Living Beautifully

If this post ends up being ridiculous, I'm sorry, just bare with me because it's really late and there are a lot of thoughts in my brain tonight.

I do this thing, sometimes, where I totally lose myself IN myself. I think meditation is truly beneficial to the self and stepping back into the depths of the mind can be helpful, but it's hard not to lose yourself. There's an image that the media subtly impresses upon the women in current society: the perfectly complex woman. She is sophisticated but not elegant, quirky but not too awkward, playful and imaginative but not ignorant, and naturally and uniquely beautiful.

You would assume that Hollywood's glorification of the "beautiful personality" would only help women feeling pressured by the doll-like physical figures of women in television, but I think it may only contribute. While women should celebrate their personalities rather than objectifying their physicality, the media has created yet another expectation. This new 'ideal' woman is cute but not realistic. Not to say that she's everywhere, I don't think we can afford to demonize the media. But I've been thinking about this.

I want to be beautiful. Every woman does. We want to be interesting and unique and mesmerizing. And we are. And not because others are able to recognize that beauty despite the influence of the media, but because we know we are. I look at my eleven-year-old sister and I think she is beyond beautiful. There is something about her - she trusts herself.

Women need to be able to trust themselves. Once we let society and the world peel away at our inner voice until it is reduced to nothing but a whisper, replacing it with the mechanical judgements and second-guesses of modern society; once our beauty becomes about ourselves, we have lost the battle. This really applies to everyone now, not just women. Our beauty should not be about us. We should focus on being beautiful for the world (not the way you're thinking, though).


Beauty (as defined when typed into Google search):

1. A combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight.
2. A combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.

It is not a bad thing to want to be pleasing to others - it is only bad when this want becomes an all-consuming desire. We should want to be pleasing to the world. As human beings, we should want to contribute something beautiful to the world. I think definition 2 is more applicable to this post, but take from it what you will. I won't try to convince you of my personal beliefs anymore. I simply think that we should attempt to view beauty, not as a tool, but as a way of life.

Thanks for reading.

Almost-Regret and Way Too Much to Digest

If I said that everyone has a past relationship that they cringe in shame to look back on, I think you'd know what an understatement that is. If you have not experienced such relationships, I applaud your success and wish that you are never acquainted with such almost-regret. But it's pretty much unavoidable, in my opinion.

I call it almost-regret because, really, I almost regret those relationships. There are only two (can we just collectively "Amen" for that, please?), but they taught me a whole lot about being self-reflective. I think in order to have a great relationship, you have to experience a "worst" relationship; it's pretty much entirely comparative. There's not some static definition of the perfect relationship. While the cliche idea is that, yes, the perfect relationship is relative, I think it's true that none of us even know what our perfect relationship is. We can identify what we need in a companion but that doesn't necessarily mean we know what a relationship with that ideal companion would look like.

Anyway, I appreciate those repulsive relationships in a strange way. I can look back, not often, but often enough to remind me of the raw humanity that we have to account for when we enter in to a relationship with someone else. Expectations are trouble (as we have all discovered) and you can't always trust in the way you think things are. But you also can't let yourself become consumed with doubt (both of which I'm guilty of - and I don't think it's uncommon to be).

My parents divorced four years ago. I can only recently begin to function outside of this truth. For the longest time, I've attempted to be rational about relationships to counteract the emotionally loaded relationship I witnessed crumble before me. But rational relationships between human beings is a significant paradox. Being rational, especially when the motive behind the rational thinking is fueled by emotion, is counterproductive. Dismissing the feelings behind human emotion is incredibly irrational.

The best way to overcome a failed relationship, whether it is your own or one of those close to you, immediately impacting you, is to embrace the fractured emotions and accept that there is always a better something waiting to happen to you, but only if you allow it to. I almost regret my parents' divorce but I've learned so much from that brokenness that I'm not sure where I'd be today without it (and, mind you, every family's divorce is different -mine was significantly messy).

Hopefully this made sense. Thanks for reading and, as Ellen would say: be kind to one another.

P.s. I had way too much to eat for dinner tonight.

I hope I get an A+ in people-watching...

For my philosophy class, we're studying inwardness (all the Hegel and Kant theories), and to further our studies, we've been given an assignment in which we are to "watch someone."

Guidelines:

1. They must be quiet; one of those folks that don't like to speak up much in class.
2. They cannot be someone in the administration or a student in the actual class.
3. We can't know them or have talked to them before.

Apart from simply watching them, we have to write journals about them.

I feel so creepy. And it's not because I've been eyeing (discreetly) this quite girl in my American Studies course, but because I'm also writing journals about her. If we're going to get real, I know everyone already watches the people around them. It's human nature to people-watch. But writing journals about them takes it to a whole 'nother level, usually referred to as stalking. As if it weren't enough to document all of their mannerisms, we can't use their name. We can only call them "Subject," or "the subject."

I need this assignment to bring my grade up to an A; I'm like .000006 away from an A. I'm also going to need an assignment for my American Studies course once I'm done using the entire class time to document the way this girl crosses her legs and speculate about her brain activity...

Newborns and Newly Born

Due to this blog being a newborn, I am welcoming it into the interworld through this post.

I had my reservations about creating a blog. I figured that I wouldn't have much to write about, but I'm afraid that may have been an understatement; I have plenty to say. So I suppose this is my best bet at communicating my stories and thoughts. I named it as I did because, from my freshman year of high school, I've been referred to as The Whale because I eat copious amounts of food. I don't gain any weight but that will probably change as my age advances and my metabolism, inevitably, slows (I guess I should adopt a workout routine). If there's anyone out there reading this, I'd just like to say thanks. I hope you except my newborn blog, swaddle it in comments and views, and that you remain open to what it intends to say.

Did you know: Baby whales are called 'calves.' (weird)

Happy Literal Day of Birth to my blog.