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[beautiful-someones-treasure-gem]

On Love

You need to love yourself before you can love others. This post is for after you’ve learned that.

It feels like a momentous task to share my thoughts on this topic, but I’m just going to say what comes to mind and leave it at that. Like anything else, the concept of love is dramatized for entertainment purposes, and so we grow up being shown that real love is charged, complicated, and earned through extraordinary circumstances - and I’m talking about every kind of love, be it platonic or romantic. It’s not real love until it’s proven. Until then, it’s just a word. 

I do believe that part, at the very least. I think that if you love someone, above all, you pay attention to them. What do they appreciate? What are they concerned about? What are their experiences? We currently live in a world where it is possible to live only for ourselves, and sometimes that is all we can manage to do. But when you have this person, or these people, who you consistently think of, talk to, spend your time with - that means something. Our time is limited. What you choose to do with your time speaks volumes when it comes to others. I cannot stress this enough. “Proving” your love to someone doesn’t have to be as dramatic as swinging in on a rope to catch them as they fall from a tree (I’d love to, but I definitely bailed on the rope climbing portion of gym class). For ordinary people, love is proven by caring about all of the details, and giving of yourself more than is necessary for the social status quo. 

It’s also about compromise.

You will never fully understand someone else’s whole lived experience, but you will certainly put forth the effort to show you care about them. Compromise is all about balancing emotions and needs with one another, and showing a willingness to understand these things, as well as knowing both of your limits. This is all to say that love is not simple. It never will be, because people are inherently complicated. Emotions can run amok, needs may not be met, limits could be reached. These things happen all of the time, but what those involved choose to do once they do happen is what matters the most. You either choose to ask questions, to understand, to empathize, to apologize, and to work together so that you come out of it better than before. Or you don’t. 

Live long enough and you’ll likely be burned by your fair share of relationships - friends, family, lovers, etc. Walls start forming before you even realize what’s happening, but there’s a reason for that. Survival is a key aspect of who we are, and that’s by no means limited to the physical.  This makes it all the more meaningful when you choose to open yourself up to future relationships. You realize you could end up getting hurt again, but the risk is worth it because maybe this person seems nice, maybe you’ve learned enough to protect yourself if things don’t work out, and maybe you’re tired of feeling lonely. I think taking these chances is worth it, as life is made all the richer with people you can love and be loved by without fear. Just be sure you never settle for anything less than that - because you love yourself, and you can’t be wasting your efforts on people who don’t deserve you. 

[beautiful-someones-treasure-gem]

On Passion

Much like the flame, passion too may be as dangerous as it is beautiful.

The concept of passion has recently been somewhat of a concern to me. I find myself wondering about it the more I consume media, as the word itself is often used as part and parcel to other concepts, such as love or hobbies or careers. In general, it’s used as a way to enhance the understanding of these things, and therefore it is often seen as a desirable thing to possess. You may even hear a person say that they couldn’t entertain the thought of being romantically involved with someone who wasn’t passionate about something. 

On one hand, I can’t fully disagree with this. It’s exciting to listen to someone speak about something that truly interests them like nothing else. If you have the opportunity to watch someone conducting a craft they’re passionate about, it can even be entrancing. These are things that make others compelling, as if they’re sharing an intimate part about themselves with the world, and you’re fortunate enough to witness it. They aren’t simply describing an idea, nor are they just completing a project. They are energized by what they’re doing, and we are attracted to that energy. 

On the other hand, passion can also lead to unfortunate circumstances. Perhaps you’ve heard of a “crime of passion”, where it’s not enough to describe a crime simply as such, but to elevate the understanding of it as something more. The emotions that manifest as a result of such passion can cause a person to do unspeakable things, and whether they feel regret or not afterwards, it’s already done. Similarly, passion can lead a person to obsession, causing them to shut all but the object of said passion out from their lives. The people who fall victim to these consequences of passion are anything but attractive to others, and certainly we would like to believe that they are the minority. 

For the most part, however, I would say people think of passion in terms of what they find attractive or admirable about a person. 

I’ve always felt that I’m quite mild in temperament in comparison to others. As a child I was abysmally shy. My dad regularly had to tell me that I needed to speak up since nobody could hear me. I kept my interests to myself just in case someone made fun of me for them. In school I would try my best not to stand out at all, as any sort of public attention was insufferably embarrassing. There are plenty of reasons why I was all of those things and more, and it would be some time until I was able to shake the worst of it. As I am now, I would still rather not call attention to myself, though attention no longer makes me weak at the knees, for the most part. I also lack that outgoing, animated way of speaking that many others possess, so meeting new people isn’t always easy. Even more, I have a difficult time expressing myself outside of writing, so I often have to take time to think about what I want to say before I say it. I’ve come a long way when it comes to speaking, but I still feel that I don’t typically find all of the right words to express how I truly feel about something in a conversation. 

I wanted to reflect on passion because I feel I’m a rather outwardly dispassionate person, at least to those that don’t know me. In the loud, bright world of fireworks that captivate the masses, I feel I am more like the flame on a candle. I accept this, as much as I’d like to think that being the other way would somehow make life easier. It would not - I would wear it terribly, and it’s only to my detriment to continue making these comparisons. It’s simply not in my nature, and that’s all right. My fireworks are all within, to be seen by those willing to take the time to find them. 

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to keep your passions in whatever way feels natural to you, and do your best not to compare yourself to others. Those worth your time will see your passion so long as they’re paying attention, whether it’s loud and bright, or quietly glowing.

[beautiful-someones-treasure-gem]

On Names

In all your life you will not hear a sound more meaningful to you than that of your name. 

As someone who enjoys the dreaming up of characters and writing stories around them, I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching the perfect names for many such dreams. I would think of their appearance, what they valued, how they existed naturally in their world. Then, I would search for a name that not only sounded right for them, but also held a meaning that reflected them as a whole. Other times, I would choose a name for a character simply because I liked it, or because it was the name of a character that already existed that I admired. Rarely, the character would conveniently tell me their name, and that would be that. What mattered was that the name felt right, like it had belonged to that person all along. 

This is not how it always works in reality. We are not born and asked what we would like to be called for the rest of our lives, and so we are given a name by someone for some reason, or perhaps no reason at all, and that is who we are. We may never question our name, and go through life perfectly content to be called whatever it is. We may be raised to believe we inherited the name from an ancestor, and that we should be proud to have it. We may grow to resent our name for any number of reasons, wishing it were never given to us in the first place - that we had been given some agency in its choosing.  

Speaking from my own experience, I was told there was no significant meaning to the name I was given, only that my birth mother wanted to call me something incredibly unfortunate, and so my father chose something much less unfortunate. I was satisfied with this answer for quite some time, even grateful about it. Had my birth mother succeeded, I would have been bullied even more in school than I already was, so I certainly wasn’t going to complain. However, I still remember thinking up lists of names I would rather be called all the way back in elementary school. It wasn’t that I resented my name, there were simply so many other names that appealed to me more. I wouldn’t share these lists with anyone, though, nor would I speak about them. There was this strong sense of embarrassment about them, as if it were a ridiculous idea for someone to want to change their name. Instead, I would use the lists to name the characters I dreamed up for my stories, and tried not to think too hard about my own. 

When I moved to a different school district for middle school and high school, the name dilemma deepened, though I’m not sure I realized it until long after I graduated. It just so happened that I shared a name with three or four other students in my class, and so to avoid confusion one of my teachers asked if it was okay to call me by a nickname. The nickname in question was the first part of my last name. I was ten or eleven years old when I was asked my permission to be called this, so I simply agreed to it without thinking about it very much. From that moment on, until some time after graduation, all of the teachers I would have and all of the friends I would make would know me by this nickname. 

I’ll be the first to admit that how I was as a person growing up, how I existed naturally in my  world, was as someone who wanted to please others and to avoid conflict. It’s because of this that it took me some time to realize that I didn’t like being called this nickname at all, and I didn’t like being called my first name either, for that matter. I felt no attachment to either name because they had nothing to do with me. They didn’t feel like they belonged to me at all, only that they were bestowed upon me as a matter of convenience more than anything else. Once I finally got around to accepting this, I began to think of my lists. They were long discarded, their contents largely forgotten, but I wondered if I had already been onto something as a child, and had just been too embarrassed to bring it up to anyone. 

I’m fortunate enough to have such supportive family and friends. I still remember overcoming that sensation of embarrassment when I finally told them that I had chosen a new name for myself - a name that I felt belonged to me because I searched for it and found meaning in it and chose it for myself. I knew it would be difficult for them to adjust to calling me something different, especially the ones who have known me all my life, but I was long past regulating my own life for the benefit of others. I hope this story proves just how much it means to me that my chosen name is accepted and used by the ones that matter to me most. I am more grateful than I can ever truly express. When I hear that name spoken by my loved ones, or when I use it to introduce myself to someone new, the thrum of joy I feel each time reminds me that I did exactly the right thing. My younger self would be thrilled to know it.

Whatever your circumstance, I only encourage you to be thoughtful about one’s name, whether it be your own or that of another. That sound carries with it more weight than any other. 

[beautiful-someones-treasure-gem]

On Death

“The sooner you can come to terms with death, the better your life will be.”

This is typically what I say whenever the subject of death comes up, rarely though it does. In fact, if it is to come up in conversation, I’m more often than not the one to broach it. Even so, I have to be mindful that though I find death to be an interesting topic to philosophize about, it’s one that the majority of others would rather avoid than discuss. It’s not to be brought up with people unless they indicate they’re likewise interested, so this topic is typically saved for friends and family - the ones that are amenable to it, anyway. 

I find it unfortunate that the subject of death is largely avoided, but I’m in no way surprised by this. There was a time, as I’m sure there is with all people, when I would rather not think about death as well. It’s a taboo subject for many, only spoken about when there is no other choice in the matter, such as the passing of a loved one. This happened to me for the first time when I was around 15 years old, when my Mema passed away. I was incredibly close with her. She spent most of her life in a wheelchair due to polio, and since I lived with her I was, from a very young age, accustomed to helping her. I would lift her legs into their supports on the wheelchair in the mornings, and I would water the flowers in her garden where she couldn’t reach. She’s the reason I love flowers as much as I do, inspiring the way I name certain things, placing hidden meanings behind each one. This very blog and its name is, in a way, inspired by her. She’s also why I love hugging my loved ones so much. Every day after school she would be outside watering her garden when the bus dropped me off, and I would run from the bus straight into her arms.

When she passed away I remember being ridiculed by my birth mother, among other family members, for not crying. It was a strange thing to be made to feel like something was wrong with me after such a saddening event, as if I was somehow making it worse for them. It was one of the many ways my family mistreated me as a child, which I wouldn’t recognize as mistreatment until I grew older. Regardless, I did end up crying several days later for quite some time. I remember that day clearly, because it was the thought that I would never be able to hug her again that got me crying, finally understanding just what it meant for her to be gone. I’ve skipped over some details for brevity’s sake - my grandmother’s death was a long and disturbing event that could have been prevented with better care, which is one of the many things I resent certain family members for - but this is all to say my first experience with death was far from quiet and simple. Even so, it would be some time before I fully accepted that death was something to be discussed and accepted. In the years that followed, I tucked my Mema’s death somewhere I couldn’t easily reach, yet it affected me greatly on the surface. It wasn’t ever brought up again, and I didn’t know enough to realize that I needed to talk about it. As a result of this and other family issues, I became depressed, directionless, and made plenty of unwise choices that are still difficult not to look back on and regret. 

I’m sharing this to convey that death is a subject that should not be avoided, no matter the circumstances. Death will affect all people, and since it’s such a significant, oftentimes upsetting event, it can only benefit our collective mental health to address it as soon as we are able. So many live in fear of something that every human in the world can relate to, and I find that to be a shame. It will only hurt ourselves and others to go through life pretending it does not exist, because it’s all around us, all of the time.

As I am now, still possessing that innate fear of death that all people have, I can say that I’ve come to terms with my own death as well as I can, and I live a better life for it. I don’t fear that it may happen, I simply know that it will sooner or later. Perhaps it’s the fear of the unknown that most people are concerned with. When will it happen? What will happen afterwards? To the former, I say don’t waste your energy fearing the timing of death, because life is chaotic and messy and unfair, and you’ll only run yourself ragged with fearing something you cannot predict. To the latter, I think that’s too personal a question to answer. I believe people may want the concept of the afterlife to not be personal - for there to be a definitive answer, so that it’s no longer unknown. Unfortunately, as things stand now, there is no way of truly knowing. So again, I would recommend against spending energy on that path of thought.

It is the fear of death that I want to see expelled from people through discussion, as much as it can be, at any rate. Acceptance of death can ultimately be comforting, and perhaps more importantly it can be motivating as well. It’s part of what motivated me to start this blog, to share my thoughts and opinions on certain subjects. I’m not sure anyone will read it, but it comforts me to know that people could chance upon it, and to know that there will be a record of my thoughts out there to be found, hopefully even after I’m long gone.