worth.

"how dreary to be somebody!''
                                          -emily dickinson



during a lecture at our school, our principal said if everyone were to be happy with what you were doing, you're essentially doing nothing.

you're doing nothing for yourself.

there was a point where i felt as if one person not liking my decision was equivalent to it not being the right decision. even if was the right decision for me, it wasn't the right decision for them.
so it was never the right decision.

maybe it isn't as simple as that in some cases but i lost out on a lot of opportunities out of dilemmas born out of my inane need to please everybody. i'm scrapping that habit.

honestly? i'm kind of sick of having to tailor my opinions according to situations.
i wanna be my own person. 

philosophy.

"three o'clock has always been too late or too early for anything you want to do"
                                                                       -jean-paul sartre





my mind is buzzing.


sir sartre once said "my place is nowhere, i am unwanted"
two quotes in one post, i know, tacky
but bear with me.

in a story, "the letter", there is a phrase that drew my attention;cheerless existence.
it was in context to a man who had lived five years without a letter from his daughter.

i'm not at the age where i should be relating to this. nor have i had an experience but there's something about the juxtaposition of this entire damn situation that makes me wonder which decisions i had taken that led to me sitting here at 1:45pm questioning my essence. 

aristotle proposed the idea of essence; we exist for a final purpose. we may be awful at living up to our essence or we may be great at it. maybe we'll never figure out what our essence is but it's tied into our very being. it's not something we can deny.

you end up being the world's most terrifying criminal? there, that's your essence.
you end up being the next shakespeare? there you go.

but sartre (i've been reading about this guy for ages, he's a hoot) said existence precedes essence.
that essentially means everything's up to you.
literally.

it's easier said than done but we were presented with a horrifying amount of freedom the moment we came into existence. you're choosing your every step.
this fact led some existentialists to senility but some reveled in it.

i'm getting to the point.
while my literature teacher waxed lyrical about the use of the phrase "cheerless existence" i got to thinking if there really was someone out there existing without an inkling of happiness, how can they stay alive?

by aristotle's point of view, living without happiness would equate to being your essence.
by sartre's point of view, living without happiness would equate to the culmination of every glance, every decision, every step, breath, wink, tear of your life.

is all of this really our fault?
is the world dying our fault?
the people getting assaulted everyday, trump getting elected, the children starving in the corners of the world, the homeless people, the poverty stricken population; is this what the world was meant to come to or is this because of us?

are we to blame?

racquets.

"summer will end soon enough, and childhood as well"
                                                        -george r.r. martin



on the way back home, i overheard a conversation between two primary schoolers. one of them was asking if the other person was free this evening so they could play. a conversation of thorough disarray ensued; they finally decided to settle who was coming to whose house over text.

i remembered when i was in primary, i used to get anxious throughout the day to come back home just so my friends and i could meet up and we'd put our imagination to good use for an hour and a half.
somewhere along the way, school got too much and we holed ourselves up in our room desperately scribbling away at papers. there wasn't any time for imagination. in a way, i guess there still isn't.

i miss being seven years old.
i miss not knowing what social media was, what relationships were, what love feels like.
i miss when the only thing that could make me sad was when one of my friends couldn't come over to play.

some of them still live around the street. my oldest friend moved away in 8th grade. ever since then, i've drifted apart from them.

i feel like things went too fast.
it's too late to slow them down. 

purple rain.

"when you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?"
                                       -jennifer niven



if there's one thing that the past week has taught me, its how to be happy for other people.
i'm a bitter person, it's not a secret. as a 7 year old, hearing about my aunt's trips to all these exotic places that i had never heard of made my eyes prick with tears because why can't i go too? 

even now, i'm slightly more traveled, slightly more well-read, i still can't say im true to myself when i watch my friends walk up on stage to receive an award that i was vying for.

but there's this person i met.
let's call them alex. alex is, by far, the most considerate person i've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
the day they brought a glass of coke back for me from the canteen when they had gone to get one for themselves is something i'll never forget.
you rarely find nice people around here.
alex is one of the rare people.

while them and the rest of our team sat in a row, looking up at the stage with dimmed hope, they said something kind of profound that blew me away.
they said, even if you don't win anything, clap for the people that did.

now none of that was new to me, my parents had been telling me that, my teachers had been telling me that, almost everyone had told me that at some point or the other.
but the way they said it made me believe it.

suffice it to say, i wasn't sad that day. i came back feeling mildly buzzed owing to the fact that one of the biggest tensions of the month had finally gotten over and somewhere along the journey of getting through that tension, i met a friend i don't want to lose.

it's a privilege that's looked over by so many people, i guess; meeting people that change you. i met someone who taught me a lesson i had been trying to grasp ever since i was ten.
and even though there's a 90% chance  alex and i will drift apart in the coming month, they're not someone i can forget.

maybe the fact that eventually all our problems are gonna seem so trivial escape me sometimes. i don't need to spend so many nights awake anxious about the fact that i may never meet someone who truly admires me for who i am. nor is there a need to disregard the sick part of my brain to make room for the parts that still work.

i don't need to feel as if i can't be true to others, and in extension be true to myself.
positivity (positiveness?) is not something that comes as easily to you when your brain physically refuses to make you feel so. but there's something to be said about the fact that it isn't an excuse to slack for months on end.

i need to get my life together.
it's time to stop being bitter.

flights.

"no dark sarcasm in the classroom"
                                                 -roger waters, pink floyd





what a long, long, long week.
but oh, what a wonderful one.


i made new friends.
had new experiences.
learnt new things.
i traveled alone for the first time, i drove around my native city with a few of my friends and saw places i had never seen before.
i saw the cap and the belt of one of the greatest freedom fighters of my country.
i saw a few of his handwritten letters.

i haven't slept in what seems like a century (this is, in fact, a lyric by shinedown). everybody who had come on the trip with me went to school today. i didn't.

i haven't written in ages. nor have i drawn. however, to bolster that little creative voice in me i bought a journal as a sort of solace, i guess.

i met one of the best people i have ever had the pleasure of knowing. it's left me with this warm buzz within myself; the fact that the first new friend i made in 2018 is such a pleasant person is strangely comforting.

everybody hates a tourist (this happens to be a lyric in common people). surprisingly, all of us fit right within the people back in that city. being my hometown, it was nice seeing what it's like there in may and not my summer vacation months. for the others, it was their first time seeing the city. i felt a tiny sense of pride when they said it was beautiful.

im back home now.
one thing i'm scared about is that all ten of us will drift apart but im hoping that for once, we're granted with something good.

when you find people like them, you never let them go.