My Familiar Strangers

          Somewhere out there, a group of strangers are walking about, performing the motions of their everyday life: doing laundry, walking to dinner, dancing in a club, reading at home, or dozing on a bus. These strangers that you are so unaware of are going to become such integral parts of your life that you will wonder how you even existed before them. These are your strangers.

          All of us have our own set of strangers on this planet; strangers who will cease to be strangers when we meet them and they change our lives in insignificant or tremendous ways; strangers-turned-friends-and-lovers who will revert back into strangers when they slip out of our lives, forgetting and forgotten.

             But the people we love during our time - the people whose lives get inexplicably intertwined with ours - were once strangers on the street with closed off faces, and heads bent over unread text messages. And some of those we love might end up being strangers again.

          What is it? That force that pushes us together and twists our lives into one? Don’t tell me it is chance, because how can chance be the reason for so many people meeting their soul mates in this populated world.

There is something out there that is bringing us to our strangers, and pulling us away from them. If you’re ever feeling down, remember that your strangers are speeding over as fast as they can.

From: tumblr.com

This time next year..

    It's a bad sign that I don't know how to start this post, because I thought the news I had to share was exciting enough to come bursting out of me.

        I probably don't make any sense, but when do I ever? Okay, here goes...

I got into New York University - my top choice school. The school of my dreams really. 

The problem is that I'm not excited at all (if I was a normal excited person, the first line of this post would have been "I GOT INTO NYU!!!"). 

       Maybe it's because the truth of the matter hasn't sunk in yet, or maybe it's because the truth has sunk in so much that I'm so over it. 

      

           But I will spare you of whatever introspection I will get up to because of this news - mainly because even the thought of college (which has been my long and short term goal for 2 years) makes me feel strangley blocked.

Future Home: Washington Square, New York City
From: pinterest.com

Testing Fate

             "You can't have everything"
It's a fact of life, and a piece of advice that is repeated over and over again to people who have lost things - loved ones, prized possessions, and competitions.

       It's also a piece of advice that I've never heard. No, I'm not bragging here, because the fact truly scares me. I've been told repeatedly that I could have the world if I only just tried; I've been told that all I had to do is ask, and the entire universe would conspire in my favor.
      (You're probably wondering if the people in my life are self-help book writers, and, believe me, I've wondered that so many times myself).

    But even if an opposing fact has been drilled into me, it is the idea that one can't have everything that I believe in. I know that somebody's gotta lose, and I know that, eventually, that somebody is going to be me.

            And that is a scary thing to know. It's like walking through a creepy forest at night with full knowledge of your impending misfortunes, knowing that there are things out there that might hurt you, but not knowing what, or when, or how.

This gif is so on par haha
From: tumblr.com

A long long time ago, I wrote a blog post about choices, and someone in the comments asked me to share with him (and everyone else who might read my blog) a heart break of mine - a time when I have really suffered. It's been 11 months now, and I have not gotten back to him.
       It's not that I don't want to post something so detail-oriented about my life (though that would be a major issue), it's that I've had no heart break. Not really.

I'm only just 17, and the most horrible things I've seen and heard are from the news, or the internet, or people around me. My heart has never been broken - maybe cracked once or twice from a past relationship, or lost friends, or lonliness, but never broken.

Isn't that luck? That I have a whole heart?
I don't feel luck. I've been scared of catastrophe for weeks now - a belief that my world is going to crumble.

From: favim.com

I hope this is just a big bad premonition, because I do not want to live my life afraid of an inevitable catastrophe down the road; that way of life might just be the catastrophe.

Quote of the Day ~ Albert Camus

            A cigarette hanging from his lips, and an existentialist thought swirling in his mind. Albert Camus is one of those people I'll always talk about, but never get down to reading - I already know that.
     I will, however, analyse his quotes like I have read his work. It's just what I do.

From: waitingforbarbarians.com

      Sometimes I look at this quote and wonder if he is talking to me - me who curls up with hefty books with protagonists filled with life and grand theories; me who counts thinking about life as one of her hobbies; me who talks and laughs and rants, but never does.

     But there's something to be said for watching life from the sidelines. There really is. Some of us are never meant to be center-stage, we're happy enough watching all the madness, taking it all in and smiling at the beautiful mess of it all.
     
     When I first joined Tumblr I was on a mission to be widely heard and read, and I set about it very methodically. Very interesting posts (unfortunately, I am the only one who agrees with this proclaimation), periodic posting, relevant (to the point of frustration) hastags, and a bunch of other self-taught marketing strategies (which obviously didn't work).
      It was very exhausting really- this pointless string of meticulously lifeless advertising. And I found myself wondering why anyone would actually enjoy the Tumblr community when it's so hard to live in.

     I was too busy creating to enjoy what had already been created.
One day, I just went on Tumblr, and followed a bunch of people. It was one of those unexplainable whims that I'm grateful for (I've learnt to be grateful for all of these unthinking actions - even the stupider ones with the terrifying consequences). And I just scrolled through my brand-new newsfeed for hours. I read, laughed, and smiled at the creativity, the humor, and the passion of it all.

      Nowadays, my mission on Tumblr isn't to attain fame, but to just make interesting content to match that of the amazing people who appear on my feed everyday.

    I'm not discounting the importance of playing the game, but I am saying that the spectator stands are pretty awesome. Sometimes you're just too tired to dance all night, sing-scream your favorite songs, tick off items in your bucket list, and all those other cliche things that the phrase "Live Life to the Fullest" may bring to your head. Those times are the best for just thinking and watching, admiring and discussing.

         To live is not just to do, but to think and watch and smile too. 

The Art of Math

             I lie quietly in the warmth of my blankets, watching the daylight filtering in through the blinds on my window, composed and ready for the new day. Then, the all-invasive, ungodly noise of my alarm sounds, and the few gorgeous moments of perfection when everything seems possible are broken.

            Still, I throw the blankets off with enough enthusiasm, and head out into the real world.

An hour or so later..things start to go bad.

          It’s 8:30 in the morning, and I’m hunched over my desk while a bald old man, with a big smile and slightly-offensive jokes, rambles on and on in a language I just don’t understand. Math.

           All around me, puffy-eyed and burnt-out looking college students peer short-sightedly at the board (as if looking harder and longer at those dizzying symbols is going to magically make them understand what the hell is going on).

          Me, I dutifully take notes on unintelligible (and often one-sided) conversations between the teacher and the worried-looking students up front, while doodling distorted math-y symbols on the edges of my paper.

One time, I even write a poem. Not a very good one, but a poem nonetheless.

        When my hour of torture is up, I quickly walk away, not wanting to fraternize with the other inmates. A little while later, I bump into some friends, and then all hell breaks lose.

        “I hate math...No, really I hate it. I HATE MATH!!!”

To this, I get a few glares -sometimes they are sighs- but no replies. Everyone I know has given up arguing with me - they have left me to rant and rot in my irrationality. For really, they are the rational ones, and I am the irrational one. Why do I even take math if I hate it and complain about it so much?

Why do I take a Calculus class if I’m not a math person, and if it’s not even a requirement for graduation? Why do I take a class that I so obviously hate if no one is forcing me to take it?

These are all questions, I asked myself and others asked me even as I wailed about integrals, derivatives, and axes.

            It took me a while to figure it out, but I think that I’m drawn to math because it is so mechanical, and perfect, and logical: all those characteristics that are not present in the real world. Math is always truthful - there are no opinions, and perspectives, and paradigms here - it’s all about the truth.

           This subject of absolute truth is exactly the opposite of the subject of art, and the exact opposite of the world. But can an entire subject exist devoid of art?
           I want to find the art in math - the flowing, the irrational, the innately human art of math, and I think I’m already starting to find it.
           Far from being the creatively devoid formulaic subject, math has some amount of flexibility to it. And its furthest reaches, on the very edge of our math knowledge, exist quirks and faults where all rules are abandoned, and the numbers are just as unpredictable as humans. 

Infinities collide, and seemingly normal curves twist into psychedelic shapes. It feels like we’ve only been dealing with elementary math for so long where everything is so obvious - just like how the alphabets are logical and true, but when put together they can really create art...Maybe the new edges of mathematical knowledge are what really matter, and even thinking about it is quite exciting (though I would hardly consider boring ol’ Calculus a thought-provoking subject...but maybe further down the line or if I just look closer, I’ll be able to see uncanny and slightly crooked connections and quirks).

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It's all in the Moments

                Every psychoanalyst/philosopher ever has been obsessed with finding the purpose of human life. I mean, it is a noble goal to work towards: revolutionizing the culture, and saving the world from its own mundanity. And it’s a sensible question to ask: What are we doing here really?
                 But just because the question is noble and sensible, doesn’t mean its answer has to be so too. Although (almost) all conjectures for achieving the purpose of life involve being happy - most of them disagree on the precise definition of said happiness. The variety of the definitions of happiness have one thing in common, however, and that is a nobility, sensibility, and grandeur as expressed by the very question they are answering.
 

From: www.layman.org

             To the great philosophers of the West (as far as I have studied them...which is not very much), happiness is a transcending ideal. The moment one is truly happy, one is enlightened, set above the rest, and -in a way- more than (less than?) human. 

             Some (I don’t want to point fingers but...IT WAS PLATO!!) say happiness is living in a just and peaceful society (a.k.a. utopia ugh. Read what I think about utopia in my Utopia Theory here), and others say that happiness is finding what you are good at, and doing it well (Aristotle). Even Abraham Maslow believed that only the elite few - the top shelf - would be able to achieve true happiness (or self-actualization). 

Happiness, true happiness, to these people is not an everyday life occurrence - they probably define laughter as the masses’ forceful exhalation of air when they are confronted with something they do not quite understand. They probably consider relationships as a means for survival, and a stepping stone towards the real deal --> self-actualization.

They probably think that we the ignorant public have no idea what it is to be happy, but my ignorant mind tells me that happiness is in the little moments like laughing over some forgotten infectious joke with a friend, an afternoon spent talking when you find yourself staring into the depths of your companion’s soul, a particular look from a familiar stranger a bus stop, or holding hands with (or even talking to) your first crush. Happiness is not some sort of renunciation of humanity - and being a perfect person, it is the most human of things - it is an emotion that is a symbol of all that we live for on this planet.  

From: www.quoteeveryday.com

           Happiness isn’t a state of mind, it cannot be captured. It is just a feeling, an ephemeral moment of realization and connection. Far from being the stepping stone to demi-God status, being happy is really the feeling of realizing that you are a loving and loved human.