Some Nights (fun.)

"You did a bad thing. Deal with it." - Jess

It's funny how sometimes the simplest statements can seem so profound. I try to live my life in what I view as a good and moral way, but I think everyone gets to a stage of life where they experience terrible things they never thought they'd be going through. It's like you have this mentality as a child growing up that if you do everything that you're supposed to then nothing bad will happen to you. But perhaps having a complete and utter lack of your sense of adventure in itself is an immoral action. After all, this world was created a beautiful, wondrous thing. There are so many mysteries to be hatched, situations to be taken advantage of, and times to be run with. You really have to be willing to run with life sometimes. I didn't think in high school that I'd end up living in Alaska with my family and switching up majors less than a year in (I certainly didn't foresee the dental hygiene major that I started out with). I didn't expect heartbreak to lend me a new and more experienced perspective on the world that allows me to appreciate a broader range of emotions toward just about anything and everything. Honestly I feel like the Grinch standing on top of the mountain getting ready to experience further damage to my heart and instead experiencing an immediate rush of love and understanding. It's beautiful that we humans have songs not only about love and happiness, but also about sadness and heartbreak. We relate to one another, and we express an empathy toward the stricken individuals that most other times in life we keep in check. We honor the strength it takes to pick yourself back up after you've made one mistake or another. There are many forgivable crimes you can commit against other people, but the strangest and most unpredictable are on an emotional level. At some point we all have to be the bad guy and realize that a lot of people aren't inherently bad, they just have to make a few mistakes before they fully understand the world and what their role in it demands of them. That doesn't mean you have a free pass to go out and intentionally destroy stable life for others - it only means that when you accidentally find yourself in a predicament where you've turned out to be the bad guy you shouldn't be afraid to come forward and admit what you did to yourself and others. You should be able to recognize that getting caught up in a lie or a bad situation doesn't make you a bad person by association. It only means that you made a mistake, and it's how you react once you realize the gravity of your actions that really defines the sort of person you are. In most cases overcoming obstacles serves to make you a stronger person with a bigger understanding of the world. It gives you the power to empathize and help others along the right path who have followed a road similar to your own. When a problem first presents itself to you it can seem like a black hole in your life, sucking in everything good and leaving in its wake bad situations and an abyss of despair, but the more you try to cover it or move on without facing it and accepting responsibility, the more you will find yourself stilted in success and happiness. When you've managed to handle a bad situation with the utmost grace, when you've served up your soul in its truest form and faced up to the consequences of your actions the feeling of peace and prosperity is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. I have to wonder also, when Centuries by Fall Out Boy talks about the obscurity most humans face unless they commit some terrible crime, at the awful truth of it. It's true that some of the most well known figures memorialized within our societies are the appalling perpetrators of the most horrific crimes. We pass down the names and judgements in hopes that future generations will not repeat the mistake of trusting similarly inclined individuals but what now are we to do when our future generations understand that one of the easiest ways to be remembered is to become heinous and notorious for something. I guess it all comes down to good parenting, good morals, and having enough people in a society that are willing to commit their time to helping someone for the sake of human sympathy, and not to gain something themselves. What more fulfilling thing can you experience than the knowledge that your time has been well spent, the world is better for having you, and you will be memorialized in the form of other people stepping forward to do exactly what you have done for others. In other words I've been letting my slightly philosophical views on plagiarism lead the way as I ponder paying it forward, and taking the good, taking the bad, taking them both and learning about the facts of life. To further my cliche I'd like to close by saying that you can be anything if you want it badly enough. You can travel, make money, influence people, make real friends, make a difference in society, learn how to do just about anything you please... Anything you want is within your grasp. I always think of Where the Red Fern Grows when the grandfather told the boy, "If you want anything bad enough you'll get it. You just have to meet God halfway." Again I have always been struck by the profound meaning in his simple words. People grow up here being told that they can have whatever they want, be anything they want to be. It's become fostered into our social structure that if you want anything badly enough it'll just come to you. But that certainly isn't true... You have to work, prioritize, and put everything you have into something to get it sometimes. Sometimes things fall right into your lap, and you can count yourself blessed for that - but most of the time nothing can get you from point A to point B except a keen sense of determination and perseverance. If you want something bad enough and you're willing to put in the work, you'll get it. It takes a resilient person to use the roadblocks as springboards, and it takes an impressive person indeed to view the overcoming of these roadblocks as a fantastic journey that provided you with a deeper sense of understanding, emotion, and a great story to tell at the end of the rainbow.