Just Listen

            I spend a lot of time listening to other people’s problems, in fact it is one of the reasons I study psychology. I want to help people, like Spiderman and Batman minus the masks and tights. So I sit with an empty mind and open heart listening to the lives of those who trust me with their business. I am not therapist yet but I can assure you that with me your thoughts are as sacred as my own. You who has also had to throw down with life in the ring does not to explain your tears to me for I have been there.

Just listen

Can you hear it? The sound of a one way conversation? The sound of a soul pouring itself out like golden lemonade out of a crystal pitcher, do you get the picture? When have you ever heard something so honest? Not since you were a child crying in your parents arms over how you don’t fit in at school. Not since you questioned your own sanity, looked in the mirror and said “I am done arguing with my reflection.” Not since you realized that you will never be “that guy” or “that girl” so you took out the crayons of your inner mind and started to draw a picture of who you really are.

Just listen

Is it clicking? Does it connect like Legos, stacking higher and higher until you finally have a ledge to stand out on and see the world? Do the puzzle pieces fit, muddled parts of a whole slowing being drawn together like magnets showing you an image of the truth? How does it feel knowing that when door opens and life floods out that the negative feelings do not have to be absorbed into your bones, that you can just let the dam break and wave goodbye to dark portions of the past?

Just listen

What are you listening for? We are all flawed and that’s the truth, but do you have the gall to listen to your best friend tell you about a wrong turn they made on the road of life without backstreet driving? The world is not new nor is anything that lives on it. Everything you judge has been judged before, everything you hate has been hated before, and everything you fear has been feared before. As you stand there and judge me I stand as I always have. Hands in my pockets and eye’s looking forward, for unlike you I have no reason to hate my own shadow. I can wait. I can wait until you are done picking me apart piece by piece because funny thing about sponges, they always put themselves back together. Are you done? Good.

So just listen, because now it’s time for me to speak the truth.

Sophomore State of Mind

Well I am back to the land of Southern Canada and it feels very odd. On the one hand all my people are back in one place and it feels good to be near some of my closest friends again. On the other hand I feel like I left some important pieces of myself back in Cali and the loss of those pieces is driving me up the wall.

            I consider myself to be a fairly independent person, I survived a year with minimal contact my parents and most of the people I had grown to depend on in high school. While others broke free and went wild with their new college freedom I walked around campus in the dead of night, basking in the glory of just being able to say that I made it this far. Somehow though this year feels different. Now that summer is over it is time to get back to work and shake off the desire to lie around all day and do nothing, and I know this but I am having a hard time adjusting. There are so many things that I want to do, write, endorse, and be a part of but this past week I have just not felt worthy.

            I love my school and I stand by that, and I feel like this is the year that will make or break me. Now is the time to rely and hard work and habit and hope that at the end of the day that is enough to get me to where I need to go. I am a man of faith, whether or not you believe in my faith matters little to me, because it makes up a big part of who I am. We all are who we all are and that is a lesson that mankind has yet to learn. I have dealt with the terrible, stupid, and negative but they are no worse than me nor I better than them. The only difference between people is how much they are willing to change and adapt to survive. I have not had to adapt for a while and now maybe I need to evolve.

            The second year and I can already feel things starting to come into place. I am not a typical student, nor are any of my classmates. I do not party, drink, smoke, etc. and these same sorts of things I used to think isolate me from my peers actually bring me closer to them. This year I am going to be honest with myself. I will feel pain where it needs to be felt, close doors that need to be shut, and love where love needs to be given. Yes I admit I have a very corny way of thinking but we all walk our paths so if you do not like it get out of my way.

            My blogs are scattered because my mind is scattered, but this year I want things to become uncluttered, to finally get my head out of the clouds and into the stars. Time for a new state of mind.   

Office Life and Family Ties.

                                

So my summer is pretty much ending this week and as I tried to look back and reflect on the past couple of months I realized that in a short span of time I have changed quite a bit in terms of my ambitions and mental states. I am by no means a different person; I just had a lot of time to think about life and all the madness that goes along with it.

This summer I worked 9-5 5 days a week at a law firm in Oakland, and for the most part it was incredibly humbling. I had a huge amount of respect for people who work hard in anything, but working in an office all week was something else entirely. I have no idea how my mom has been doing it since I was born. I constantly felt cramped in and smothered, and while time did not pass by slowly or anything tortuous like that I still knew that this is not where I wanted my life to go. I am not better than people who work desk job and if fact they might be doing the smarter thing by choosing a path that almost guarantees a stable financial income, but I refuse to put myself into that environment knowing I will not be happy. All this is not to say that I did not learn anything or gain new friends and respect for law practices, it is just that everyone is meant for something and not other things, and I am not cut out for that kind of office environment. I always felt like I was making a mistake or like I was being judging, and that is just not a good vibe.I love to dance, set my own hours of activity, spend hours reading and learning about nerdy things that are only important to me, and help people with their personal issues. All of this together equals a confused young adult with an uncertain future, but I will gladly choose my confusing niche of happiness over eternal melancholy.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to go visit my grandpa’s house for my cousin’s college graduation party. I am not usually excited to go visit family because: We live super far from them, I am always approached by aunts and uncles that have known me since I was born yet I have no recollection of who they are, and they all see each other more than I see them so I feel a tad bit left out when I visit. This was not the case when I went yesterday however…it was completely different. Lately I have come to respect my family as a whole a lot more and I was excited to be able to see my grandpa (who is one of those old men who worked for everything he has today). At the party I was overwhelmed by people as usual and slightly regretting my decision to come, but in the course of about an hour I reconnected with cousins closer to my age that I have no spoken too in a long time and danced with my crazy family. It then dawned on my that my younger cousin is going to be a senior…and I remember when we used to play with power ranger toys as kids. Life is going by so fast and me having stupid thoughts about not fitting in with my family is only making things worse. Distance or no distance yesterday was one of the best days of my summer, because my family is still as tight knit as ever. I  have moved quite a bit in my lifetime, from houses to schools and so on. Throughout all of this my grandpas house has never changed. Same rooms I used to spend the night in, same neighborhood, same smell, etc. In all my troubles and insecurities about my relationship with my family I have always had the Ol’ family manor to go to. So as my mom and I will have to leave Pinole soon, I hope that my grandpas house remains the constant, because whether we like it or not we all need some sort of family ties.

A Grandmas love and Car crashes

     So on Sunday my mother and I took a trip out to see my grandma to help her set up her new phone, unbeknownst to me this short trip would be one of the most significant things to happen to me all summer.

      When we got to my grandma's my mom stepped outside to handle the phone business leaving me and my grandma to talk. I will always find it funny how even the most hardcore people will become straight children in front of their grandparents.  Sure we can yell at or ignore our parents but when grandma is around everyone’s an angel. Now over the last few years I have talked to my grandma less and less in order to preserve some stupid principle of "independence", but that day I just lent myself talk. I told my grandma of my unorthodox dreams: how I want to be a dance therapist, how I want to create something, etc. To be honest I have no idea why I came clean, but I figure it was time for me to embrace my crazy dreams aloud as opposed to building them up in my mind. I waiting and watched her face as a I spoke and when I was done...I had no idea what to expect. Now to clarify, I get my lack of verbal filter from my grandma, so if she thought that what I was doing was stupid or not worth the time she would tell me. The reaction the followed however was extremely positive.  It is also worthwhile to mention that my grandma is also a huge nerd like me. She likes anime, comics, firefly, and buffy, so I guess her joy in my life choice was not that surprising. Kids and their grandparents often times share the same notions of wonder and fantasy, because in the beginning of your life it is all you know, and in the later part of your life it is all you have left. So she told me “I’m glad you decided to walk this path, if anyone can do this it is you.” Now I get that she is family and supposed to be encouraging, but hearing it aloud makes all the difference. I have no desire to work a desk job for the rest of my life, I am far too reckless and believe me you do not want me behind a desk with any sort of power. So I am going to pursue something crazy, because if you are good enough at something, then somehow and some way you can make a living off it…hopefully.

            After getting pumped up about my loving grandma approving of my aspirations I preceded to read comics while my mom drove home (I drove up, so my mom drives back, fairness and all that jazz). Out of nowhere a car spins out on the freeway and collides hard with the car diresctly in front of us. I looked up in time just to see the car spin out and time actually seemed to slow down. It was my first time being so close to a crash that could have easily been a lot worse. The car that spun out was hit on the driver’s side, so it is safe to assume that they were hurt a little. I have not been that scared in a long time; usually nothing gets to me but after that when we got home I was still shaking. I drove right after that to see someone and help myself feel better but it was just crazy. One wrong move and we are all goners, that’s what I gathered from this encounter, so I cannot waste time being passive or scared. I do not want to die before I do something cool and if that sounds morbid or odd that’s because it is. I would not call this a near-death experience, but I was close enough to see what could have been…and I did not like it.

            Moral of the story: There is none, I was scared by a car crash and now I am more determined to do everything that I have been trying to do. From darkness comes motivation.

A Man’s Worth

I am a child at heart. I love cartoons, comics, and video games. All these seemingly childish mediums came together to form a big chunk of my personality. This has become a tad bit of a problem from me as I have grown older because popular to contrary relief, childish things taught me valuable life lessons. Being in college I expected to be surrounded by people who were all smarter than I was; people whose paths in life were set in stone whilst mine was shaky and dream-fueled. Luckily for me that was almost never true. I was surrounded by good people who just were looking to find what makes them tick, just like I was.Seeing fellow students who could not fend for themselves was as huge eye-opener though. I have always been told how spoiled I am by my parents and to an extent that is true, but my childish morals of right and wrong evolved and helped me figure out a few things.

First of all I believe that a man’s worth is not determined solely by one thing. I heard things like “it is determined by the company he keeps…his actions…his car” or whatever, but the most important thing about “being a man” I have found is just be true to your word. By your word I do not just mean what you say, I mean what your beliefs are. Yes things happen and in the heat of the moment emotions can affect us all, but it does not make much sense to say that you hate people who hit women and then go around playing whack-a-mole with female’s faces does it? All the anime and cheesy cartoons have led me to this conclusion, the hero always does what he says he will don and never abandons his morals. True that does not translate well to the real world but it is a step toward not being a terrible person.

Second you should always try and be honest with those close to you. These are the people who support and have your back; therefore it is imperative that you treat like you love them, simple right? I have seen people abuse friendships and it makes me sick. I am an only child so I know what it is like to not have anyone right, so I have come to rely on my friends to the point where I consider them family. In the grand scheme of things none of our connections matter because we all die alone, but it’s these connections that allow us to bring happier memories to the grave. After all I would rather die young, fat, and happy than live long and die old, healthy, and lonely.

Finally I hate mooching off of people. I never take anything I cannot give or pay back just because it is so wrong to me. We should all have to work for our place in the world, so if you are just riding the coattails of others then what kind of person that make you? Yes sure life is unfair and some people have to work harder than others but that should be motivation to triumph. I know that if I put enough hours in I can be a better dancer than people who were born with “natural talent”, I know that if I grind enough I can make more money than people who were born into wealth. It is all about finding out how much you want out of the world, because that’s how much work you have to put it.

I am so bloody childish. I actually think that by staying true to your morals and working hard you can be whatever you want to be, but hell it has gotten me into the college of my dreams and the life of my choosing so why not just stay a man-child a little bit longer?

Playing a crooked game

Do you remember when you and all your friends were equal? When it did not matter what kind of family they came from or how smart they were?  Is almost unreal to think of how much we all change. For the majority, there values change and suddenly wealth becomes the measure of happiness, and obsession is the only way to obtain this wealth. For others freedom is the measure of happiness and rebellion is the measure of freedom.

People have begun to see fame and fortune as the only way to be moral person, with looking down on others being a requirement for fame. Deep down they might know just how idiotic they are being by sacrificing any shred of common sense they have left for pleasure or pocket change, but in our game of like life it is never good to put your faith in others notions of morality and integrity.

Well who is to say who is right and who is wrong? In short form the truth is we all suck at life. There is no one correct way to live it, but I believe there are wrong ways to go about your daily business. In a game like life each player is already bound to lose at some point, the only question is when will you lose and how much will you have to let go of. This is where everything gets tricky. In a just game those with the most should be the most afraid whilst those with less have less to worry about, but that scenario is almost never the case. Those with fullest pockets figure out ways to evade the traps and pitfalls and leave their fellow man with fallout of their wicked evasion.

In a system like that who would ever choose to have less? The problem with our society is that it evolved around this scenario, those with more always have less to worry about and cheat the game while honest John and Jane Does have to suffer. Now do not get me wrong if you are someone born into more and someone who worked for their keep then it is not your fault the world lines up in your favor, but keep in mind that we are all still playing a game where those who slip up get swallowed up by land sharks.

In this game there are times when the losing players are giving miraculous chances at a better life, but never for free. This is a game where handouts do not equate to happiness. The only way to stop this game from playing you is to stick to your own plan, not let anyone mess with your pieces, and come to see the difference between winning the game and surviving it. 

Oh People

So people suck and that’s no secret. There are some days when I am just so physically sick of people that it seems like I am not of this planet. And I am not referring to all the drastic horrible things that people do, I am talking about all the little things. How this person snapped at you with out you doing anything, how that person lied to your face, and even how your own family can just act in a heartless manner toward you.

            Now you may be like, “Zeke where is this coming from, is this vaguely directed toward one person”?, and the answer is no. There are just times where I feel the need to talk about people in an elitist manner, deal with it. It annoys how fragile our own emotions are, even the people (like myself) who boast that they are desensitized to most things cannot help but feel…and it is terrible. Most people either grow up thinking that emotions are necessary or unnecessary with no precedent ever being established it is hard to know what the right way to emote is. Feel too much you look weak, feel too little and you are a monster, all the while we people are just fluctuating in our actions.

I think the worst part about people is having friends. When you have friends there are now other people that share your life experiences with you and know some of your deepest fears and such (depending on the friendship), but your friends are also people. They can still piss you off even though you love them and there is no way to change that. So not only are they your closest confidants but it’s also extremely easy for them to become your worst enemies, after all the more someone knows about you the more they can hurt you. Just the other day I said something rude and inconsiderate to one of my friends just because I had a piece of knowledge about them that no one else did. I was having a bad day and there was no excuse, but I still had all the means needed to provide an effective emotional sting, just because we are close friends.

I also find myself not willing to let my friends go. People are not replaceable and you should never believe anyone who tells you they are. Each person is uniquely shaped and as such leaves a one of a kind indent on our lives. Now I am not saying that some people are not similar, but rather that even similar people have their differences that separate them from the herd of people that flow through our daily lives. I hate breaking bonds and losing people because if I trust you enough to become your friend and then something happens to break it that feels like a bad investment. Like all the time we shared did not mean anything, and sure nothing lasts forever but it is still stupid to think that such bonds strengthened by time could be broken over one argument, distance, a rumor, etc.

Moral of the story: there is none. I just don’t like that I have to depend on people to live, but at the same time I love people. I guess that’s one of the reasons we are alive, to learn how to deal with people. Not all of us have to be friends but we do have to all share a planet. In that regard it is probably best if we learn how to either get a long or avoid each other in order to assure that we do not kill each in our short times here.

 I don’t even know what I’m writing.