Souls Aren't Soldiers

I don't believe in nations. I think the reason behind all the wars and negativity taking place between countries today, is because of existence of countries.

We sing the national anthem everyday.
We're told to take pride in our country.
We're told that the only way to become glorious is to give all we can for our countries.
We're told to fight for our country.
We take pride in our soldiers, we're told to become soldiers.

As The Killers said, 'I've got a soul, but I'm not a soldier.'
We're not, though.
Most of us, are only souls. We can't withstand being soldiers.

Society says we're not allowed to like other countries. Being proud of a country we aren't born in to is a crime. Countries are supposed to bring people together, instead they tear people apart. They tell us our countries give us freedom, but freedom isn't free.

However, I know the idea and existence of a nation is essential for an organized world. Without nations, we'd be a muddle of orgranisms without passports or citizenships tied to our names. We'd be lacking identities and organization.

I may not believe in nations, but I do believe in democracy. I believe in equality. I believe everybody should have the equal amounts of rights, no matter where they're born into. I believe that if we're required to have nations, we also require nationalism. We require unity. We need something or someone to bring us together.

We need art, culture, beauty, and traditions.
We've got enough success. We don't need new scientists, we need lovers of people and music.
Bring out the dreamers and the singers, the painters and the writers. Bring out the thinkers and philosophers, the kids that get along with everybody.


We need to believe in nations. We need to believe in the WORLD as a whole, not just a nation. We need to be more than competitors for success. We need to help and hand.

If we just take the time and understand other countries and cultures we wouldn't be this way. We would be a more tolerant, more peaceful world. The sad thing is, every time something or somebody is different from us, we toss our snotty noses in the air and judge. Humans are powerful creatures, with powerful minds. The think is, we need to learn how to use our power for the good.

After all, with great power comes great responsibility. We've got the power, we just need to learn to be responsible. 

Twisted Seasons, Twisting Life

The green pushed out of the brown, into life. The brown, twisted, dark, and grey is appreciative. It finally has some color, it's something new. It is no longer a colorless, almost dead wood. No, it has become spring itself, personified of course.

Spring heated itself to summer. The green melted into a dry brown, only to be given its color back through rain. Sweat trickled down the trees, on to the ground. Sleepy eyes flickered, sleepier backs stretched. Smiles and water and sweat mixed and intertwined and melted. Flowers popped up, and down, with the monsoon.

Rain splashed, rain poured, rain was personified into cats and dogs. Rain came into the ears, the eyes, the house. It carried with it the happiness and joy of summer. It brought the tears and cries and pain, home. It cleaned and washed and scrubbed, more than any Spring Cleaning ever could.

Dry, crackled leaves stooped crying for water. They called and called the rain that would never come. Dry throats, drier tongues. Dirty shoes, dustier suns. Dry cold, and thick jackets, all found their way home. Red cheeks, cracked lips. Every super market has run out of lip balms. The sold are busy, palming the way into life.

Cold sky, wet clouds, and twisted brown becomes dead again. The harsh sun, cold as ever. Evolution is taking place. Numb nose, red ears, clatter along with the teeth. Dead flowers, a funeral for all. Dead trees and the dead grass, begging for a burial that isn't frozen. The bears sleep, and the hares moan. Who does not want this on going blizzard to end?

The green pushes out of the brown, into life. Twisting and turning, interrupting the sullen. Twisting and turning, joy seeps in. Twisting and turning, slowly and steadily, the seasons twist out your life. It's spring again. 

Be Rebel With A Cause

James Dean.
Audrey Hepburn.
Brigitte Bardot.
Elizabeth Taylor.

These names hold the identities of people we have never personally known, and will never get the chance to know. These names are the names of people who are considered to be legend-wait for it-dary. These people are who teenager then and now strive to be. These names are always linked with a face or attribute. These names will never truly be forgotten.

Who wouldn't want to be as cool and intimidating as James Dean?
Who could refuse a face like Audrey Hepburn and a body like Brigitte Bardot's?
Who wouldn't want to have the historical eyes of Elizabeth Taylor? The eyes the world will forever remember.

Cuba Gooding Jr.
Helen Hunt.
Geraldine Page.
Art Carney.

These are names of people who aren't remember. The usual teenager can not link these names with a face or a movie. These names are forgettable. It doesn't mean that they weren't good at acting. It does not mean that they didn't make a difference. It doesn't mean that they were not good people. It does not mean that they didn't matter.

Yet, these four individuals and many, many more have died and will never be remembered.

Don't we all want to be remembered? Don't we all want to leave a mark in this world before we leave? Don't we want to matter enough so that our names are remembered, our faces idolized, and our features admired, even after we die?

So, what does it take to be remembered? Why do we want to be remembered in the first place? Why can't be just live our life and be content with being forgotten. Sooner or later, everything will be gone. Human kind will vanish and leave no trace of ever existing. If it will be all gone, then why are we so intent on being recollected of after death? Why do we write, create, and work so hard if it will all amount to nothing? Why shouldn't we just spend our lives eating fast food and watching reality TV, because what does it matter anyway?

Why should we work so hard if we might end up being a Helen Hunt or Geraldine Page? Not coddled nor remembered. 

Humans like risks. It's a risk. Life is a risk.
It's a risk to give the world your best. You may not get anything in return, or you might get everything.
It's a risk to make friends. They could really hate you, but they could love you too.
It's a risk to love and be loved. It's a risk to be a parent, a risk to be a child. It's a risk to be a girl working. It's a risk to be a boy working. It's a risk to send that email or text message that could change your whole life. It's a risk to pick up a book or watch a movie. It's a risk to travel or drink coffee. It's a risk to live.

Through living, you could either lose it all or gain everything.
It's a risk worth taking.

Geraldine Page may not be remembered by most, but she should be. Why? Because she took the risk. She followed her dreams, and even if it never lead anywhere or became anything...the risk she took was a  big one, a courageous one.

So take the risk to live. Take the scary risk to live your life the way you want it. It could be a total waste, but it could be worth it all.

You might be as cool as James Dean after all. Go ahead be a rebel, but stick to a cause. 

Things You've Never Thought

            As a teenager and a person, I know how much one can think. I can only imagine the number of thoughts that cross our mind in a second. We think so much, so frequently, we can’t keep track of everything we’ve ever thought. Even if you write down everything you think you are thinking, you miss a lot. However this fact of the universe is peculiar as who we are is directly proportional to the thoughts we’ve thought and the happenings we’ve experience.  The bizarre thing is that we can never know exactly what we are thinking during every single moment of the day. Thus, we can never exactly know who we are. There is only one reason that every single person is different from another; no two people can ever think the exact same things.

            There are a lot of different types of thoughts that our minds form. We contemplate just about everything in between the existence of god to whether our neighbor thinks we’re a noisy household. Thoughts are very judgmental things. With thoughts, one tends to critic oneself and all of one’s surroundings. This means we judge and examine everything from our pimply faces to Miley Cyrus’s new haircut. We give our opinions on things we shouldn’t have an opinion on in the first place. Through the currently famous book “The Secret”, many of us have found that to get what you want out of life, you must control your thoughts. This is easy to say but hard to do. Initially it seems like a good idea. However, every yin must have its yang.
            There are many things we think unconsciously. These thoughts make us who we are. If we were to control and shape our every thought, would we ever be able to be our selves? Our minds think such weird, complex thoughts. If we changed those thoughts into thoughts of the happy, driven person we want to be, will be ever be ourselves? Is controlling our thoughts like performing plastic surgery to our brains?

            There are many things that you’ve never thought of, that I have. There are many things I’ve never thought of, that you have. You and your mother will never have ever thought the exact same things. However, the thoughts of you and your brother may have more common thoughts. Your thoughts and your dog’s thoughts will be less common than you and your brother’s. You and your friends will most likely a majority of your thoughts in common. However, the thoughts of two organisms can never be the same.  By never, I mean never as in never, ever. I’m not Justin Bieber; sometimes the saying ‘Never Say Never’ is utterly false.

            Have you realized that a book is just a long, complicated thought of the author? The things you’ve got to memorize for your next history test are just the thoughts of somebody who lived not so long ago. The idea of beauty and the things that are considered ‘facts’ are just thoughts. Everything the human kind thinks or has thought it knows, is just the compilation of all the thoughts that a human has ever thought to pursue. Therefore, education is just a long thought process. If a person acted upon every thought a brain has ever thought, human kind would have so much more knowledge.
            The thing is that thoughts create everything and anything we’ve every known. However, in today’s world, instead of thinking one is simply told to memorize another’s thoughts. That is a horrible, horrible form of education. We should have the right to think and question everything and anything around us. Our freedom of thought is almost non-existent at one point. In school, they say they’ll teach us everything we’ll ever need to know. That’s a lie. Sure, teachers teach us of the French people’s fight to freedom, they teach us why the sky is blue, how a rainbow is formed, and why stars twinkle. However, they never teach us the single most important lesson that we need in life: how to think. That however, isn’t exactly an entirely true statement. They teach us to think in a certain way. They teach us that you have to add in order to multiply. They teach us how to think and then problem solve. However, they never encourage us to question what we supposedly learn or memorize. They never tell us why a certain type of person is ‘beautiful’ while another is ‘ugly’. They don’t tell us how a person’s beauty level is decided. They don’t teach us to disagree with something that is already stated true. They encourage questions, but discourage the search for answers. For example, if I ask why ‘red’ is called ‘red’ and not ‘blue’, ‘orange’, or ‘filiw’, I will not get an answer. If is ask what color the sky is the answer will be blue, but that’s a lie. The sky can be many different colors during many different time frames. However, we teach our children to accept answers that are unacceptable. Why?

            If thoughts are the reason we are who we are, and questions are thoughts, and if we are not taught to form either creative or correct questions, does that mean we’ve become people we aren’t supposed to be? Does that mean that we’ve already been tricked into doing plastic surgery in our minds? It’s a known ‘fact’ that the mind is the one place in which we have complete freedom. Is that a lie, because our minds are already so much influenced by other minds that they can never truly be free? These are questions I cannot answer. These are questions I may never be able to answer. These are questions I was taught not to answer.

            Times are changing though. In classrooms today, it’s more about thinking and less about mugging up. My parents were told to write and write and write the same words of a language in order to be fluent in it. Today, I am told to understand the roots of words in order to learn a language. It’s more about understanding everything around and about you, instead of memorizing the thoughts of people that are probably currently dead. Therefore, I can rightly state that human kind is indeed advancing.

            Sometimes I wish I were born later in time. I would have more opportunities to become myself. There would be a more correct, moral form of education. I would be able to think my own thoughts more fluently than I currently am. All in all, it’s hard to think thoughts that you really think. It’s hard to become yourself when everybody else is telling you not to. However, you must. You must because as Oscar Wilde once said, “Be yourself; everybody else is already taken”. Therefore, you must work your hardest to be yourself. As easy as that sounds, it never is. 

The Writer's Inspiration Bureau

I love to write, but only when writing loves me. It's the contradiction most of the world lives with: you love something and it doesn't love you back, what do you do? Do you keep loving it or do you pretend you don't love it because it doesn't love you. That's when you have to choose, between the heart and the brain. However, when it comes to writing not loving me, I don't love it. 

When words flow smoothly from my head, onto my fingertips, and straight to the keyboard, finally on to the page, it's wonderful. It's fantastic when what I'm thinking unravels and untwists itself to create legible, understandable words. However, how about when my thoughts don't unravel themselves? What about when my thoughts are frivolous? What about when my thoughts aren't about anything important, but just about monotonous activities that I take part in everyday? 

What happens when I, the writer, stops thinking about now, the moment, but waits and waits for a better, more interesting tomorrow? 

What happens when my thoughts aren't thought-provoking anymore? What does that mean? Does it mean that I'm done with words? However, that's not possible, as I've loved words too much and too fast to get unattached. As Galileo said he couldn't be afraid of the night as he's loved the stars much too fondly, I can't be afraid of a little writer's block that's been building itself for months because I love words too much. Right? Or wrong? 

Why can't I unravel my thoughts? 

Like the story where the author, Elsie Brown, wrote in one of her stories of a writer who just couldn't get ideas and gets help from the ghosts of the Writer's Inspiration Bureau; I desperately need to borrow a idea ghost for a day or two. 

Every writer needs his muse, and mine must be nature.  During the summertime, the world becomes alive. The trees are green, the air is sticky with the sun's sweat, and the atmosphere is smiling down upon all of us. Just by smelling flowers in the air and tasting the lemonade the neighborhood kids sell, I want to write, observe, and write again. Then the autumn comes, with it's beautiful, sad leaves always falling. Writing's fine until then, a little difficult but nothing I can't handle. Then comes the dreadful winter, always so cold and dark. When that horrible, depressing weather comes in, I can't lift up a pen! My mind goes blank, and I spend all of my time wishing for the sun to come out. The comes spring, as it is now, and ideas begin to blossom but not bloom. Just little sentences, without the commas form through my keyboard. Just as the weather gets warmer and mother nature comes back to life, so do I. 

Thus, reader, I wrote this dramatic little blog post to get you to understand why I haven't wrote in a while. I just couldn't, it wasn't summer yet. However, now the weather is getting sunnier and brighter and so am I. Thanks for the patience, hopefully by April I won't long to be a character in Elsie Brown's novel. 

It all comes down to one fact: I love words, and words love me. This love, much the other loves, are seasonal. I must wait a little longer until my words and thoughts love me back yet. 

A Long Run-On

Who are you?
You are not your height
You are not your weight
You are not you not your attitude
You are not your make up nor clothes

You are not the music they make you listen to
Nor the formulae you can never remember
You're not the mundane mortal,
That they want you to believe you are

You are your bed, unmade at noon
You are the new school books that smell like the New Year
You are unsteady hands, and a lip-biting habit
You are your much-too-loud, body-shaking chuckles

You are the vocab lists you never memorized,
You are procrastination before a final
But you are also success,
For you are your love of learning
You are your favorite author's words, every single one of them

You are your mother's homemade chicken soup on a rainy day
You are your little brother's laughing eyes,
And his ability to withstand being bossed around
You are your father's driving lessons,
The ones that always end up,  where they began

You are your grand-father's stories
And the grass on your front lawn
You are your neighbor's hospitality,
And the fur on your dog's coat

You are your guilty pleasures,
The ones that weren't made for guilt
You are not the Top 40 radio hits,
Nor the pop-stars that you've watched fade away

You're not your laptop or cell phone
You are more than cells and cytoplasm,
You're the words that slip from your lips,
at 2 am, into darkness
That hold you together, while you fall apart

You are your favorite singer's voice,
And that time when you ran across the finish line before anybody else,
You are your first-grade teacher's christmas cookies,
And your high school principal's never ending lectures

Who you are
Can't be definied by your name, height, or age
Who you are
is defined by who and what you love,
more than waking up late on a Sunday morning.

Horrendous, Harrowing Hospitals

I hate hospitals. I hate the cold, white hallways. I hate the whispers and the stares. I hate nurses who act too friendly and smile too much. I hate the sound of the doctor's echo because it's too quiet. I hate the smell of antiseptics and the stench of the decaying. I hate being aware of the time ticking away. I hate the supposedly "child friendly"rooms that ruin disney characters. I hate the cloud of uncertainty that is constantly looming ahead. I hate the sound of silence, that's just too loud. I hate the thought that the hospital is the place an abundance of people come to be saved, but die instead. I hate the fact I have to experience this everytime I go there, whether it's because I have a cold or a stomach virus. I know that doctors save lives everyday and hospitals are required. I know all the benefits that come from a good health care system. I know I should appreciate hospitals, but I don't. I respect doctors. However, hospitals are just horrible.

For somebody who hates hospitals so much, I for one, tend to spend a lot of time in them. This isn't due to the fact that I like to make sick people feel better. It's because, living in a third-world country and constantly inhaling more carbon dioxide than oxygen, I've developed a very poor immune system. As a result of my poor immunity, I get sick. I get very sick. It's not the same type of illness all the time though, it differs every few months. I get stomach flus easily. I've had an ulcer scare, and been prescribed the wrong medicine, resulting in me getting even sicker. I've had typhoid a couple of times. I get colds too though, like a normal human. I'm pretty sure my lungs are more black than a chain-smoker, even though I've never held a cigarette in my life, because of all the dirt I breath in on a daily basis. Experiencing these diseases may have been educational to a point, if I had not spent most of those horrible, horrible months (especially the typhoid months) in the hospital. Trying to be my own physiologist, I've decided that I dislike hospitals because I dislike being sick. But again, don't we all? However, my case is a little bit unique. I've gotten more illnesses than the average person, I've spent more time with doctors than an average teenager, and I've developed a phobia of being sick. I may have developed emetophobia over time. I tend to associate getting sick with going to the hospital, and maybe THAT'S why I don't like hospitals. It's because I've got emetophobia.

As I dislike hospitals so much, I came up with a list of things a hospital could do to make us "haters', hate less:

1) Treat Patients Normally: Nobody wants pity and sad stares when they're sick. Where's all the optimism gone? Treat patients normally, no matter how sick they are. However, if your normal is actually mean, then just be friendly. Well, don't be over-friendly. Just don't look at them funny, or smile too much (psttt, nurses!).

2) Put Happy Magazines In The Waiting Room: Put happy magazines in the waiting room, none of the boring real estate ones: people come here to get better, not buy a house. Please, please, please refrain from putting those magazines that are always telling people to go on unhealthy diets. Some of those ideas are dangerous, and you don't want the patients to try them at home. Put up happy, funny, and pretty magazines. Put up informative and educational magazines, it couldn't be a bad thing to learn something while waiting.

3) Do Something To Cover Up The Antiseptic's Smell: I don't know what, but those scents that smell too clean, are kind of intimidating. Also, the other type of smell is pain scary.

4) Nurses, STOP SMILING SO MUCH: Nurses, I love and respect you. However, if I'm down with 103 degree fever, I do not appreciate you smiling so brightly ALL THE TIME. I'm sure that you pay your dentist well to take care of those pearly whites, but please display them elsewhere. I have nothing against smiling, I do it all the time. Just please don't smile at the wrong moments. By wrong moments, I mean the ones when you're just about to stick a needle the size of a pencil into a child's arm and you smile, while saying, "this may hurt a little". WHY WOULD YOU SMILE THEN? Do you like to see people in pain? Especially children? Please don't smile during times like this, it makes you look like a sadist. Other than bad-timed smiling, you're good. The small talk is fine, just sometimes silence is better.

5) Stop Trying To Be Child-Friendly To Teenagers: I'm not 5. Please don't talk to me like I can not understand you, because I can. I can also analyze your hand gestures, don't need to over-do those. Please don't put me in rooms in which Winnie The Pooh is painted on the walls in odd colours. I prefer a mustard-yellow pooh with a red shirt, not a neon-yellow pooh with a pink shirt. That's too psychedelic for me, especially when I'm sick. I prefer plain white walls, thank you very much. I'd love it if you didn't provide me with crayons and paper every time I step into the waiting room. If I were healthy enough to colour, I'm sure I'd be healthy enough to go to school.

I believe those 5 suggestions are sufficiently drenched with sarcasm (sorry about that, old habits die hard) for the moment.  I could give you suggestions on how to resolve our country's poor health care system, but you most likely wouldn't listen to me. All in all, I don't like hospitals. However, I hope to like them someday as I'll probably be spending more time there, whether I like it or not.