It's funny, now that I look back on life, I realize what an unfair question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was for the young me. It presupposed that we cannot be what we already are.
The world asks you what you want to be, then tells you what not to be.
I guess what that question really implies is a preconditioning of sorts. Followed by several clouded judgments on your initial instinct.
What the world really means by that question is:
1) Are you going to do what we expect of you?
2) and is it acceptable enough (brag worthy to the rest of the community)?
Some are strong and will persevere through the unholistic wordsmiths.
Others will sadly fall under their spider web.
I wonder how many Picassos and Nietsches of our time that we have lost in this battle...
I recently discovered that we now live disposable lives.
Yesterday I went to the park to clean my mind.
After 30 minutes, I found my favourite bench and ran off to it, for it has the perfect view of the soccer team yelling away, the swings, the dogs, the runners. It's exceptional.
A few minutes later, an elderly couple sat next to me and they held hands. We started talking and I asked them how long they've been together. They said : it'll be 60 years next month!
I was floored.
When I asked them how they managed, she replied with : Generations, dear, generations. We were fortunate to be born in a time where when something was broken you fought hard to fix it. Not just throw it out like disposable batteries.
That concept really stuck with me.
Fighting through struggle.
Over the next few hours, I began to reflect on the generations...trying to pin point the exact moment where we started to become this "disposable" generation.
Not a particular moment in time connected with me, mainly because I am certain that this has formed within a few generations. The link? Technology.
The more attached we have become to being wired, the more detached we have become with ourselves. We've lost our sense of nature, our sense of touch.
The only "touch" we refer to is on our iPads.
We throw away anything that has a crack in it, because we always want to have the latest and flashiest, to impress people we don't like, with money we usually don't have.
Is this the life?
Is this what we have made of life?
How have we gone from Gandhi and Percy Shelley to video camera phones and morally grey reality tv shows as forms of education?
XtG
A mask.
The most commonly used prop in any social setting.
It is in which the world finds its synchronicity.
We have allowed ourselves to become so immune to them that we've found we can only merely see them if aided with the visualization.
My hypothesis : Give an individual a mask and it is only then that he/she will reveal their truth.
Most would humbly argue otherwise. Their common argument may be conditioned to something such as : Wearing a mask is to pretend to be someone/something
else. The mask can be a kind of language that expresses the emotion
of the figure one chooses to create.
All valid, but some masks
may serve more than one purpose. The primal use of the masks in which I refer to are more the physical manifestation on the concept
of providing the wearer with the means to transform their personality with their truths (or what they believe to be their truths). These masks are made for those people who want
to capture themselves in a certain moment.
I have come to learn that it is only the brave wear them out for the world to see. For it is the most honest action.
They can openly lay their intent for the world's viewing eye.
A friend has recently taught me this lesson, one in which I shall grow to cherish quite dearly. As the masks have been accompanying her lately, I find the horror in the removal of the masks. She understands how dangerous a mask can be.
For they are or become what they pretend to be. That is where the honesty lays.
I shall end this with Andre Berthiaume who cleverly stated the following : We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”
XtG
