I have to say that despite the record breaking cold that everyone is complaining about, this week was pretty incredible. I painted, I was in a movie and feel healthier due to my high consumption of green vegetables and my lower consumption of pizza and pizza related items.
I feel creative and am feeding off what ever inspiration I can find. One of these morcelles of inspiration food is this video.
Never mind that she is an incredible public speaker but what got me is that she speaks some of the most raw and beautiful truth that I have heard in a long time. She grabbed my heart with her voice and kept me interested until the very end.
I think that we all struggle with identity and the very fact that we are in a world that wants us to believe in products and not ourselves makes me sick. We are told to believe in a structure and institutions that are themselves not virtuous, yet we are told to live up to high standards and live honest lives. They are robbing us blind while at the same time telling us not to steal.
This is why I do what I do the way I do it. I push on in the hopes of discovering who I am and not what others want me to be. I push forward and work to maybe, one day think of myself as a "good person". (what ever that means)
I want to live a just life, not a profitable one. Can they coexist? Well, if I am going to survive, I am going to have to figure out how they do.
My next inspiration meal is this epic woman. Fan Lebowitz. HOOOOLLLYYYY SSSHHHIIITTT!
If talking were a sport, this woman would win first place at every Olympics.
What I like most about her is the way she explains things and how, for the most part, her thoughts are accessible to most anyone no matter your background. Now, to get her wit and subtle comedy is a whole other story, but she does not try to loose you in big words or concepts. Her sentences are crafted to be concise and strong and she doesn't, "beat around the bush" so to speak.
If you have an 83 Minutes to spare, I would highly suggest you watch the small doc about her called public speaking
Here's the full movie for free :)
http://www.movie2k.to/Public-Speaking-watch-movie-524584.html
I have many many other things that have given me inspiration over the last week but I am starting to realize the power of self admiration. I am not talking about ego or narcissism but rather, a sense of self that is beyond the physical world.
The physical world is and will always be, a manifestation of how we feel. If we feel shitty, we will do shitty things. If we feel good, we will most likely do good things.
The world that we live in tells us we are worthless unless we attain a certain level of success or have special pieces of paper declaring our excellence. This system hurts the collective soul and conscience of the people and doesn't allow for TRUE acceptance of individuality. Yes, we live in an age of endless opportunity, but those opportunities are not our "rights" as many people feel they are, they are privileges that are given to us by those who want society to conform. You can not buy individuality and when you realize that, you are a little bit more free.
All that aside, there are a lot of shitty people out there who can and will beat your soul down and steal what ever sense of self worth you may have.
Personally, I've had enough of this. I see that the next step is to feel good within and feed off of what I create myself. Being my own hero, being my own lover and admiring the beauty that I am without looking in a mirror.
The video below is the 20 year-old me who didn't know jack shit about business and just wanted to bike my little butt off until I felt some sort of feeling of belonging.
Cycle-Bird gave me the feeling that I could do anything because it was me. No one said I should do this or that it was the best "career" choice for me. I did it because it felt right in my gut and everyday it made me feel alive and happy.
Was it easy? Of course not. It beat me just as hard if not harder than a professional university program but I came out the other side feeling closer to my identity. This is not to say that you can not discover yourself through academics, but as someone who has a hard time sitting down and concentrating, school was like a cage for me. I felt trapped and doing this job and building something that I called my own was the only thing that kept me sane and happy.
This is the challenge of life that we all have; finding our identity in this crazy world that we all call home.
It's not easy for anyone but what I suggest is that you start looking at your energy as currency and spending it in the right places. Your emotions and your psychological state is just as important if not more than your bank account. Treat them as such. Follow your heart and make sure you feel good with every breath you take because you never know when it might be taken away from you.
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