Category: Human Connection

This category of posts strive to create a better connected world.   One that everyone is treated like family regardless of who they are or where they are from.  With these posts we look past ourselves and try to find reason and purpose behind making a connection with others.

Connection When You Least Expect It

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There I was, at the annual New Years Party I have been desperately waiting for all year.  As soon as I stepped inside the mansion-like house, a feeling took me over. With the music blasting and lights flashing, a sense of fun mania took me over. I was going to have a great night.  

With dozens of people from all around the area, I was astonished by how many of them I had never met and would probably never meet again.  With everyone in such a good mood, it was impossible to not feel the same way. Whether people were playing drinking games, busting a move on the dance floor, or lounging on the couch talking about god knows what, it seemed there was something to do for everyone.

The party was sensational, but as usual, it was only short-term.  A feeling that seems to never fully go away began to resurface. I have grown accustomed to this feeling, hence why it only took my subconscious seconds to know what to do next.  Like a snake slithering away silently, I withdrew from the scene and stepped outside as everyone continued to have the time of their lives.

As I stood there, with the cold winter breeze chilling my skin, a feeling of peace fell over me.  I knew that I would just need ten minutes of this bliss before the night would be mine once again.  As I stood in the cold winter night, I noticed a man around my age sitting with his legs hanging from the edge of the porch.  As he looked down at his feet, which he swayed back and forth much as a child does on a swing, I recognized our similar situations.

I then proceeded to sit next to him.  At first, we both said nothing. Listening to the distant noises of the party just one door away and looking over the glass-like lake, the need for words was not yet present.  

After a few minutes, I began our conversation with a simple hello.  As we talked, there was no secret as to why we had ventured off to such an isolated spot.  We spoke of depression, anxiety, and most of all, we spoke of suicide. There was no judgment and there was no stigma.  We simply spoke our thoughts, and nothing was there to stop us.

The loveliest part of this conversation was that both of us were isolated, as we desired to be, but we were also not alone.  It is rare when we simultaneously experience both solitude and the comfort of another person. We stayed in this unusual sense of bliss for what seemed like hours.  

Eventually, some of the partiers ventured outside to find their lost friend.  As they found us sitting on the porch, I watched a look of confusion fall over their faces.  If they were not questioning why their friend was sitting out in the cold, they certainly must have been questioning why he was doing so with a stranger.  I then watched as my newfound friend bounded up from the porch with light in his eyes. I don’t believe it was entirely fake, yet I do believe his joy was a bit exaggerated in order to silence their questioning thoughts.  

As they jumped away, back into the party, I was alone once again.  Surprisingly, I felt better. I felt fuller. Normally it took a bit longer to get back to this level of happiness, but for some reason, my tank seemed to be refilled.  Therefore, my next decision was simple, it was time to slither back into the exotic New Years’ atmosphere.  

It was not until the next morning that I began to hash out the night.  Who was that I sat next to? And did we really tell each other our deepest, darkest secrets?  The answer is that I will never know who that person is, and I quite frankly don’t need to. I don’t need to know when he was born, or where he grew up, or even his name.  He is someone I bonded with. Someone I formed a true connection with, and it only took five minutes.  

We bonded because we were vulnerable.  Sitting outside in the middle of the night, talking about the things much of society would push back, we let ourselves be fully seen.  We spoke openly and allowed our vulnerable selves to be present. Now do not mistake my words, I am not saying that is the only way to form a connection.  There are a number of ways to create great connections and friendships. I simply state an example of a healthy one. One that is rarely done, especially with a stranger.  Especially with someone you know so little about.   

The thing is, I knew enough about him before we even spoke our first words.  I saw that empty look, that empty feeling that I, and many others, have lived with for years.  And knowing we had that much in common was enough for me to show my vulnerable self and then hope he would do the same.  And thankful he did.

Connection, real connection, is a huge component of what the human mind requires.  We need someone to rationalize our thoughts with. We need someone to celebrate with.  And most importantly, we need someone to be alone with. To find human connection we simply need to be courageous.  We need to make the first step with our hearts out and our hands held high. To show our vulnerable selves even when there is no guarantee it will work out.  

Maybe not at your next New Years’ party, but somewhere, you should connect with someone.  You should form a bond because let me tell you, there is no better feeling than when you show your demons and all you get in return is a genuine smile.

Connection On a Whim

There are so many people  in the world, and with all of these people comes many stories and so much potential for interaction. Every day I walk around and wonder to myself whether or not this person will ever be a part of my life, or if I’ll ever cross paths with that person again. We are a culmination of all the things that have led up to any single moment, in that regard we are all so unique. This variety of people leads me to believe that all relationships are rare and individual in their own right.

I have experienced this in my own life. There was a girl in my life whom I said hi to in passing almost daily, all I knew was her name, after a little while this stopped and she faded from my life. One day however, our paths crossed again and this time we were forced to interact on a deeper level. As time progressed so did our relationship, until one day I realized she was one of the biggest parts of my life. I see this kind of thing all of the time. Most people meet on a whim, almost always through luck, and forget how they got there.

I spoke before of our complexities, and the tremendous amount of combinations our complex personalities could make when combined with one another. Now just reflect on this, and imagine all of the people you encounter throughout the day. It is unimaginable the possibilities that lie ahead with every interaction that we make. Thinking this way can make you go a little crazy, because really there is so much missed opportunity, and the worst of it is that we will never know what we have never had. Not all is loom and gloom however, because sometimes we don’t miss our opportunity, sometimes we find people that we work well with.

It is important to let this sit in the back of your mind, to keep it as a reference whenever we are with others. Once we recognize the fact that there is so much missed potential, then we can work towards minimizing that loss. I am guilty of it, especially lately, of not trying very hard to truly connect with others, and to connect with new people. It can be hard sometimes to go out of your way to speak with others, to try and form true connections. There are also those who are content, those who do not think it necessary to try and form these new relationships.

At the end of the day we are still primates, we crave social interaction on our most basic of levels and I think it’s important that we maximize the quality of that interaction. Even if one feels like they are content, or it is not worth the effort, this really is one of the most fundamental aspects of a human life. What a shame it would be to just accept things the way that they are, and never look to see if it can ever be any better. From now on I am going to try harder to get out there, to get as much potential out of the relationships that I keep, or look to keep. I encourage all to do the same, and hope that one day we all find those that can help us live a fuller life.

How to Develop Empathy

Image result for mean kids

Let me begin this post by stating the fact that I love kids. Having said that, I was wondering if anyone else has noticed that kids can be little psychos.

I have been a lifeguard for the City of Glens Falls for the last three summers.  The job essentially entails card games, eavesdropping on people’s conversations and the occasional save.  I mean, it’s not my fault. I am literally paid to watch these people play in the water. Therefore is it only natural to hear the occasional small talk.  

One day I was listening to a conversation between a mother and her son when a realization dawned on me.  As I watched the son, once again, splash his mother in the face after repeatedly told not to, she responded with an ultimatum. Either splash me again and we go home, or stop splashing me and have fun. In response, the son whipped as much white water into his mother’s face as possible.  His mom, infuriated, told him to sit on the sand and that they were going home. The son walked up to the beach and began to cry.

As he sobbed, I noticed that the intensity of his tears was directly connected to whether his mother was looking at him.  As the mother began to collect the other children, the displeased son would dramatically increase his sadness with every glance the mother gave him.  Finally, after a minute, the mother could not stand her son’s emotional state and told him he could get back in the water if he did not splash her again.  With instant joy and achievement, the son bounded into the water and was back to having the time of his life. Not ten minutes later did I witness him splash his mother again as the cycle began once more.

It was at this time that a realization hit me harder than any belly flop I have ever been paid to witness.  That disobedient son was simply playing his hand. He knew that his mother didn’t want to be splashed, and he knew she would threaten to end his fun early.  Yet none of this mattered since he also knew that he had the ultimate ace card. He knew a couple of fake tears and a hardcore frowny face could turn her decision right over.

I thought about this for quite some time until I came to the conclusion that our empathy towards others is knowledge that must be learned no different than math or any other subject you learn in high school.  

After three years of watching similar showdowns commence, I found that almost all the kids had that same ace that their parents lack.  They possess the inability to understand how their actions affect others. They know that their actions will make others sad or happy. Yet they do not feel or truly understand the effect that emotion has on the person’s well being.  The son understood that fake crying would make his mother sad. Which would then get her to go against her own statement and allow him to continue having fun. What he couldn’t comprehend was how she felt.

Another example is that these children do not realize the mental consequences of stating that one person is better than the other.  I believe this is why little kids are the bluntest tiny humans out there. They simply do not understand what will psychologically happen to these people as they hear the unrelenting truth.

Personally, I have always considered empathy to be a trait that you either have or don’t have.  Yet, since we learn it, I now consider it closer to a skill. Nobody teaches you how to feel happiness, but somewhere along the line, we must have been taught how to feel for others. If not taught directly, we may have taught ourselves through life experiences.

And like any skill, some people can learn it quicker and easier than others.  People who are labeled as psychopaths, for instance, never learn this skill. Just as some people have the inability to read, these people have the inability to feel for others.  On the other end, we have the altruists of society. People are so good at understanding others, they seem to identify with everyone around them as much as themself.

Empathy is the skill to understand how actions will mentally affect others.  I think children are little psychos simply because they have not had enough time to learn this skill yet.  Like any skill, some kids will learn it before others, or some may even go their whole life not learning it at all.  Yet most will learn at their own rate and they will understand the feelings of others more and more with every year that passes.

If empathy is a skill that can be taught, then let us teach it.  Yes, some will struggle more than others, but struggle or not we all learned fractions.  And if we learn math, then we might as well learn how to care about one another as well. I mean come on, do third graders really need to know how to find the area of a fenced-in backyard or do they need a thorough explanation that other kids feel the same as they do when their toy is taken from them.  

We should have a class designed to teach these much needed social skills to these very psycho children.  I am not saying to get rid of math, but maybe we have a class called social life. One that teaches us to be empathetic for others.  As well as teaches us how to handle breaks ups properly, or explains the ins and outs of awkward conversations. This class would simply teach us how to be mentally stable in a way that makes everyone else feel good as well.  

Yes, you can learn these skills on your own, but if I was told to learn math on my own I don’t think I would have made it to triple integrals.  I probably would have figured out addition and subtraction and then called it a day. This is how we currently handle these much needed social skills.  We learn the basics and then suffer through the rest. I say we fix that, what do you think?

You Know Yourself Best

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Last winter I made a very difficult choice, I decided that I was not going to return to school for my 2nd semester.

As you can imagine, this came with a ton of backlash from family, friends, and even coaches. My parents were concerned that I was throwing my entire life away and everything I have ever worked for.

A majority of my friends who had hidden doubts about me going to school in the first place expressed those thoughts to me whether they realized it or not. I say that because I know none of my friends would intentionally want to make me feel like I was no longer good enough to fit in with them.

My college coaches were upset because they had to put in a lot of time and effort to recruit and choose who they think would benefit the program the most, so to see me leave after one semester must have felt like a slap in the face.

I think the worst part of the experience has been that I was never one to disappoint people, never one to be seen as weak.  The most difficult part was the way people treated me after my decision. It was like everyone just viewed me as this soon to be “townie” (that is slang for someone who did nothing with their life and ended up with a basic job in the area they grew up in). People would come up to me all the time and try to sit down and counsel me because they just assume that I am incapable of being able to figure out my life on my own now.

I’m not saying to ignore help/advice from others, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to yourself. I’m sure some of you are reading this and are thinking, “yeah no shit”…however put yourself in my shoes and have multiple friends and family members come to you acting like they know more than you all of the time. I believe people are actually concerned but they are also jumping to conclusions way too fast. I took one semester off and explored some other options, and people reacted like I gave up on my life.

Currently, I am going back to school at my local college to see if it’s what I really want to do without breaking the bank. Although, if its something I really don’t want to do that’s okay. I am 19 years old, I have so much time to figure out what I want to do and I’m no longer going to let people scare me into thinking that I’m not doing okay.

If there is anything you can take away from reading this, it’s to do what you know is best for you. People are going to judge and compare themselves to you all the time and even if they are a semester, a year, a bachelors, a masters,or even 10 years ahead of you… it doesn’t mean that they know the key to success for you. Listen to your mind, and follow your gut because eventually things are going to work out and every doubt people may have had about you won’t matter.  It won’t matter because it simply does not. What people assume about you does not change you in any way. You are who you are, and you should be proud of that person.  

Live your life how you think is right because quite frankly there is no wrong way, so you might as well be happy with your way.

The Goodness In Us

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I like to smile when I talk to people, it makes me feel good when others around me feel a little happier, a little more comfortable. I like to pick up garbage when I can, it makes me feel good to see where I am a bit cleaner. I like to give compliments to people when I can, it makes me feel good to see I can have a positive impact on others. There is a trend here. All of these actions are deemed generally “good”, however that is not the reason that I do them. I do these things because they make me feel good. Feeling good is the reason we do everything, all of our actions have some sort of self-serving incentive behind them. Even great sacrifices motivated by love or sympathy still come down to making us feel good, important, or fulfilled by said sacrifice.

We act this way because our survival depended on it,  if one did not look out for their own interests they would die. What I would like to talk about is something people have wondered for a long time. Are people innately good, or bad? The question is quite simple, but the answer can be really complex, and vary by person.

First of all, almost everybody who is asked this question understands the question fully, however it is based on their standards of good and bad. In a way this question is actually not one, but an infinite number of questions that depend on the questionee’s morales. To further complicate things, there are many other factors such as religion that come in to play. One may think that if another individual is not part of their religion, they are bad, regardless of their moral compass.

Another problem is judging whether or not good is something that is internal (intentions of the individual) or external (actions taken) to the individual. Let’s say a person robs a bank at gunpoint to put food on the table for their family, is this person good or bad? The intentions of the person are good however the actions taken are arguably bad. Actions versus intentions has been an ethical argument since the beginning of ethics itself, and since nobody has come to the right answer, I do not believe that there is a blanket answer to this question. I do however, have an answer that is fitted to my views, and which I hope others can relate to.

When thinking of what it means to do good, I believe actions and intentions are in tandem with one another. One should always be looking to promote the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. I really don’t believe your religious views have anything to do with whether you are a good person or not, as long as you are trying to promote what you perceive as the greatest good for the greatest number. It is important to note the subjectivity of goodness here, what one may think is good another may think is terrible, that is why goodness can only be judged by the one making decisions for themself.

My conclusion draws from what I spoke of before, the survival instinct, to do what best interests the self. I’m afraid that there are many times that doing the most good for the most people comes at the cost of one’s own happiness, which goes directly against our instinct to do what will make us feel the best. Because of this caveat, based on the confines of the question I think people are born bad, but fuck the confines of the question. It is too linear in it’s choices for such a large and complex subject, causing us to bottleneck a myriad of answers into just two broad choices.

We are self-interested, but that should not have to fit into terms of good or bad, it should be a term within itself.  Mary Lou Kownacki said “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story.” and I think this is true at our most fundamental levels. I believe this is true because nothing is done for no reason at all, nothing is done for the sake of good or bad, they are done for incentives. Once we fully understand someone’s story we can understand their reason for doing a good or a bad thing.

So yeah, based on the question and my beliefs I think people are born bad, but I think the questions is a failure because it isn’t productive. What we should be asking is not whether or not we are good or bad, but how can we incentivise being good. At the end of the day the best way to promote good is to incentivise it, that way we can all be self interested, but we can also trick our instincts into having us do good things. We cannot look at people as good or bad, we can only look at them as people, and try to understand what they have been through to get where they are.

Discovering Your Strengths and Weaknesses

What are your strengths and weaknesses? A rather simple question, yet so hard to answer. 

We see these questions come up in interviews, rehabs, conventions, emotional talks, essentially anytime we are expected to feel vulnerable. Times that we are told to look inside ourselves and reveal the light and darkness that makes us who we are. The joyful, energetic, fun, hilarious parts of us, along with the sad, angry, insecure, empty, dry parts of us.

This two-sided question is rarely asked of us and is typically avoided at all costs. We do not want to share these parts about us because it leaves us truly exposed. If you explain what is good about you, then you are saying what you take pride in. Whether it be the interviewer, social worker, friends or family, these people hear what you are proud of and then have the liberty to decide if they agree. They decide whether it be out loud or in their head if what you think is good about yourself is even present.

On the other side of this two-headed dragon of a question, you are asked to reveal what you hate about yourself. You are asked to talk about the thing that you may try every day to minimize and control, but continually fail. Then, as you talk about that thing, these people again have the freedom to decide if this trait is manageable or too much to handle for whatever the situation.

So, what are your strengths and weaknesses? In an unpressured, nonjudgmental manner I encourage you to find the answer to this question. Seeing ourselves for who we really are is one of the single hardest, yet rewarding, things we can do. 

It is crucial because once you know the answer to that question you begin to understand yourself from a better perspective. You can begin to understand your actions and emotions when certain situations occur. You then start to see yourself for who you really are and begin accepting both sides of yourself. Once you start to do that, I would bet your weaknesses will start to feel like strengths. 

I have found that the more of myself that I accept, the happier I have been. I cannot imagine you are much different. 

My strengths include my self-motivation, emotional awareness, and resilience. My weaknesses are my impatience, inability to be vulnerable in front of others, and overthinking. These are the things about myself that I have accepted and will continue to accept because they make me who I am. The good and the bad, the right and the wrong. 

And by no means am I ashamed of them. I do not hide these weaknesses and expect them to magically disappear one day. I have accepted them, and I am addressing them in the attempt to never have these weaknesses hold me back in life. And because of this I see myself for how I am, good and bad, wrong and right, happy and sad. 

Therefore, I will ask you one last time, what makes you strong and what makes you weak? Find your answer to this question and be aware that it may change as you do. Desires and fears are always changing as you experience life. This is why you must always be refreshing the question. Always battling the two-headed dragon with a different weapon, different strategy, different outlook. The dragon will never change, but how you slay it will define you time and time again. Your body and mind are forever changing until your inevitable death, so never stop questioning who you are. You live with yourself your entire life, you might as well get to know the person.

The Little Things

I guess sometimes life is about the little things.  The moments when you help a friend or make a new one.  The times you talk all night because the person on the other line can’t imagine being alone.  Or when you give a friend a ride home so that they can finally crawl out of their shell and let out their demons.

These actions require both emotional stability and empathy.  In these moments you need to prioritize another human over yourself.  You need to walk into their shoes and feel around. Listen to what they say and touch what they feel.  After some time you will hear and feel clearly through their perspective. You will be a part of them, and in many ways, you will be them.

It is then when you feel the pain they feel, you must also feel the happiness they feel.  It is buried very deep within them, but nonetheless, it is there, just hiding. Their hope, their peace, and most all, their purpose, are all hiding in the back of their minds.  Hiding from the light and being absorbed by the darkness.

When uncovering this light you cannot miss a beat or break a sweat.  You cannot seem weakened or discouraged. You must present their happiness as an equal and allow this person to watch as you hold their happiness with confidence and hope.  You would show this person the light that they believed was nonexistent and offer it to them. Eventually, they will hopefully follow your steps and gratefully take it from you. For those moments, and hopefully many more, this person will be able to hold onto the happiness that they thought they lost. 

As you watch this individual have their moment of clarity, the hardest part follows.  You must take off their shoes, prioritize yourself again and resume how you once were.  Unchanged and stable. This process is difficult but not impossible. And when looking, as yourself, at the happiness your friend now holds, it makes it all worth it.  Because at that moment you see more than they do. You see past this issue and look at the greater picture. You see hope. Hope that the world will grow. Hope that the world has a chance.  Hope that you, yourself, can help heal it.  

These moments can happen within minutes and give a lifelong memory.  I have experienced this in many types of relationships. The one commonality I have found with these experiences is what it creates after.  A bond is formed that is pure and true. One that I like to think of as simply a true friend.

I have seen so many people believe that they are the center of the universe and that they must prioritize themselves before anyone else.  In a way they are not wrong, it’s your body, and who else is going to keep track of it if not you? Yet in such a globally connected world it would be nice if we were connected by more than just our cell phones and Snapchat streaks. 

What I describe in the previous paragraphs is the ultimate connection.  The connection between two individuals that for a split second, are closer to being one than two.  As a human race I believe we should strive to have as many of these connections as possible. If we become connected, the world would be a much more understanding place.  When one understands their neighbor, they are more likely to bring cookies, rather than complaints. When one understands their rival’s motives, they are more likely to find an agreement, rather than an argument.  When one understands the pain billions suffer every day, the more likely they are to donate millions to those very people. 

My intended takeaway from this post is to please make a connection.  A real connection. One that involves you to not be you. One that makes you them, and if you do this enough you will eventually come to realize that they are the same as you, and always will be. 

“We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” – Maya Angelou

What is Depression?


We live in a world where we don’t know our future, yet we hope it will be a good one. Isn’t that nice? We have hope for better days and this hope maintains our way of life. If I knew I was bound to be homeless by the age of forty, would I bother to continue my academic advancement? If I knew I would end up marrying someone I didn’t love, would I bother to continue pursuing a romantic partner? And if I knew my child would die before their eighth birthday, would I bother to have them in the first place? I don’t believe I would. 

The nice part is that I don’t know how things will end up for me. Because of this, I do plan on graduating college, I do plan on marrying someone I love, and I do plan on having children (well… I might). Hope is the motivation to push through the rough times so that you can once again reach the great times. It is the feeling that allows us to be optimistic about the future, which gives us the courage to try to find and maintain happiness. I feel that this hope is what pushes me, and everyone, every day to feel we can succeed and have a great life.

Yet, some people do not have hope. Some people cannot feel hope like the rest of the world does. They feel trapped when they are outside. They feel alone in a crowd of people. They feel empty when they do the things that make them happiest. These people are in danger every day yet look safe as can be. 

Many of these individuals have depression. Depression is not just sadness like many people think. It is a deep-rooted feeling of emptiness that consumes all other emotions and replaces them with a feeling of death. 

Most of the time when people are sad they know that they are sad and hate how they feel. And a lot of the time they just want it to end so they can move on. This is not how depression typically works. 

Depression is a feeling that appears to never end. It creates the illusion that this deep-rooted sadness one feels will never stop because they believe it is who they are rather than what it is happening to them. Their life becomes sadness, rather than the sadness infecting their life. True darkness is not when a room is without light, but instead when that room has no light ever coming back. When the Sun will never rise. When the light switch will never be flipped. When one’s eyes will never open again. 

Depression is a disease that kills. It kills how the person thinks, feels, acts, and whatever else that lets them feel human. Eventually, the idea of doing anything seems too painful, too time-consuming. Going to work, showering, eating, and simply getting out of bed seems like too much work in such a dark world. In a world without hope what is there to push us, to better ourselves? What is there to make us be how every human should be? There isn’t, there wouldn’t. Society would not function because nobody would function.

Depression is a very real and dangerous disease. It is one that should not be taken lightly, and it is one that should be understood. We should try to understand what our neighbors, our co-workers, and maybe even our loved ones go through every day. I am not saying they all have depression, but the stigma for this disease is enough for millions to go untreated every year. Millions of people suffer through this darkness alone every year, and they will continue to if we don’t talk about it. So please do. Please show these unlucky individuals how to have hope once again. Show them the light that they could not find. Open the blinds, flip the light switch, and let them open their eyes to the beautiful world around them.

How Vulnerability can lead to Invincibility

Vulnerability is the state of being exposed to possible harm or attacks, either through physical or emotional means. Almost nobody wants to feel this, yet arguably everyone needs to. 

With few exceptions, people are born with the need to emotionally connect. This commonality largely leads to our desire for comfort and well-being. In short, we want to be happy. It’s that simple. A way to ensure such happiness is to minimize emotions that go against it. To do this, many of us attempt to minimize our vulnerability, our state when discomfort can affect our well-being. Our intentions are clear cut, but the consequences of these actions are damaging.

To reiterate, vulnerability is defined as a state of possibly being attacked emotionally and physically. Both mental and physical components of our well-being are affected by our vulnerability to certain situations. Yet there is a reason why we, the public conscious, mostly associate vulnerability with mental attacks. 

Humanity has created a society that allows physical safety for us. Yet this is a fairly recent achievement. Of humanity’s two-hundred thousand years of existence, only five percent of that has been spent building civilizations. Before that we spent our days running around, looking for our next meal. In those years of do or die, we learned many skills and ways to think, one of which was to contain our vulnerability from the outside world.

Nowadays, the typical person is much safer physically than his or her ancestors. Because of this, our physical defenses have gone down over the centuries and been replaced by mental ones. The shift in how we defend ourselves has allowed people the ability to close themselves off from others. The issue with this is that people cannot suppress one emotion and leave the rest untouched. In my personal experience and research, attempting to suppress one emotion will result in all of them being suppressed.

The worst part is that our technological innovations have made this work easier. How many times have you looked down at your phone rather than exchanging a slightly awkward ‘hello’ with someone? At that moment we feel insecure because we don’t know our relationship with that person. Instead of addressing it, many of us take the easy way out and ‘happen’ to be looking the other way. We still walk past that person, but it feels a whole lot easier because mentally we are miles away. 

This phenomenon is also partly why I believe people get mentally addicted to objects and activities.  Whether that be a phone, drug, alcohol, food, or sex, we begin to rely on these things because they make us feel less vulnerable. When under the influence, people enter a different headspace that distracts them from their psychological pain (not to mention most drugs flood the brain with dopamine, a chemical that causes happiness). Addicts need an emotion, or lack of one, and find that relief in something external to them, no matter the consequences. 

I think we can all agree that we would rather feel happy than sad. The harder question is how do we achieve this? How do we, ourselves, minimize sadness, rather than having something suppress it? I think the answer to this question is by allowing our vulnerability to coexist with us, by accepting that it is an emotion that is as valid as any other. Our emotions make us who we are, and we should be proud of them, all of them.

Not just the part you want to see, but the whole thing.  Yes, the glorified Instagram image of you is great, but the picture of you before you understood that hardly anything matches with orange is just as important.  The A you got in mathematics should make you proud, but so should the C you got in Spanish. We should strive to see ourselves for who we are and smile anyways.

Not just that but we also need to take risks.  To not hide in our phones when we are unsure whether to wave at the person walking past us.  We should instead look them in the eyes and say hello. Sure, they may not say it back, and you may feel embarrassed, but who cares.  At least you tried, and maybe next time that person will say hi to you after he or she reconsiders their action. This fear of being vulnerable and looking weak needs to end.  We are all weak in some ways, and we are all strong in other ways. Let’s embrace that and be proud of who we are, who we truly are.

Who is Biased?

Image credit: nst.com.my

I, like half of the United States, have divorced parents. Seeing both sides on a regular basis, I was lucky enough to be met with love no matter the roof I was sleeping under. So in that regard, I could never ask for more. I have loving parents and I am forever grateful for that. Yet, through this love came a war. A war on who my parents wanted me to be, and let me start by saying, they wanted very different things.

My mom wanted me to know how to survive. She wanted me to be tough, strong, and the type of person who would never be pushed around. Alternatively, my dad wanted me to know how to live. He wanted me to be caring, safe, and the person someone goes to when they need to talk about their feelings.

Both parents loved me, I’m grateful for that, but with these different parenting goals came different rules. Their differences would seem to show in everything I did or did not do. From one saying to fight the bully and the other saying to tell a teacher. One believing in having closer friends, and the other in a closer family. One taught me to get dirty and play rough, while the other taught me to stay inside and keep warm.

As a child, all I wanted to do was make my loving parents proud. Yet this seemed impossible. No matter what I did I seemed to always be displeasing one or the other.

In response to this impossible task I started living two lives. I became two people. I would play differently, talk to different people, and react to things differently, all depending on the house I was living in for that moment. This was my life for quite some time, more than I would like to admit. Yet eventually it came to an end and the two conflicting worlds finally merged.

I still do not totally know what it was, but one day I simply started seeing what I was doing to myself. I realized the duality of my own personality. And I didn’t like it.

Eventually I collected myself and developed a singular Jake West. Through this process an amazing trait formed. I learned to keep an open mind. From years of seeing such different views it became clear that neither side was entirely correct. I learned there is no right or wrong in almost all debates and decisions, there are simply opinions. These opinions form from biased backgrounds and differing childhoods. They form from the limited knowledge we are taught and the limited information we learn. Depending on where we live and who we are raised by, this limited knowledge differs from person to person.

What I write for you right now is not a fact, but merely a biased opinion. A biased opinion that I hope to be as unbiased and as factual as possible, but an opinion nonetheless. What I have found in society is that we treat these opinions as if they are facts and then refuse to allow anyone to change or sway our unarguable facts.

I believe this is, without a doubt, one of the greatest mistakes our species is currently making in modern times. We are treating our opinions as facts and acting on them in certainty. We are discrediting people who have put just as much time and effort into their biased view as the person trying to discredit them. And all of this is limiting our ability to share knowledge and understand one another.

So, I have one request from this post: listen. Listen to your friends and listen to your enemies. Listen to your superiors and listen to your inferiors. Especially listen to your children and listen to your guardians. We must listen to one another because what everyone has to say is important. Everyone. There will always be something to take away from a conversation and there is always someone who can teach you a new bit of information.

We must understand that our views, our opinions and our thoughts are biased. We are all biased and we are all not completely correct on our view on the world. If we can learn this, then we can learn to truly listen. Once we begin listening we will be that much closer to seeing the ultimate truth and that much closer to seeing humanity come together. My childhood taught me this, and I hope one day your experiences will teach you this as well.