5 Things You Have To Do Before You Die

1. Play More Games: Learn to enjoy the little things in life. Do things that allow you to spend time with the people that are important to you. When you pass on, you will leave a rich legacy in the memories of your loved ones. When they pass on, their children will remember you from stories and pictures. This will continue until the last of your descendants die out.

2. Write a Novel: If you get published, you can extend your legacy. Your name will be preserved alongside the unique ideas put forth in your work. Consider the ancient Greek texts that we study to this day. And yet there were surely civilizations’ that preceded the introduction of the written word. What do we know of them?
3. Plant a Tree: We share our planet not only with one another but also with all living things. There are Redwoods that predate the existence of dinosaurs! When you die, your body will be recycled into the ecosystem of carbon-based life on earth. But how long will earth remain capable of supporting life?
4. Learn a new language: Being able to communicate with other cultures allows you to appreciate different lifestyles. If life exists elsewhere in the universe, we may be able to survive off their resources. How will you contribute to post apocalyptic life?
5. Wake Up Early: Time is running out. Every day you waste is another one closer to death. But linear time as we understand it may very well not exist. Maybe this is not the end. If that is the case, you can go back to sleep.

Why Birth Control Is Actually Pro-Life

Birth control, in modern society, is just another thing we take for granted; much like flavored vitamins and an abundances of vaccinations, medical miracles of their time that are now little more than, so we insist, our right. How often do we look back to the birth of contraception? It wasn’t all hunky-dory from day one: it was like abortion, and same sex marriage… “Unnatural!” the religious fanatics might cry, “Expensive!” call the politicians, “Ridiculous!” shout out the fortunate classes who do not necessarily understand these controversial burdens.

Birth control gave power back to the woman. The power to say ‘if a man can take a meaningless lover, why can’t I?’ It gave her the power to choose the order of her life: marriage, career, children. It gave her the power to love others, and herself; fewer offspring gave her the time to appreciate herself as well as her family.

During the early 20th century, the woman was trapped by an endless cycle of reproduction — sad really, that such a monumental act as giving life became so mundane and disdained. This was the time of the female revolution, a wave of feminism that modern medicine facilitated. Although the initial idea came into being centuries ago by founding father, Robert Thomas Malthus, it took its time to take hold.
Birth control gave life to the woman, so she was no longer forced to decide between another child, or celibacy; so she was no longer a prisoner to the unrivaled wonder of childbirth, no longer stuck behind the bars of motherhood.
The average family in Britain today doesn’t even have three children, yet if we go back only two or so generations, it was not unheard of that our grandparents were one of 12. Is it that women have become lazy and greedy? Wanting more career and entertainment, and less maternal responsibility? No. It is a mother taking initiative to give more love and attention, more support and opportunities, to her reasonably-sized, nuclear family. Some women do not want children, but unless they are celibate or homosexual then, without birth control, they would struggle.
Unnatural? Or is this free will handed down from the heavens in the form of a tablet or discreet foil packet? Birth control is control. It allows women to decide ‘When’, ‘Who with?’, ‘How many?’. It allows a man the freedoms to wait, to not have a child until he is ready. (Isn’t that something men often complain about anyway?) However, joking aside, it gives freedom to all people; regardless of sex or class, regardless of age or occupation, regardless of intelligence or race or lifestyle.
Birth control may prevent births, but this does not stop it giving life and strength to the people of today. From a time when it seemed radical and ridiculous, to the era of dating sites and one night stands; birth control was a natural progression necessary for the world to move forwards, to nurture young minds more attentively, and allow ourselves the necessary freedoms. This is how birth control yields life.

Teaching: A Noble Pursuit…To Quit

I’ll forever remember when I realized I wanted to be a teacher. I was going on a study abroad trip with a group from my university. Part of the trip involved community service. You could volunteer at the city hall, or a nonprofit organization, or a primary school. I had already had my fill of office jobs, and I loved kids, so I chose the elementary position.

Although I was only with the children for a short amount of time (as a volunteer teacher’s aide, I came in two days a week until classes were over), I fell in love with the classroom. I loved the students, I loved the teacher I worked under, and I loved watching the students learn. My experience was limited: aside from babysitting, I didn’t know the first thing about working with children. But my naiveté drove my passion to learn about the teaching world and to someday become a teacher.

This passion led me to finding an internship at a local preschool back in the States. This passion led me to enroll back in school almost immediately after graduating, since I was in my third year of an English degree when I decided I wanted to be a teacher (insert joke about the uselessness of an English degree here). This passion led me to downright beg any institution, public or private, to take me in, for any position, for any pay. I was ready to work for free if it meant I was teaching.
Cut to me over four years later. It’s now the summertime and I’m very unemployed. In May, I had handed my resignation letter to the school I had been working at for the last two years, letting them know that I wasn’t renewing my contract and that I would be done, effective the last day of school. I was (and continue to be) scared out of my mind, because I didn’t and still don’t know what the future holds. Because I didn’t know what I could do next. Because I lacked even an iota of the passion that I once had for teaching.

Teaching felt tailor-made for me. From the tutelage to the empathetic chats to the fancy DIY borders on bulletin boards. I would tell people I was a preschool teacher and have them respond with, “That seems like the perfect job for you.” Or, “You totally look like a preschool teacher.”

But somewhere along the line, I burnt out. If I’m being 100% honest with myself, I burnt out the third day of being a teacher. Three days into my very first job as an actual teacher, I found myself huddled by a park bench near where I worked, crying my eyes out, wondering if I’d ever calm down enough to go back. The details as to why I ended up in such a state are irrelevant. And it wouldn’t be the last time this happened, either: between that day and when I quit, I had three more breakdowns, in different classrooms, at different schools. Some I could hold in until my lunch break. Others I could not.

I spent the better part of three years telling myself that I would toughen up, or that it was just a difficult classroom that year, or that someday it would all click.
Then, as I approached the midway point of my fourth year teaching, I realized something I had been denying myself since day three: I was not cut out for this. And instead of toughening up and learning the ropes, I had become more and more and more burnt out, until whatever passion I originally had was gone.

The rest of that year was misery, but not for the usual reasons. I was conflicted. I knew I needed to quit, lest my mental health deteriorate beyond repair. I had already learned that no amount of rest or vacation would fix this issue. But I was wracked with guilt. I loved the kiddos, and quitting teaching felt like I was quitting them. I felt guilty for wanting out of the one career field that I actually had wanted to be in. I felt like I was giving up on everything: on my aspirations, on the children, and on myself.

Some people were understanding. I would tell friends or family about my predicament and they (especially those who were teachers themselves) would reply with, “I don’t blame you.” One (former) teacher even joked, “Get out while you still can.”
Others, not so much. On the opposite end of that spectrum were people who would offhandedly say that teaching “was a part time job” or “just babysitting”. Or they would view my decision as weak-willed, because they stayed in their job even when things got tough. But none of the comments were as damaging to my psyche as those who would say things like, “But it’s those good moments that make it all worthwhile!” or “But teaching is such a noble pursuit!”
My guilt was highest after those conversations. I felt like I was proclaiming that being charitable and nice was too much work so I was resigning myself to a life of pure selfishness.
However, I knew I had to quit. It was getting to the point that I would get emails about workshops or various classroom techniques, and instead of feeling inspired or driven, I felt nauseous. I was having visceral reactions to things that simply reminded me that I was a teacher.
So my last day came and went. I said my good-byes to the parents, who all knew I was leaving. They were curious about my plans for the future, and I gave various answers: ESL tutor, yoga instructor, animal shelter … person-thing. I focused on the idea of a “change of pace” because “burnt out shell of a teacher” tends to leave a sour taste in people’s mouths, especially when their children were under your care and tutelage. I then spent the next week – my first week of pure unemployment – dealing with the emotional fallout (which included a lot of DVRed talk shows, online articles about cats and GIFs, and the music from Evita playing at inopportune times of the day).
And now it’s August. Summer vacation is winding down and another school year is about to start. Instead of attending one of those ubiquitous in-service days and preparing my room, I’ll be preparing for the next phase in my life. Which could be anything. Downright anything.
But as I look at what options seem appealing (or at least not-unappealing) to me, I notice one common trait: help. Whether it’s showing someone how to write a paragraph in English, or giving a dog a needed bath and walk, or guiding people to find nirvana, the drive to help people is still there, even if the drive to teach children is not. Teaching may be a “noble pursuit”, but there are other “noble pursuits” out there. And admitting that classroom management is not your forte is not admitting that you’d rather hoard all your time and energy for yourself.
I feel like a woman trying to go on a first date after a major divorce – a divorce that happened in the midst of family and friends telling you what a “good guy” your former husband is. I’m a little shell-shocked, a little exhausted, a little afraid to ever have that much passion about anything ever again. But still taking that step forward. Understanding that a job does not necessarily make me, but it does have the power to break me if I don’t walk away when I need to.
I have no idea where this path is going, but I’m on it, and I refuse to stop or turn around. And that right there is quite the noble pursuit.

Success Is Not Unnatural

There are few things that annoy me quite like when people hear I’m training for a marathon and make comments like, “Well, people aren’t meant to run marathons.”

Yeah, you’re right. People aren’t meant to run marathons. They’re meant to run a shitload more.

Our ancestors once hunted down animals by running them into exhaustion. This could last days — days — spanning miles upon miles upon miles. Most believe that the only reason why we sweat is because we hunted in this fashion. Endurance running is the one physical trait human beings have over the rest of the animal kingdom.

Some point to the fact that the messenger in Marathon, Greece, died after declaring victory (or at least that’s how the legend goes). I say: if the messenger did actually die, it was most likely due to dehydration or heat exhaustion. And in a world of Gatorade and breathable running clothes, this is less than an issue now.
I hate it because it gives people a type of false out. If you’re looking for an excuse, say you don’t have the time. Say you have bad joints. Say you just don’t care about running, or running for that long. Go right ahead. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. Marathon training takes a lot of time and work and care and mental effort. It’s not easy. Saying that it’s not personally worth risking injury to do it is a perfectly okay and honest out.

But to say that it’s unnatural is not only false, but it makes it sound like the people who marathon train are somehow in the wrong. Like marathon runners are on par with mad scientists, trying to do what can’t and shouldn’t be done.

The reason why it’s a huge pet peeve of mine is because I see this everywhere. Not just in running. People try to dismiss anyone’s hard work — runner or otherwise – as unnatural. Pretending like any achievement is an aberration. Because it’s easier to act like making the grade, or starting a company, or writing a book, is abnormal. It’s easier to act like this than it is to admit that anything of worth takes hard work. Hard work and sacrifice and a touch of risk.

Success requires a bit of luck, but it also requires ingenuity and relentless drive. I wasn’t naturally born with such a drive, and I wasn’t brought up with a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic. But I force myself forward because the alternative is nothing I want to be a part of.
People still dismiss the idea, saying how rare success can be. But how are you defining “success”? Is the runner who completed a marathon without stopping unsuccessful because he wasn’t in the Top 10 (or Top 100) runners? Is the artist who completed his most important piece of work unsuccessful because the art galleries turned him down? Is the person who left a guaranteed (but soul-crushing) job unsuccessful because her start-up hasn’t made millions yet? Are we really going to be so naïve as to think that, if we aren’t guaranteed the upper echelons of success, it’s not worth doing in the first place?

The older you get, the more you find yourself around people who are perfectly okay with mediocrity. People who stay in jobs they hate, or in relationships that are unsatisfying or even toxic, never challenging themselves, always backing away when things get a little too tough. And from that cesspool comes a perverted pro-mediocrity stance. People who are so defensive of the status quo that they have no qualms about sitting back and making excuses and even deriding others for actually getting shit done.

But what does that do, aside from tiring out your vocal cords? Dismissing entrepreneurs won’t make your job better. Mocking academic people won’t make you smarter. Dismissing artists won’t make you more creative. And criticizing runners won’t get you in better shape. Go out and do shit.

What Built Us Up Will Tear Us Down

Society is a crazy thing.

All it takes is 15 minutes on any news website to make anyone feel incredibly unsure of the world. From governments killing protesters to all-out civil war; bloodshed and child soldiers, tyrannical regimes and regimes that are on their way to becoming tyrannical; economies on the verge of collapse and governments on the verge of collapsing in on themselves. Spend an additional 15 minutes on that site and you can’t help but wonder how much longer modern society has left.

Every dystopian novel talks about the folly of mankind and how it will eventually and inevitably serve as our destruction. It is what it is: we are selfish, shortsighted, aggressive, territorial, hyper-competitive, greedy, and egocentric. We are immediately distrustful of those we deem outsiders and we’re quick to hoard our resources, even if it harms us in the long run. We are simultaneously lone wolves and pack animals, retreating to one or the other at all the wrong times.
The funny thing is, however, that it is those very traits that gave us the modern world in the first place. The very reason we have technology and medicine and climate-controlled homes is because, at the root of it all, we are all those negative things. Our ancestors first and foremost survived because they were the most brutal. The naturally peaceful and passive ones were killed off the second resources got scarce. The more territorial and aggressive ones soon took over the lands of those who couldn’t fight back as effectively. These were the ones who got to pass on their genes. These were the people who became our distant ancestors.

As the centuries progressed, human beings started creating and inventing, not only because they wanted to survive, but also because they wanted to survive better than that douchebag in the other tribe. Innovations occurred – not to better all mankind – but to better the individual and whoever he or she deemed as his “tribe”. America scrambled to build and improve its space program because they really hated that the USSR got Sputnik into orbit. Samsung overhauled their cellphones purely to outdo Apple. Gerry from down the street spent thousands on landscaping because he was sick of having a lackluster yard compared to the Andersons. Countries and corporations and communities alike, all using their aggressive, selfish, territorial nature as their main catalyst.

Businesses expand and evolve because we are so cutthroat and competitive. Advances are made purely to get a leg up on everyone else. We are never satisfied, always in want of more power and more resources. And, through that, we have cars and cell phones and an absurd selection of food at the grocery store.
And it is those aggressive, territorial, competitive, selfish tendencies that lead to disparity and abuse and an eventual breakdown of even the best-organized system. The Roman Empire rose and fell because of the same human tendencies.

The very things that helped build what we have now will be the same things that eventually tear it down. It’s incredibly beautiful, if you think about it.

I have a skewed sense of the world, I know, but it’s a viewpoint that helps me take in all the insanity, all the pain and bloodshed – as well as all the passive, fragile beauty — and recognize that it’s all one big, multi-dimensional piece of artwork. And maybe it’s easier for me to take that step back and admire the whole of Earth’s story because I’m not currently ducking bullets or mourning the abduction of my son by a guerilla army. And I might start singing a completely different song if everything falls by the wayside tomorrow and I’m suddenly clawing for basic survival.

But until then, I am going to admire this incredible story. The driving force that built us up is what will inevitably tear us down. Like a balloon, inflated from nothingness to something remarkable until it pops. And how, even when everything falls by the wayside, there will always be a few people with that unshakable sense of hope. That determination to be better than their ancestors, to rise up when everything else has fallen, to show that humanity isn’t all territorialism and anger and death. Maybe they’re the ones who save the world. Maybe they’re the ones who stagger away from the wreckage and start again. Maybe they are inevitably consumed by the collapsing world around them. What happens to them is almost negligible. Their ending only marginally affects the intricate tapestry.
The rise, the fall, the recovery, the endless cycle forward. The flawed, innovative nature that we downright stumbled upon and have no choice but to claim as our own. No wonder so many novels touch upon this topic. I’m hard pressed to think of a better storyline.

Inside A Writer’s Mind

We make our home under piles of words, we make friends amidst the pages of books and we find comfort in between a full stop and the next capital letter. We feel in italics and reflect in capitals. With an obsession for the written word and words dangling from our fingers, yes, we’re writers.

Being prisoners of our impulses, we do not decide who we are. Initially, we are thinkers, over-thinkers to be precise. There are waterfalls of thoughts flowing through our heads. We think forwards, we think backwards and we think sideways.

Absurd questions race through our heads. Gradually, it turns into a state of mind. There’re always too many thoughts, more than our little cerebral hemispheres could store. That’s when it comes down to one thing, words.

We write because we have to. We write because if we don’t, our thoughts might dissolve us like acid spilling on bare flesh. When there is excess of something, it needs an outlet, lest it will destroy its container. Now, we are containers of thoughts and words are our outlets. Words keep our notions from destroying us.  We find all our answers in what we bleed out as words.
We live by metaphorical resonances. We like to look at the world from the outside. We observe people and things. We could spend our entire lives in coffee shops, looking at people and listening to their strange conversations.
Even with the lights off and blankets over our heads, we never really stop writing. There are conversations and concepts in our mind that keep racing with the blood until the synapses in our brain collapse into sleep.
We look at the world differently from others. We perceive things in a unique way, we don’t see things plainly, and rather we fall in love with the colors and sounds that surround us. There are no bars for our imagination. Our bodies might be stationary, but our minds have traveled as far as universe permits.
In the end, all I can say is, a writer is nothing but an entire world inside one person.