensate for. The real issue that we should be tackling is the fact that being homosexual is still seen a problem and an unfavorable option in some societies.

What we should be doing is showing that homosexuality is really not that different from heterosexuality beyond the mechanics. What we should be aiming for is equality. Not reluctant acceptance.

Growing up means getting clever.

When I was young I asked for toys for my birthday. I usually got clothing instead. When I was disappointed, my parents would say to me, "Is that Barbie going to keep you warm?"

When I got older, I asked for electronics for my birthday. Things like ipods, cellphones, and laptops. Again, I usually got clothing instead. When I was disappointed, my parents would say to me, "Is that Blackberry going to keep you warm?"

I noticed a pattern.

For my birthday this year, my parents offered to buy me a MacBook Pro. But when I asked for an Alexander McQueen scarf instead, I could tell my father was disappointed in my choice for the materialistic option as opposed to the practical option. When he asked for an explanation, I replied, "Is the MacBook Pro going to keep me warm?"

Can you really blame me for learning my lesson?

fire away, fire away - ricochet, you take your aim.

I want to be a good writer so badly. And when I say this, I mean I want to be a good writer qua writing. Beyond just good sentence structure, I want to be concise, I want to write with clarity and poise. The thing is, I also value the poeticism of rarely spoken words. I want my words to have a lyricism that I never have to point out and for them to resonate, to appear bolded or italicized without me ever having to actually click those buttons.

I want to be able to speak like I write and have friends who will think it's completely ordinary. I want to stop feeling like I'm an endangered species - a dying breed.

Being Smart Is Out of Season and The Travesty That Ensues

The popular top 40 radio station in Toronto right now is running a commercial for a telephone company that begins with a mother telling the listener that her child isn't the smartest kid in the class, but instead he's "popular" and racks up a hefty cellphone bill. I didn't find out that the ad was for a cellphone company until the second time I heard it because when I heard it the first time, I burst into a long tirade of criticism after hearing the first few lines. Why can't her son be both? Why can't her son simultaneously be popular and the smartest kid in the class? Western media propagates the false notion that being smart and being sociable or well-liked are mutually exclusive, but why is that? Why is it unfashionable to be smart?

The other day I corrected my brother's pronunciation of the French word "croissant". I always pronounce it as I have been taught to in French class since the age of ten, the same French classes that my brother attended three years after me. He makes a disgusted face and replies, "Who says it like that? It sounds so pretentious." What is simply correct has suddenly become pretentious and there is now a negative connotation to being knowledgeable. My brother's attitude reflects those of so many of our peers who would rather blend in with the masses, despite knowing that the masses are wrong, than be correct. Somewhere along the road it became more socially acceptable to err because everyone else is, rather than be correct and stand above the masses. Popularity for all the right reasons now makes you popular in all the wrong ways.

The media, and perhaps even our personal lives, can produce several examples of those who are unerringly smart and also gratingly annoying because of it. We label these people as pompous, pretentious and arrogant - all adjectives with glaringly negative connotations. And in several cases the examples we produce may exhibit these traits in every way, but somehow these traits have started to become attached to those who are also just simply intelligent. It may very well be true that those who grow up receiving several accolades for their academic achievements develop proud personalities that make them intolerant of their less eloquent peers and intolerable in return. A segregated few may have been the start of a dangerous stereotype infiltrating legions of teenagers to come.

Turn on your television and you will find numerous teen dramas illustrating dumb blonde cheerleaders who run the social ladder and nerds who can write a million A+ papers before they can score a date. Even though several of these shows are actually telling stories of teenagers breaking these social barriers, it's damaging to future generations to even have these stereotypes articulated at all. Illustrating this social ladder for teenagers influences them in subtle ways. They might not go as far as imitating these characters, but they look for these characters around them. And when they're all doing that they all start categorizing; they all start judging.

Judgment is the root of the problem. The jocks who put more time into football practice after school than studying in the library are automatically assumed by the peers to be less smart than those who do the opposite. When in reality, those jocks could be spending less time studying because they have an easier time grasping the material and don't need to be while those who are cramming in the library really do. But because they possess easy markers of those stereotypes, the jocks are now labeled. Their peers aren't expecting them to be smart, they don't ask for more of them intellectually. Instead, they might be approached more often socially because they are interpreted as more likely to climb the social ladder and be popular. They are invited to more parties, perhaps find it harder to say no, spend even less time studying than they did before, let their grades drop and thus emanate the stereotype even more so. And when their grades drop it really doesn't matter too much, they have a network of friends and a buzzing social life with their equally struggling peers to compensate and thus the cycle continues. Pygmalion effect, anyone?

These stereotypes are damaging in ways that we can't even fully comprehend yet as it is a currently dominating trend. Teenagers, not unlike my own brother, are becoming afraid to be smart. Afraid to say what they know is correct because of that fear of being labeled and judged by their peers as "pretentious". It's an extremely unfortunate situation in that standing out in academics has become one of the few ways in which people don't want to stand out. The majority of teenagers think that they are special snowflakes with feelings and thoughts that no one else has stumbled upon, when in reality they all think in a hive mind. They shy away from actually thinking outside the box and discovering things scientifically and experimentally in ways that perhaps really no one else has ever done before. It's a very sad state of affairs.

No one should be scared of being knowledgeable or being right and correcting your peers. If you do it with humility and the intention to aid, it will come across. Intelligence comes with great power, not only academically, but socially as well. With intelligence comes the ability to network in larger circles, speak with greater confidence on several more topics and best of all  the foresight to see and think beyond the stereotypes. The media needs to start promoting characters who are both smart and beloved, elevated for things beyond the stereotypical markers. Start writing characters who are intelligent and well-liked. Write about jocks who read Dostoyevsky in their spare time. Write about the prom queen who's on the chess team and takes a teammate as her date. But most importantly, write it as the norm.

Don't fear being smart. It doesn't have to be or mean anything more than simply being smart. Crave knowledge, desire improvement and aim to be better. We all strive for success and we all want to excel. There's no reason to be ashamed of the way you choose to fulfill your calling to the human condition.

Yesterday I laughed, and it felt foreign. 

lest I put it off, for I put it right for the impossible soul

I've never been a believer of fairy tales and happily ever afters, but I want to believe in soul mates. I don't, but I want to. I want to think that there's another being out there that holds the spirit with which mine finds peace. I don't want to just feel contentment. I want to feel a deep longing that is never sated, yet feeling complete at the same time.

My soul lives through times and dimensions beyond our basic comprehension, existing as both human and non-human alike. And it'll be searching, always looking in the back its mind for the one other being that will make it feel truly loved beyond words can describe. Sometimes it'll find it, and they'll be happy. Truly happy and so fortunate that the stars aligned in their favour. Sometimes they won't be happy. Sometimes things just won't work out because perhaps they'll realize too late or never at all. And maybe sometimes they won't find each other at all. But they'll make the best of it, patiently await until the next world and the next lifetime in which they can try again to fill the last dormant corner of their souls. A true homecoming.

re: critics of Dianna Agron and her “LIKES GIRLS” shirt OR What I Think It Means to Be An Ally

The majority of my dash all day has been mostly supportive of Dianna wearing the “LIKES GIRLS” shirt and her explanation of why she did that. But I’ve come across a few posts that have made me realize this view obviously isn’t held by everyone. I’ve seen quite a few posts saying that Dianna’s actions were actually hurtful to her proposed cause in that someone who identifies as an “ally” of the LGBT community shouldn’t purport to understand what that community is going through because they actually can’t know exactly what they are going through. Critics of Dianna’s actions, while mostly acknowledging that she does have good intentions, refer to the fact that she doesn’t understand what it feels like to be a lesbian because, as a person of privilege, she can take that shirt off at the end of the day.

While I understand the point of view of the critics, and what they are saying has merit, I still don’t really see how what Dianna did can constitute anything less than good. I understand that Dianna doing something that insinuated that she was a lesbian when she is not can be seen as belittling those who actually are lesbians - I fully understand this. It’s the exact reason that while as I may find myself physically attracted to a female celebrity from time to time or am completely open to the possibility of one day being sexually attracted to a woman (despite never having been to this date), I would still never identify myself as a bisexual because I feel that my doing so would reduce what it actually means to be someone who identifies by that label.

What I gather from Dianna’s Tumblr entry, however, seems to show very clearly that what she did was by no means her trying to relate her own experiences of being marginalized to that of a lesbian’s. Yes, she does talk about marginalization of many types, referring to not only prejudice faced by the LGBT community, but the prejudice that many people face at large. And while the marginalization that Dianna and similar allies of the LGBT community have faced can never be the same (please read “never be the same”, not better or worse) than that faced by the LGBT community, it is by no means a bad way to get people to start thinking about a basic way that those who are not allies can begin becoming one. Yes, an ally can never fully comprehend what it’s like. But how can any of us be allies without first being sympathetic? And how can any of us be sympathetic without first attempting empathy? Dianna’s pointing it out for us.

I will very obviously never know exactly what it’s like to be a member of the LGBT community. I cannot even begin to fathom the fears many members of that community face when coming out to their family and friends, when deciding whether to hide their sexual orientation for fear of opportunity loss or ridicule. I cannot begin to imagine what it’s like to be singled out and labeled for something that feels so natural, yet be told is so wrong. I accept this. But in order to be any kind of help at all in bringing equality for the LGBT community, and for a cause that I am as passionate about as Dianna, I had to begin by reaching into myself to find what I feel are the most basic tenants of humanity and see those qualities in everyone else. Striving for equality begins with being able to relate and find that when someone marginalizes you, you would feel as awful about yourself as I do about myself when someone marginalizes me.

Although it could be inferred from Dianna’s words that the prejudices faced by the LGBT community are relatable to an extent, as allies we obviously understand that the degree to which we are marginalized is not the same. It is due to this understanding that we are allies. I choose to be an ally because I see the disparity in the ways in which my heterosexual label affords me privileges that those identifying with a homosexual, bisexual, transgender or pansexual label don’t have. It is because I see these disparities that I work towards gaining equality for the LGBT community and consider myself an ally. It begins with being able to understand, and being able to understand doesn’t mean a full understanding of what it is to be a member of the community. I would never imply that (and neither does Dianna). It begins with the very primitive grasp of the notion that I wouldn’t want to be ridiculed for my sexual orientation or any label that I identify with, and no one else would either.

Yes, Dianna can take that shirt off at the end of the day. But she never intended for people to think that her donning a shirt saying “LIKES GIRLS” meant she was coming out as a lesbian. She clearly says that she did it as a celebration of being able to do something like this, exercising her right to wear a shirt like that and not be persecuted for it as someone may have been decades ago or even today in another part of the world. Dianna’s shirt is a celebration of the fact that we have begun to (please read “begun to”, not completely) remove the stigma of proclaiming affection for members of the same sex and/or gender. By wearing that shirt, she’s not belittling what it means to be a lesbian. She’s simply saying that she likes girls and even though it’s not the same way that a lesbian likes girls, she can very obviously understand why a lesbian would like girls that way. And that’s a message I will proudly attest to as an ally.

for life in the cage where courage's mate runs deep in the wake

My life has been a series of choices I've made because they were the ones that presented themselves to me. I'm often unsure that I've made any decisions at all.

Everything has always conformed to plan that's been set out for me. Go to school, go do some more school, earn a professional degree, work, have a career, make money, live a life. I haven't deviated from the plan and the only options within the plan are choice of school and choice of degree - of which my options have been slim and  my choices were based on rules that set the plan.

I make my choices based on a weighing of all my options. I aim for everything within my power and when I am offered an objectively valuable option, I take it. I take it automatically. I do this because every choice is another step in the plan and I'm incapable of refusing the plan's best option. Every choice that I have ever made is simply the result of picking whichever was the most valuable options. A computer model could make these choices. A computer model can catalog the level of prestige, the level of recognition and the level of income that every option will lead to and then just choose option with the largest theoretical profit. A computer model would have made the same decisions I have made. A computer model could live my life for me.

I am confined and I am afraid of finding out that my life is going to be series of milestones, none of which I ever had the option of not achieving. But most of all, I'm afraid because I'm ending this entry by saying -

- so is life.

for love is the breath

You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you’re tired. You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you didn’t even have a name for.

 - Richard Siken

I have a love for passages that make me wish deeply that I knew the feelings that they are conveying. When words strike you so profoundly that you feel as though you've lived its story, but in reality you are so incredibly removed that afterwards you feel empty.

I find it strangely fulfilling.

trying to be something that I wasn't at all

A lot of days I wake up feeling like life is a gift I was given,
but it's a gift that I didn't ask for.
A gift that I'm going to waste because I don't know what to do with it.
And it terrifies me.

do you want to be afraid?

I'm reading my Socioemotional Development Psychology textbook right now - the chapter on sadness. There's a bit about how humans are actually one of the only species that cry when we are distressed. Other species' versions of crying are usually distressing wails and calls, but no tearing up as we do. Some psychologists propose that crying is a habit from early life that we can't seem to kick. Crying is instrumental when we're young because we need to let our caregivers know that we're hungry or uncomfortable, lonely or just needy. But as adults, your words, facial expressions and demeanor suffice. Another example of something we carry over from childhood, despite it's relative uselessness, is play. Adults of other species are also rarely seen fooling around.

Adult play was such a strange concept to me before I read this passage. Not because I don't do it, or not because I don't do it often. I do, and a lot. So much of what we say and do is just play. Nothing more than play. To think of it as something that has no purpose except as something I won't let go of from childhood, has never made more sense to me before now.

I think that we play (and cry), even though they're behaviors that no longer serve a purpose in our adult lives, because we're trying to hang on to our childhoods. It makes sense that as a species that can reflect upon our own mortality, our own inevitable endings, that we would want to prolong the period in our lives in which we didn't have so many doubts and fears. The more we grow, the more we are aware. We routinely can't stop ourselves from wondering what happens tomorrow, next year, ten years from now or after the lights finally go off.

But childhood is when you know no bounds, you are at once omnipotent and omniscient. I can think of no truer example of ignorance defining bliss. And who's to say there's something wrong with that? Who's to say that a child's lack of awareness is anything short of wonderful? A child never doubts themselves when they play. A child becomes her own master and commander, her own hero and her own savior in a completely different way than an adult who has to eventually accept that they are all these things for themselves. As adults, you have to accept your existential loneliness and fight the good fight for all your hopes and dreams. A child chooses to fight, chooses their goals and desires - nay sayers be damned.

Next time you play, feel limitless. Climb a tree, build a pillow fort, crawl into a box and be a deep space explorer. We are regularly and continually helpless, grasping at straws to explain humanity and existence and being. But once in a while we need to empower ourselves. Go on, play on.

don't be distracted, don't be distracted

An open letter to my limitless brother, 

Every talent that you've ever gifted to show me has moved me in ways that I fail to communicate in words. From the first time I heard you sing to every moment that I've witnessed you perform (in every sense of the word), I can feel nothing short of pride and privilege. You continuously catch me off guard with all your capabilities and insight beyond your years.

Your future holds no locked doors, only paths to every endeavor you wish to pursue. Not knowing exactly what you want the future to hold doesn't make you any less driven than I was. Your abundant repertoire of skills begs to differ. So don't fret; sing to your heart's desire, act, play and write your every whim. You have shown me time and time again that you are boundless.

it's a long life, only one last chance

Lately I've been infatuated with the notion of running away. Not that I'd ever do it myself; I'm way too scared and nowhere near resourceful enough to pull anything like that off. But the idea of it is enthralling nonetheless. To uproot yourself - to start over - it would almost be too unfair. Getting a second chance, knowing everything that you already do about life, it would be completely unfair. It would be too akin to rebirth in that overstepping those boundaries and creating a new life for yourself would border on intelligent design.

It would be intelligent design by human hand, completely lacking in any scientific advancement whatsoever. The notion of running away is all of a sudden limitless, the closest to pure creation that I think I could ever feel.

It's strange how even when nothing's going wrong in life, the notion of running away is still so appealing. We spend so much time building lives, developing relationships and bonds that we'd surely be sad to leave behind. Yet if the opportunity arose to just uproot and plant ourselves far, far away, most of us would probably take it. That probably says something about how much we hold onto our regrets. It probably also says a lot about how many of us actually appreciate the variety of building blocks we're being offered to construct lives that our individual societies have already handed us blueprints to.

for the scariest things are not half as enslaved

So one of my dearest friends is suffering from a spell of "being-sad-for-absolutely-no-reason" tonight and I decided to give us a writing assignment to kick him out of the mood and to force me to post an entry. The assignment is to write what you imagine being in love is like or if you have been in love what it felt like. I'll have to write about the former.

I have a lot of hopes for what I want being in love to be like. But at the same time I'm a realist, bordering on pessimist, so in reality I have more fears than I have hopes on the subject. A lot of what I imagine being in love to be like is built from an early age on fairy tales and idealistic media representations. As we all grow up, however, we obviously come to realize that they are fairy tales and idealistic representations for a reason - they are incredibly rare circumstances bordering on the impossible. Now that I'm out of my teen years and done pining over boys in plaid who claim to wear their hearts on their sleeves, I've come to reconcile the ideal with the plausible.

I imagine being in love is actually exactly like the way it is in Cinderella or Snow White. I believe that some moments you've got to be able to look at your significant other and think "Wow, I lucked out." It's got to be love at first sight. Love at the first moment you wake up next to them in the morning. Love at the first moment you come home to them after a long day. Love at the first moment you sit in complete silence with this other incomplete soul that needs you just as much as you need them - need them to need you, to complete you and to calm your impossible soul.

Fairy tales aren't lying, they just tell a marginal part of the story. Cinderella and her prince are very much in love, but that doesn't mean they don't fight like all hell breaks loose on a bad day. And that's part of being in love too. There's no way that being so dependent and enthralled by one another isn't ever going to lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. There's just too much invested for us not to feel vulnerable when we're in love. And when we're vulnerable, we're likely to lash out and recoil - we're only human. But part of being in love must necessarily be reaching out to that other person and seeing through their eyes. It must be like seeing yourself, for real, for the first time. Every limit and imperfection is being laid bare for the other to see, for you to confront, and that's tremendously frightening - which I also imagine being in love is.

I think it must take a lot out of someone to be in love. It probably drains everything out of you more than anything else. At the same time though, it must be immensely satisfying to have someone else fill all the empty parts of you, to know that you're not alone. I guess that's the reason why someone would give themselves up to be stripped naked and split open for another person. There's the hope that they will creep and crawl inside all the nooks and crannies, will accept even when they can't understand and will touch upon every blemish and see only perfections. When it happens -

My hopes will outweigh my fears.

and if you said what you want, I would laugh it off.

Every time I hear someone say that they know they are right because the bible tells them so, I feel the undying urge to run my fist through their face - and I never condone violence. Let's get this little thing straight: God did not write the bible. Men - who are every little bit capable of doing things that surely anyone of any religion or belief can agree are wrong and unjust - wrote the bible. Any passage you could use in that book to support any argument subjects your argument to every fault and imperfection that the men who wrote it are also subject to. When you appeal to the bible to support your stance on something, there is no one on this earth who can say indefinitely whether you are right or wrong. But the bottom line will always be this: the bible cannot now or ever be a guarantor of your correctness.