humanity
For better or for worse, relationships reveal the core of the human condition.
The Transformation
The gymnasium has undergone a metamorphosis: Cologne and flowers have replaced fusty air; an acoustic guitar strums along to a sultry voice; black and red balloons slow dance to the music; string lights reflect off the tiny sparkles on my dress, making it resemble a midnight sky. Faces are exposed—smiles revealed and outlines shown. I’m witnessing an unspoken respect, a unified rainbow.
By Lauren Forte8 years ago in Humans
#ATaleofTwoStrangers
Ever have one of those days where you feel everything and everyone is evil around you? Fortunately or unfortunately, I get that consistently. So, when it is one of those mean blue-purple days when I feel completely at my wit's end with humanity, I rummage through my mind map to an instance that happened a few years ago. I share this instance with you guys in the hope that some of you may find solace thinking about it, as much as my chaotic mind does. 🙂
By Athira Pillai8 years ago in Humans
How My Life Would Be Different If I Had Better Listening Skills
Hearing is the act of perceiving sound by ear. Listening is something you consciously choose to do. There have been plenty of times when I ramble on and on about nothing, but when it's someone else's turn to speak, I lose focus. Don't get me wrong, I don't do it on purpose, it's as if my brain can't sit still. Why should I expect people to listen to what I have to say when I can't do the same? It comes off as selfish whenever people are talking to me and I zone out, even after they've sat there for 10 minutes listening to me. It's the same with everybody: friends, family, even teachers! At first, I thought I was being selfish, then later on I realized that I don't listen the same as everyone else, I listen better when I'm distracted.
By Alexandra Marrufo8 years ago in Humans
Pulling Rank: Best Examples of Selfishness in the Face of Precarious Situations Listed from Selfish Devotion to Self-Interested Care
When questioned about desperate situations like being stranded on a desert isle or sharing meager rations with your wife or husband aboard a rickety raft, Ayn Rand would classify such scenarios as “lifeboat” questions. These questions constitute statistically improbable situations. She would go onto explain that life is not lived on a remote location nor in a battered sea vessel. It is lived in the way of meeting with all kinds of people in every scale of ability and trading with them. The key to both of these extreme cases is the fact that morality would have to play the largest part. To perish while your spouse lived is not a sacrifice. To gobble up all of the rations is not a selfish act but a selfless one, if you value your wife or husband over the fact that he or she should live and not you, and that life wouldn’t be worth living without them.
By Skyler Saunders8 years ago in Humans
Ahhhhhhhh
Something inside of me has become quite entitled. Instead of being angry at myself for the stupid things I do, or for the lack of interesting qualities to my personality, or for the fact that I long for something new and to be spontaneously exciting, I yet never put myself in any situation outside of my comfort zone— I am angry at the world.I scream and shout at this world that has allowed me to grow up on it's floors and play in it's dirt, or splash in it's sea which holds me every time I long for it when I am so selfish, and yet I feel entitled to more? I do not blame myself for wishing to have already amounted to more, to have done and seen more things. I don't know what I expect from this world that has cradled me for my 17 years inhabited upon it, has given me a free education and free healthcare to mend my broken bones after falls off of climbing frames and opened up my mind to intricacies and questions still unanswered and yet I am so angry I feel so bored. Am I wasting the best years of my life? A question asked by myself to myself daily and everyday the answer is 'of course, stop worrying about everything you idiot' and I complain there is nothing more in my town to see, not one thing more I can do to excite my heart and dilate my eyes and make me fall in love. Like the sun rising slowly above the sea on a chilly morning, or a passage surrounded in a jungle of shrubbery that you have not yet walked down enjoying the scents of all of the flowers and plants, or just feeling alive. I am in love with being alive.And it is when I think about this that I realise I am not angry at the world, I am just very scared of it. I am scared of what it means to be alive, to feel spontaneous and free in a world that holds me captive surround by such strong, colossal creatures. The sea, what an amazing creature that will some day overpower us all and reign supreme with it's waves that break and the glorious sound of it during the night. The sea always sounds better at night, peaceful and relaxed, reminding you of it's giving nature when all we do is take from it and dump into it our waste, and often our tears, because what is more 'alive' than sobbing into the gentle sea. For the colossal beasts that are the mountains, the over lookers and protectors of us that stand so strong against harsh winds and armies of warriors and climbers that wish to challenge the mountains, what fools to think they can beat the nature of such a vain show off. I compare myself to the sea and the mountains, and the billions of people they surround and I feel truly insignificant. It's hard to feel you can amount to your best potential when your competition is an entire world of purity and beauty, an entire world of war, and community, and love and hate and peace and nature. It scares me to live in a world where there are people identical to myself, and then better. A step up from my normal pessimistic, somewhat narcissistic, fearful way of life, full of adoration for anyone remotely interesting and reading book after book getting lost in their stories to avoid facing the world ahead of me. You may describe me as 17, someday I wish to describe me as so much more.
By hello baby8 years ago in Humans
