Tuesday, May 14, 2013

You're so much cooler than the cool kids

I had already planned this post but finding the statement from A&F CEO Jeffries was the perfect way to make my point.  My last post I talked about the people who are bullied becoming the bullies.  Today it's about those of us who were the outcasts and how "different" is "better".

I'm a female so that already comes with its own issues of being made to feel "less than".  I was kind of lucky because my dad believed I could do anything, my maternal great-grandmother had been a rebel and renaissance woman and both my mom and her sister were very headstrong.  When "women's lib" came along the women in my family were half-way there.

Today the most prominent community we are trying to help is the LGBT, but they're not the only ones who get picked on.  The smart kids, the too tall kids, the too short kids, the too fat kids, the too skinny kids, kids with glasses, braces, curly red hair or purple mohawks, kids who shop at Wal-Mart and kids who shop at Hot Topic, arts kids, math kids, etc. etc.  And that just looking at the 5-17 year olds (K-12) and the crap they put up with at school.  Later on in life it is the adults of any counter-culture who don't have someone physically in their face every day but who get all the subliminal messages from TV, movies, magazines, the media that we just don't fit and that makes us somehow bad? wrong? TARGETS!

Here's the thing though.  Is the flock "right"?  I don't think so.  I think they're scared but societies and cultures have provided them with armor of physical strength, "beauty" and set goals so they feel like they are more "right" than you.  Consider this though...why are they trying so hard and why do they never feel like they've accomplished anything.  Going to their graves they will still feel like they have fallen short because that's how the game is played.  The people who run the game always have a twist that will prove that you're not quite "perfect"...yet.  Of course you never reach "perfect" before you die so you die believing you have somehow failed.  You know how you failed?  You failed at being YOU!

Look at people trying to live up to the game.  Are they ever truly happy?  None of them that I have met.  They're too busy trying too hard to fold themselves into a shape that The Fates never intended for them.  Those of us who seek to find out who we were born to be actually feel accomplished when we discover another talent we were born with.  Me!  I started writing when I was 14.  I didn't realize then what it released in me and how much it opened me up, allowed my wings to unfold and the joy that filled me with.  I got away from writing for a number of years and spent those years trying to fold myself into society's and my significant other's shapes.  It hurt...physically.  I smoked to much. I ended up with heart palpitations and anxiety attacks.  I cried a lot.  Now that I am free of that and not only writing but discovering my other arts and all the artists around me, I'm happy.  In fact I have found joy and peace on this plain.  I don't have to wait for some reward in the afterlife.  It is in the here and now.

Go find you bliss.  Go find you.  While you're young and stuck in the hostile environment of school, find the people like you who don't fit.  Create your own community. You probably have already-in the music or art room, in the shop, at math or science club.  These are sanctuaries where you can heal each other and give each other strength.  Remember you are emotionally stronger than your tormentors.  You're character in solid.  Theirs is weak because it depends on living by someone else's rules.  Yes, you have to still be nice.  In my house the rules were "No hitting.  No kicking.  No biting. No pushing.  No lying and no yelling"  Besides when you nice back, they don't know how to deal with that.  That's why they pick on you.  Because you don't play by their rules.  You can depend on yourself.  Your friends are real and you can trust them.  With you and your friends it is not about competition but about collaboration.  You know how to compromise...not your core self but when trying to meld two or more ideas.

You are the people who will change the world. You are the people who are creative enough to go searching for the best solutions to all kinds of things.  Because you refuse to let go of your imagination you will not just be a better artist but a better scientist, better mathematician, better engineer, better architect.  You will design the best green energy source.  You will find homeopathic remedies that actually cure without causing other problems, you will figure out ways for the world to work together. The sheeple have been trying it their way for a long time and it still doesn't work.  Divide and conquer, segregate and control lives everyone going to their graves unfulfilled.  They may have money, a big house, a fancy car and have traveled the world but they have neither joy nor peace.  The time for the "other people" to try it their way has come.  So be YOU!!


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