Subtle Perfection

                Life is filled with the good, the bad, and the ugly and everything in between. I think it’s safe to say we can all agree on that. Growing up in a family that attended church on a regular basis I was taught to believe that nothing in life can be perfect. It wasn’t a bad thing, but we were taught in correspondence to that, that God is the only perfect part of the world. However this post has little to do with God but a lot to do with perfection. Eventually I decided that I didn’t believe that at all, instead I believed that perfection exists in so many miscellaneous parts of our everyday lives yet the problem is we fail to notice it. That’s because perfection is fast, and it’s subtle.

                Perfection is a fleeting moment that lasts a matter of minutes and can go by completely unnoticed. It’s like that split second when you’re on a late night drive with some good friends, the music’s turned up loud and you take a quick glance outside and you can see the starts attempting with all their might to overpower the city lights. 5 seconds of perfection. Or on a day like today, when you’ve had almost 6 months of winter but on this morning you woke up to warmth and sun poking through your window. Another 5 seconds of perfection.

                The thing about perfection is that it disappears pretty fast. Most likely because our brains work in a way that allows us to knit picky about what could possibly be wrong about a certain moment. But the other thing about perfection is that it’s moments like those that will keep you going even when nothing can possibly be good.

                So ultimately, perfection does exist, contrary to popular belief… You just have to take the time to notice it.

These Time Are Hard

            

               They told us high school will be the best years of our lives. Now if I asked you what the first word that comes to your mind when I say “high school” is, I’m guessing the vast majority would declare that it does not fit in agreement with that original statement. The rest of you are lying or barely attending high school or maybe a few of you are just super optimistic. The point is, they lied to us.

                I remember believing it too. I remember believing that high school was certainly going to be the best years of my life. Then I met grade 9 and the dream began to flicker. The funny thing is, that even after the past 3 years I still believed them when they said grade 12 would be the best year of your life. It’s not really. That’s not to say high school is all bad and brutal. That would be a lie as well. But it’s not the best years of your life either. It gets better.

                High school to say the least is a bloody rollercoaster, and grade 12 is the part with a million ups and downs and definitely a few loops. Everything from the cliché broken hearts (which don’t seem so cliché once you’ve had your heart broken) to the loss of friendships to never ending parental dilemmas. It’s all there. Slapped in your face almost every other day. It’s those years where you make a lot more than a few mistakes and promise you’ll learn from them over and over again. I mean, we certainly find ways to make it fun, and there will definitely be a collection of good memories when we all leave, but majority of us have probably mistaken school for hell from time to time.

                On the plus side, I think it’s safe to believe it will get better than this. Maybe worse too at times, I won’t lie, but certainly a lot better as well. These are nowhere the best years of our lives.

These Things Will Change (or not)

If you want to narrow down the cause of a large portion of our everyday problems you meet the term expectations. We expect life to work a certain way. I mean we knowingly admit that life never works the way we want it to, but our expectations still exist, hidden in the back corner of our brains.

                You know when you go on a vacation and the destination is so beautiful it’s almost surreal? Or maybe the destination doesn’t matter, what matters is the people you are with. Regardless of any kind of nuances when you’re on a vacation with a group of people aka your friends there’s a bond there. There’s something about being removed from every other regular day distraction that provides this sense of closeness. And for some reason, though it never actually happens, we expect that when we return home these bonds will remain. It doesn’t work like that, but time and time again we cling to these friendships that were so perfect as if they will remain that way.

                It works kind of like this:
                You go away to a new place and even though you’re with familiar people (sometimes, sometimes not) the destination is different than what you’re used to. So all the sudden there’s this sense of change. As well there are no distractions so whoever you’re with becomes this close knit group. You begin to forget that back home nothing has changed at all, and back home a million and one distractions exist. So all the sudden you return home feeling different and you get slapped in the face with this realization that nothing is different here at all.

                If you went on any recent trip, or even if you can think back to a time like grade eight camp, this will all make a lot of sense. If not, it won’t at all.

Time Heals All Wounds

That’s what they all say right? Just give it time. Time heals all wounds. Only time will tell. That’s all fine and dandy and sure time matters but they forget to tell you the prerequisite. And that of course, is that time really doesn’t do a whole lot, unless you do something first.

                Ultimately when a problem arises we have this instinct to let it play out in time. We feel as if the prolonged hours and days and weeks are somehow going to act as a Band-Aid to whatever issue we’ve got ourselves in. All the sudden after time has taken its toll we can rip off that Band-Aid and the wound will have magically disappeared.

                Time doesn’t really work that way though. The only way for time’s extra effects to kick in is if you make a decision to fix the problem first. After you’ve done everything you can to solve whatever problem it is then the only thing really left is time. That’s when it starts to work (sometimes to your advantage and sometimes not).

                The point is we can’t rely on the passing hours to change whatever dilemma we may find ourselves in. Nothing great ever comes of that decision. Instead, we need to take action ourselves. We need to have the incentive to take matters into our own hands and deal with them head on.

                Now of course, like any other misconception, there can be parts of it that remain accompanied by a little truth. Sometimes a little bit of time is necessary. People need a break from people, that’s life. But when you rely on time as your only source of problem solving you just create more problems.  

                Essentially, use your time wisely.

Dishonesty is the best policy... Wait what?

Is honesty really the best policy?

                This is one that will forever and always never cease to amaze me. Somehow, and I don’t know how, but honesty became the worst policy. All the sudden we’re so startled by how much the truth can hurt that we think it’s safer just to avoid it in general. We cheat, so we lie about it. We hurt our friends, so we lie about it. We make mistakes, so we lie about it. But why? When will we warm up to the idea that yes the truth hurts and so do most things in life, but the truth hurts less than a figured-out-lie.

                Here’s the second part. If we’re making some kind of decision that we have to lie about, why the hell are we making that decision anyway? It’s like lying has become second nature to us now and it all the sudden opens doors for us to make decisions that we know we shouldn’t.  If you can’t tell the truth about the decision that you are making you probably should not be making it. I’m not talking mistakes, because everybody makes those. Mistakes happens, just own up to it I suppose. In this case I’m talking about those decisions that you go into thinking “as long as nobody finds out…”

                And I totally understand that it’s hard. There’s nothing easy about telling the truth when you know it will hurt. And every single person makes mistakes. So ultimately this is definitely easier said than done. But it needs to be done. We need to stop relying on dishonesty and this false reliance on the truth never being figured out.

                I think the most difficult part with this is that it seems like this is a rule you can bend without breaking.

"Vogue: Dead Girls are Skinnier"

                We all know this misconception, and far too many of us have dealt with it head on. Essentially, to be pretty is to be skinny. We know that it’s not actually, or at least we say we do, yet a good portion of us will say “I wish I looked like her” when we come across an image of an exceedingly slim girl. We want her thigh gap and her collar bone structure and her back dimples and flat stomach. We have an unhealthy attraction to being skinny even though in the back of our minds we know that’s not the ideal body figure.

                So now I’ll give a big s/o to Jennifer Lawrence. If you don’t know who she is, she played the lead role of Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games. However, I must admit I think her role in Silver Linings Playbook surpasses her excellence in any preceding movie. However, for her lead in the Hunger Games and apparently soon to be Catching Fire, she was told she needed to lose weight in order to play the role of the starving hunger games contestant. Her response? Well she said no. She said she would not be willing to promote anorexia to any of her audience. Criticism sky rocketed and yet she ceased to conform to the critics.

        

"First, people say how so many actresses in Hollywood look anorexic, and now they are criticizing me for looking normal."

"Interviewers have asked Jennifier Lawerence how much she weighs and why didn’t lose weight when Katniss is meant to be slim/skinny. She said that she was careful about not losing weight for catching fire, because she didn’t want to promote anorexia to young girls watching the films. Even though she’s getting criticised she still believes in what is right. Jennifer Lawerence you are my hero." -via tumblr

        

           The funny thing is we judge models. We tear them up and talk about how society has become too messed up for believing that everyone has to be skinny. Then all the sudden we get someone like Jennifer Lawrence who actually has a healthy body weight and suddenly she needs to lose weight. It’s all so ridiculous. Welcome to the 20^th century.

In the business of dying

   
    You only live once. Otherwise known as "yolo" by the present and currently evolving teenage population. The slogan was first founded by modern day "rapper", Drake, who slipped the punch line into a hit song. Like most new fads in teen culture this one spread like wildfire. Ironically it failed to promote any kind of motivation towards setting goal for a one-time-only life. Instead it did the opposite. Yolo, became an opportunity to commit the most irrational choices in order to die doing something unbelievable (this wasn't actually the point, but often the choices made due to this phrase are recipe's for disaster... or death). Rather, the slogan should probably be altered and extended to "you-only-die-once-so-you-might-as-well-go-out-with-a-bang". However, not many people want to have their life slogan mentioning their death in it, so "yolo" remained as is.
        The term promoted higher levels of alcohol consumption and mischievous behaviour (to say the least). It became a term often used before parties and events such as the now famous Quebec 2011 trip where, as rumour has it, a girl got "yolo" tattooed on her butt (extreme yoloist apparently). Though the term has begun its downward spiral due to overuse, it still remains the backup phrase for a night your mother would not approve of.
         The reality is that whether we want to directly admit to it or not, I think we've all been there. We've all been about to make a stupid decision and thought "yolo". Maybe we said it out loud or maybe we kept it to ourselves, nevertheless, it was thought of. The message was addicting, I can attest to that, we all can. However, regardless of having used the term and have having fun while using it, I believe it holds a firm misconception. The idea of living once should promote young to live a fulfilled life of goal setting, planning, and achievements and so on. Rather due to our present day interest in everything party related and so on, the term went directly to that sector of teen culture. It's a ironic, but I suppose irony has a twisted sense of fun attached to it.