Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Identity Crisis

I was born into this earth knowing nothing; clueless to everything that was happening around me.  Like a child's baby doll, I was passed around from person to person; celebrating my birth.  I wonder how birth can be such a celebrated event.  Is it because it's the start to life?

I have heard that life is beautiful.  I can't deny that concept, but I question it.  Why would someone want to bring a life into this cruel world?  Because you know everyone has gone through something in their life.  Is the intention to bring joy to you and your family, while trying your best to ensure the child's perfect care [and livelihood]?  Thirty seconds into watching a news station, and that concept may seem too far out of reach to be possible.  So then what, we create life in order to fix ours?  Our marriages?  Our stress from work?  Did we not see how our parents did it?  I suppose the old adage, "learn from your mistakes" should apply here.  Or maybe one about continuing to do the same thing over and over again, because we [as humans] decide that we learn by example, regardless if any mistake was made. 

It's a sad thought, you know, being so complacent of what is going on around me, while subconsciously absorbing nearly all of it.  Researchers say that the period from birth to the age of three is when we develop most rapidly.  During that period, we are so susceptible to our surroundings.  We are a human sponge; "The human brain begins forming very early in prenatal life (just three weeks after conception), but in many ways, brain development is a lifelong project. That is because the same events that shape the brain during development are also responsible for storing information—new skills and memories—throughout life. The major difference between brain development in a child versus learning an adult is a matter of degree the brain is far more impressionable (neuroscientists use the term plastic) in early life than in maturity. This plasticity has both a positive and a negative side. On the positive side, it means that young children's brains are more open to learning and enriching influences. On the negative side, it also means that young children's brains are more vulnerable to developmental problems should their environment prove especially impoverished or un-nurturing."

There is definitely purpose to life.  People come together, and have a baby as a result of fornication, but we are all created by God.  That, I am a firm believer of.  That sole reason is why we have a purpose of life.  In that way, life is beautiful, because we are beautifully made.  It still doesn't explain to me why this world is so corrupt though.  If we go with the learn by example concept, then we find that we all become copy cats.  We conform to the world that is.  By doing that, we aren't the only one's that suffer the consequences.  Violence is contagious.  The interesting thing is that happiness is contagious as well.  If we step out, to be different from the norm, instill the lead by example notion, then we can change the world.

No, I am not a peace activist.  You won't see me nude, in the streets, picketing some free world garbage.  I just feel like people live life in such disposition to anyone that is different from them, and I struggle with the idea of how that could work.  And by different, I mean positively different from them; not the person who is overly joyed, hugging and kissing everyone (again, the street hippie vision in my head).  And then, as if it is part of the clockwork that is my life, I begin to think deeply into reasons why people have this predisposition of hatred towards others.  What was it?  You know, we are elastic from childbirth through the age of three...and after, we continue to absorb what we see and experience. Based on how the world is, one would assume that the majority of things people are subconsciously consuming have to be negative. And what benefit to us is that?  Gosh, I am talking in circles again.  I digress.

Tug of war was never my favorite game.  I never fully enjoyed the concept of pulling harder than someone on the other side, to cause them all to fall down.  Maybe because I was living that  life.  I was born to two confused people, raised under the wing of the parent who had "custody" of me, expected to make a way for myself.  As I grew up, I was exposed to a split family at its finest.  I went back and forth from parent to parent.  Each household had its own way of living, its own way of parenting.  My father is Jewish, my mother a Christian; my father liberal, my mother conservative; my father aggressive, my mother passive; my father sexually driven, my mother emotionally driven...    I was in a lifestyle out of the norm; I absorbed everything.

I suppose my parents were right though; I do have to make a way for myself.  Yeah, my parents know people, and have their connections, but that really doesn't help me right now.  I would say that they have done enough...or enough as they could/knew how to do.  I can also say that I do not have the best relationship with either parent.  I have part of my father's temper, and my mother's emotions.  I have split political views, and sometimes can't even find reason to care.  I was formerly sexually driven, then I came to understand the numbing feeling that it left for me.  See, in the moment, it is fantastic, but following that fantastic spec of time [as compared to my  existence] I am left with emptiness, and my future relationships have suffered the consequences of my past.  That is negative as well as positive.  See, the things that have happened in my past make me who I am today.  And I know that statement can be overused, but it's true.  I am the best me today that I can be, or at least try to be. 

The momentary satisfaction of the things in this world is what causes the corruption.  We all seek pleasure, but the things in which people find it are not the best.  The tendency to gravitate towards the social norm, is disturbing.  We naturally slide into the ebb and flow of society.  Even those who state that they never conform to society and are different, tend to be one in the same with everyone else.  People drink/do drugs/have sex because they are told it is the "thing to do".  Humans desire to have the acceptance of others, so fitting into the groove of the world is what they resort to. 

You know, I have found that I have a great memory.  I have the ability to remember exact events, verbatim, as if I was there at that very moment.  Some memories are good, and some memories are bad.  Everything that has entered my head remains somewhere deep within my subconscious.  At times I struggle to find who I actually am, as a person.  Maybe that is one of the results of being able to vividly mimic a large variety of different people that I have heard speak or have seen.  Amidst the laughter and jeers, my mind wanders in directions unknown to those on the outside.  The mask that is put on, in the form of the mocking of a celebrity or friend of mine, only covers up what I truly feel inside.  I am lost in this world, like a wandering sheep who doesn't belong.  Or maybe I am just not like other people.

We are all uniquely our own.