What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?
[This post is part of a series in which I answer questions which do not have right or wrong answers. I am posting a question once a week. Feel free to reblog and insert your own answers.]
You know, I really don’t like questions like this. Ones where we have to choose just one thing to change. How can I choose just one thing? For example, I could decide to change history by doing something that will prevent the Vietnam War from happening, but why don’t I go farther back in history and kill Adolf Hitler while he was a baby so that WW2 and the Holocaust doesn’t occur? But then how do I know that killing him will really change the outcome?
Why don’t I make a more local change that will make a real impact on someone’s life. Like, why don’t I go back in time and save my grandfather from the heart attack that killed him at 37, which left my mother orphaned at the age of 8 and forced her into a hard life of labor and prejudice? (Of course, if my grandfather had lived, he would never have let my mother marry my American dad, and I would not have been born… but perhaps this is a good thing? I don’t know?).
Hell, why don’t I be honest with myself and change things about my own world— make me the heiress to a large fortune? Make it so that my parents have connections and I can get into a great scholarship?
The options are endless, and each one has its own merits. In the end, however, I don’t think I would change anything. Everything has happened the way it happened because that’s how it was going to happen. Even if I changed one thing, I don’t think the world would be all too significantly different. What a very Taoist way of thinking.
Read More
When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?
[This post is part of a series in which I answer questions which do not have right or wrong answers. I am posting a question once a week. Feel free to reblog and insert your own answers.]
Well of course. I think that’s true for most people. Think of all the opportunities we have to talk, to dream, to plan for our lives. In comparison, very few of us actually get the opportunity to take action. But I should also stop speaking generally and apply this more to myself. I admit that I’m a rather inactive person. Part of this is due to how I was raised (my mother preferred me to be in the house and reading), part of it is due to the internet, part of it is due to my shyness, part to my laziness— I think there’s a lot of factors that have gone into this. In the end, I should probably just stop making excuses and get to work, huh?
If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
[This post is part of a series in which I answer questions which do not have right or wrong answers. I am posting a question once a week. Feel free to reblog and insert your own answers.]
I think that when we were young and learning the “complex concepts” of the world, we had to get used to the idea that one day follows the next. Maybe we learned this, maybe it just came naturally. But at any rate, we develop the semi-false concept that “there’s always tomorrow.” Thus, we can accept that we have to follow the rules society dictates to us until we have grown into “adults” who are “free to do what they want” (I’m speaking specifically of going through the school system, of course, which very few teenagers actually want to be a part of).
But of course, adults are seldom doing what they truly want as well, which I believe is due to the fact that we lose our way as we live the lifestyle set before us. We forget what we want, or we do what’s expected of us— even if we’re not consciously aware of it, society has become such a big presence on ourselves that everything we do is affected by it.
Read More
Which is worse, failing or never trying?
[This post is part of a series in which I answer questions which do not have right or wrong answers. I am posting a question once a week. Feel free to reblog and insert your own answers.]
Never trying. By far. Maybe this is idealistic thinking, but I think even the situations in which we fail are important for us. Often, they can serve as life lessons— or even if they don’t feel like they have meaning, they become precious memories as we go past our lives. But if you never try, how will you know if you’ve really lived?
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
[This post is first in a series in which I answer questions which do not have right or wrong answers. I am posting a question once a week. Feel free to reblog and insert your own answers.]
What a weird question. I don’t really know how to answer it. In a way, my age doesn’t really matter to me because I’ve always hung out with people who were at least a year older than me. In fact, most people who are my exact age seem a little immature to me, but then again… that could just be the people that I am in contact with me? Or it could just be me… adults often tell me that I am very mature for my age, but then again, that could just be them stroking my ego. Is this question asking me how old I would feel if I wasn’t already biased about how old I know I am? Well, gee, I don’t really know. I don’t think it’s possible for me to imagination that. Like I said, exact age isn’t really a question for me, but I think it’s always obvious was ‘stage’ of life you’re in. It’s not like I’m Benjamin Button or anything.
