Rally Your Hope

Growing up is not all it is cracked up to be. Life is hard; being a kid is easy. When you are young the world is your oyster. A child has the potential to be literally anything. I mean, they are able to achieve even the most difficult of goals. However, as we live we lose our potential. The sand in our hourglass slips through open fingers as we permit our lives to run out. The longer we live the harder it is to attain the greatness we once sought, just due to the daily decisions every person makes. We close our own doors through inaction. The perfect time to begin will never arrive. Therefore it is imperative that we make our own perfect time. No longer can we give up dreams to death for idleness. It is murder. Apathy is reckless endangerment of our lives; it kills all we care for. How can we stand by as death creeps up on our hope? We tell our children to shoot for the stars, to dream big because the sky is the limit, and yet we slide through life heedless of our own advice. Stop! Quite wasting your potential! Open your eyes, you blind man, and see! There is nothing restraining you but yourself and your own fear, hate, discomfort, apprehension, loathing, distress, anxiety, laziness, apathy. Awake, sleeper! Dream, dreamer! Truly live, rather than waiting. What are you waiting for? An invitation? "Stop asking if you can achieve greatness and take it." Have you realized what I have yet? We must cease delaying and realize our dreams: seize our hopes. Build wings for flight if you must, but for the sake of heaven above and the earth as we live on it take action. Do not return to your procrastination after reading this. Do not simply be roused to inaction. Do not open the door to apathy. Rally your hope.

Speech

I thought, since the title of my blog is Hope Itself, that I should post my valedictorian speech on the subject of Hope. So, here it is.

Hope. A simple, four-letter word. But what is it? What does it mean? "Hope is the thing with feathers," writes Emily Dickenson. Merriam Webster calls hope the expectation of fufillment. I say that hope is a choice. A choice to stand up each day and move towards a goal. To improve upon our weaknesses and grow stronger. Hope is not an intangable ideal but rather a definitive action. Failure to take this action is failure to believe in the future. That future will be difficult, and life will have challenges, but we have all been equiped with the tools to surmount those obstacles, stand on our own two feet, and hope. High school is the best place to learn about hope because high school only has one goal. It is not to learn mathematics, or English, or science, or languages. High school is to prepare for the future. We are taught to form our own thoughts and opinions and we learn to become our own people, people with their own dreams and aspirations. I, for one, have decided to follow my dreams and hope in my future. And let me tell you, that future is bright, because we, today's students, are the future. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the graduating class of 2011.

Insanity, Inconsistancy

Outside, the rain is falling so thick that you can barely see three feet in front of you. If you go outside in the rain without an umbrella, which makes more sense: that you will be soaked completely and instantaneously, or that you will be dry? That you will be as wet as water itself, of course! How about if you go outside in 1,000 degree weather without sunscreen? You will be burnt to a crisp, no question. What if you see a child who is about to be hit by a car? Would you push them out of the way and save them? What if you were the driver? Would you still speed? Dp you speed? Just as occurrences in nature demand consistency, we must have it in our lives. Without it, what can possibly make sense. Things have an order and a stability to them that is impossible to argue with. It is intolerable to live in such a way that there is no order. In such a world, there would be no truth. There would be no logic. there would be no knowledge, science, love, art, language, communication, religion, or sanity. If we are not consistant, we have no foundation to build a life on. Inconsistency literally is insanity. Saying one thing, but acting on the contrary is madness. If we speed, we endanger not just children, but everyone around us. So how can we then profess the sanctity of human life? As humans, it is our goal, no it is our responsibility to get our priorities, philosophies, and ideologies straight. Once we know what we believe, then we need to live it. It is not enough to simply know, for knowledge in and of itself helps no man. It is the function, the actual use of the knowledge as a tool that proves its usefulness. So think a little. Decide what you believe. Find the holes and inconsistencies in your life and patch them up with action. I live a vastly different life than I wish to live, and that is okay as long as I am still striving to reach my goal of consistency. Remember: insanity, inconsistency.

Read Between the Lines (A Short Monologue)

I live a simple life. I wake up every mourning and shower and eat a 
My existence is broken. Pitiful. Once upon a time, I was a revolutionary, but now I am broken. 
small breakfast of toast and milk. I ride my bike though the 
Once I cried for rebellion, but not I . . . just . . . cry. I wander through a desert of people, each a 
crowded street to my job. I love my job. I work in a wonderful 
grain of sand is another hopeless face. I slave away in a dirty, gray cubicle for a dirty, gray 
building. I work in a wonderful cubicle. I work for a wonderful 
government that works only for their own interests. It uses and WASTES the very people it
man. He works for the wonderful government. The wonderful 
professes to protect. Those in power attempt to control the masses. They break us down until
government works with my best interests in mind. They never waste. 
we know nothing but mindless brokenness. Oppression from above. They feed us ridiculous
. .After I work through the mourning, I eat and apple for lunch. An 
propaganda, wasting our potential. Words loose their meaning when passing between smashed 
apple a day keeps the doctor away. After I work through the 
pots, vessels, with no hope and empty eyes. We hide, we HIDE our faces, unable to break
afternoon, I chat with the secretary. After we chat, I ride my 

through. Without hope, the masses are swindled into apathy. They will die without someone 

bicycle through the cobblestone street back home. I eat soup for 
to raise them up. We will die without someone to raise us up. Once upon a time I was a 
dinner. Alone. I read the newspaper. Alone. I watch television. 
revolutionary, but now I am broken. Once I cried for rebellion but now I cry for a savior.
Alone. I go to bed. Alone. I live a simple life. I wake up every 
Save us. My existence is broken . . . Pitiful.
mourning and shower and eat a small breakfast of toast and milk
. . .

The Real Deal

A wise woman recently told me that the theater is life unmasked. It shows real events in a real and vulnerable way. But let me ask this question: Why do we live with our faces veiled? Even people who claim disregard for others' judgment do not act fully unaffected by them. They too guard themselves. I guard myself. But what would happen if everyone was real? If everyone was genuine? And I don't mean being rude and voicing your opinion on everything with blatant contempt. There would be no fear of ridicule. There would be no contempt. Mockery is a devise of self-defense that attempts to raise one's self-esteem by stomping on another's. With genuine people and honesty, degradation would not exist commonly because, if we are honest, we hate that feeling of worthlessness and never willingly force another feeling human being into that despair. With real people, there would be real love. There would still be fear of losing, falling, and getting hurt, but people would love deeper and more fiercely as well as express it more often. The vast majority of humans hide there emotions, when in fact, they should release them to color creation. A cold white, anesthetic  world is no kind of world for life. So I am calling. Calling for truth. Calling for love. Calling for emotions. Calling for authenticity. Calling, calling, calling. . . What would happen if we tore our hearts from our chests and stitched them with sutures to our sleeves, a bloody mess beating red and black on our whitewashed world? Humanity needs to stop lying to itself, act real, and allow itself to feel. And before you dismiss this   as post as the ravings of an idealist, allow me to remind you that it only takes a handful of people, nay: one man, to start a revolution. So, when you contemplate putting on that mask that you have on a shelf by the door, at least pause in thought. You do not have to put it on. Try venturing out without it. Try being real. Try feeling. It is scary to permit emotions to permeate your life because they are potent and don't always accurately display life. But what use is living without feeling? It takes courage, but courage is not the absence of fear; it is moving forward despite it. Be the real you. Be the real deal.

Caged Bird

What if your mouth was removed? What would you miss most? Food? Drink? Speech? A person's mouth is like a portal through which their thoughts escape. I would miss the ability to quickly express myself . Despite language's poor ability to portray what the speaker is attempting to say, speech is a genuine media of expression. To rob a person of the capability to communicate their ideas is like denying a roaring lion space to roam and reign. The mind is a caged bird when expressions is refused it; its great power is rendered moot and mute without freedom. If the hands of Rembrant, Van Goh, or Picasso had been taken their mouths would have been removed. If their vision had been destroyed, so would their expression. Should art be denied the masses? Can art be denied the masses if they refuse to truly see it? If most people do not hear, see, and understand creative expression, are our mouths not denied us? Expression, bon-a-fide originality, absolutely requires response. A world without reply to expressions is pitiful and pointless. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another."
Expressions in need of reaction, it aims to elicit emotion. Without a mouth, how can we speak? Without a mouth, how can we smile?

Balance

Balance. A word that most people would use without a second thought. But Balance is the most important word in the English language. It is the most important word in any language. The word Balance is not significant in and of itself,  but its meaning is vital to existence. The entire universe hinges on the meaning of this simple word. Life Balances death. Good Balances evil. But the problem is . . . how do we live? . . . how do we Balance? Where does hope end and and insanity begin? How do love and fear hold hands? Can faith become idiocy when pushed too far? What really is the difference between the natural and the supernatural? The world, the entire universe, is a fabric woven of these two strands. Carnal and Spiritual. Are angels and demons locked in battle around us, but we are just too blind to see? If a man's eyes were opened, truly unlocked and released, would he believe what he saw? Or would he scream until his lungs failed? Are the minds of the lunatic and basket cases missing, or Balanced? Understanding our life in this world, real understanding, is like peeling back the curtain to see the realm beyond.          When the expectations of life, the lock on the natural, are allowed to melt away like chalk on a wall in the rain, Balance can be achieved. Search for equilibrium between confidence and arrogance, skepticism and ignorant disbelief, living and wasting. Search for Balance.