Ask yourself

Don't expect to do and be everything but try to be happy during the journey. Sometimes it's about getting there first, but mostly, it's about the right attitude and doing the job well while surrounding yourself with the right people.

Some people will seem like they're whizzing right past you on life's highway but you have to pay them no mind. It's tempting to want to stick the pedal to the metal at that moment; you're desperate to not be left behind. But if you don't work on yourself in the present, you'll never catch the momentum you need to be truly successful and feel real achievement in the end. Embrace what you can do now. Dream for the future, and know what you want. Pounce at the right opportunities. Don't let others try to convince you that you need something you don't.

"Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising which tempt you to believe that your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires courage." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Filtering

Oowie, it's been a while. Summer's ending and it's been wild. Well, as wild as my life gets. Which is not very.

I watched an episode from a Biritish television show the other day. And it got me thinking about this quote I've learned to live by.

"Try to be a filter, not a sponge." (Perks of Being a Wallflower)

When I first read the book, I was never able to fully grasp it. It was one of the protagonist's most profound life lessons. Now I'm beginning to understand it. In the past, as an idealistic sort of person, it was easy for me to remove myself from daily life and refuse to face the world as it were. So much more often than not, I was twice as naive as my peers in high school. I grew up thinking premarital sex was an abomination and didn't happen in my immediate surroundings; sobriety was upright and drinking alcohol was bad no matter what; gay people, jocks, and cheerleaders only existed in movies and television; drugs and substance abuse was only done by the bad kids; people were inherently good; organized religion was a wrong turn away from spirituality; and war was a byproduct of injustice and lies and power hungry men of unpleasant background.

There are a few things in there that just aren't black and white, though, and my naivety is a result of overprotective parents and going to a nerd high school sans a stereotypical status quo.

But you know what? I don't have any shame in growing up "sheltered."

Yeah, it gives me a more shocking sense of the world once I take a look at it. Asia, oddly enough, gives me a strange sense of the world. Television thrives on shocking the audience and giving accurate social commentary on the world. Should I be concerned of things poisoning my innocent mind?

Perhaps.

But perhaps not.

If I function as a sponge, I should be concerned. But if I act as a filter; if I take it, accept the world as a reality, withhold judgement not my place to have in the first place, filter it for its value, then it's my responsibility to stay a filter. (You know who was a sponge? Dorian Gray.)

I've been thrown into a world that's not my own and forced to see life for what it is outside of the walls of my ideals. From my upbringing, I did gain a sense of value and an idea of what's right or wrong. I'm not saying that my ideals and values have made a complete 180. They haven't. What I'm saying is that following others and going with the norm is not always bad. What is bad... is uninformed and ignorant following.

An opinion is yours only when you've worked it out and made it consistent with who you are.