Still Small

Those Still Small Voices
2012-10-13 02:37:14 (UTC)

Entry 7 and Break

School's out for the next week. I'm pretty happy with how I finished things off.

Since it was the last day of the quarter, we had our first "Round Table" in my seventh period English class, and everyone got 2 minutes to say whatever they wanted. A lot of people said critical things, insightful (eh) things, glad-to-be-done-with-school things. When my turn came up, I had been thinking about my answer for a while, since I was halfway into the circle. I only started brainstorming when class began, but I made sure I said what I wanted to, and that I was totally honest with myself.

And sounded awesome, of course.

"My name's S. My greatest goal is writing something great, and my greatest fear is that I never will."

So it was a little redundant. The class made sad noises at me and I said, no, this isn't a sob story. Then the teacher told me I was a good writer, and onto the next student.

I've been thinking about that a lot, how my own self critical problems paralyze my writing. I started wondering where these expectations come from, where all of our expectations come from, as people. And then, I had it: movies.

Movies are designed to make you sympathize with the main character. The main character yells at people, tells them off, rolls their eyes, laughs at people, and you agree, because you sympathize. You could never do those things.

But sometimes, main characters of other movies do things that main character forbade, and vice versa, and once again you understand because the movie makes you sympathize. Makes you empathize. No wonder we're so confused about how to act as teens - we've been given conflicting messages since birth.

In reality, there is no right way to act. Everyone has different. Everyone has a different scale of morality. People will always pass judgement on your decisions, and not everyone will like you.

Not everyone will like you.

Not everyone will like you, so you need to stop trying to please other people.

Stop trying to change yourself for them.

And so we circle back to my trusty #5.

This is perhaps the most important lesson a person can learn, yet we aren't taught to heed this sage advice until we pick it up on our own. My mom has told me this probably twice, ever, yet it's one of the most difficult concepts to grasp, and even more difficult to follow through.

It really does come down to mind over matter, doesn't it?




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