Tagged: goal

March 6, 2013

It Is So Easy To Hate People

Internet Explorer Girl’s face???/Different personalities, yo.

They’re just a speckle among the sea of people you know, the rest of which you feel passionate, neutral, ambivalent, or just plain indifferent about.

They’re not aware that you “hate” them, so they don’t try to defend themselves.

That, or they’re 100% aware and have reciprocated the hatred.

But in any case, I don’t think we should hate people anymore.

Hi. I’m Catherine, and I’m an extreme categorizer.

If you ask me about a person, I have a tendency to immediately blurt out whether or not I love them or hate them. Very rarely am I able to distinguish them as someone in between.

But I’ve given it a lot of thought (as well as love and reflection) and I’ve come to conclude that it’s not healthy to categorize people into extremes. You can’t 100% love or hate someone.

I used to categorize everyone I knew. Lately, I’ve made a huge effort to no longer categorize people, and to recognize them as what they are: human. Like me. Human.

It’s more detrimental to arbitrarily hate someone.

You think you hate them, but you probably don’t.

See, we are each our own person. The only things we know are what we see and what we hear. Both are never 100% accurate; both are obscured by our own predispositions and personal biases. Who are we to assume that we know everything about the people we supposedly hate? We have absolutely no stable foundation to base our hatred off of.

I am not an angel, you are not the devil. We are a combination of both. I would even go as far to say that I am not more angel than devil, and you are not more devil than angel. We’re probably equal in our angelic/devilish proportions, but we just evaluate these sorts of measurements in different ways. You shouldn’t hate someone for “sinning” differently than you.

Maybe you think you hate them because you two are just so different. You have completely different morals, backgrounds, opinions, perspectives, goals, and methods of achieving these goals. None of these disparities constitutes as a character flaw. They are character differences, and there’s nothing you can do about them. So, what to do at this point? Sometimes, opposites attract and live in harmony. Otherwise, it takes a bit of experimenting and suffering to realize that two personalities really don’t mix well. In the saddest of situations, people never realize that they are just suited to be companions, and lead unhappy relationships.

But what makes one lifestyle superior to another? Aren’t any reasons that you try to give completely arbitrary?

I also think part of the problem has to do with the media. Yes, we are constantly criticizing the media for destroying the beneficial aspects of human nature and yet, this has become somewhat of a blanket indict. The media is not totally evil. In this instance however, the media helps to spread these ideas that if two people have conflicts, someone is wrong and someone is right. The best example I can provide would be these things I see on Tumblr all day, everyday.

They’re always like:

“The biggest mistake I have made in my life is letting people stay in my life far longer than they deserve.”

Well, they’re inspiring, are they not? They’re effective, aren’t they? If taken seriously, they manage to keep one person from engaging in a conflict of some sort and “being the better person” or “being more mature” or “letting it go”. But these messages are also somewhat misleading. Don’t they make it seem like whoever reads these positive messages is the victim of some horrible bullying, and that the “bully” is wrong, insecure, misguided, etc. Of course, these messages are true – to an extent. There are definitely people out there that don’t treat others well, More often than not, this is really not the case; the real root of the problem arises from personality differences. And again, there’s nothing you can do about them.

November 30, 2012

This Time Next Month

At this time next month, we’ll be counting down the seconds until a new year (assuming we live through the 2012 apocalypse scenario). I find that the New Year always brings about so many interesting mood swings and behavioral changes in everyone. Yet, it’s still a bit of a cliché.

Celebrating the new year isn’t simply about toasting with champagne at a lavish, extravagant party, and welcoming the new year with a picture perfect new year’s kiss, is it? Not in my opinion. Of course, I’m still young and I don’t go to those types of parties at this period in my life.

The movie New Years Eve seemed to exaggerate all of these aspects of the cliché, portraying the holiday as a moment that your entire life has led up to, and that if you don’t accomplish your resolutions from last year, then you are a complete and utter failure. On the other hand, look what resulted from Zac Efron and Michelle Pfeiffer’s outstanding acting: an older woman ended the year with a kiss from a devilishly good looking man.

Whether you’re at a block party, in New York City to watch the Big Apple drop, or at home in your PJ’s with your seven cats, New Years seems to represent more of an occasion characterized by mental anticipation. It’s all about the resolutions, the clean slate, the new opportunities, and the bright outlook that nearly everyone starts with.

Even though you might not end up keeping the resolutions you make, it’s still probably important to try. No matter where you end up in terms of your goals, know that you are not alone. Everywhere around you, people are laboring to maintain their resolutions to spend more time with their family, work harder, sleep earlier, get healthier, etc.

On December 27th, your neighborhood gym could be as deserted as the Earth is after the Rapture in Left Behind because no one thinks exercising is a priority and because they are still in a food coma from delicious meals of the holiday break. But I wouldn’t be surprised if on New Years Day, the gym is packed full of people who yield hopeful, new outlooks on life that inevitably fade sooner or later in the year as they realize that they have more arbitrarily- “important” things to do.

However, on New Years Eve, some nostalgic and sentimental people will think back to their elementary school days, where they brought home a list of simple goals for the new year (do my homework, sleep before 9, stop eating candy). This select group of people will inevitably try to rekindle their childhood memories by writing down their resolutions on a paper and taping it to their steering wheel, adhering it to their bathroom mirror, or tacking it onto their bulletin board.

These goals will demonstrate hope and the notion of possibility to not just yourself, but those who care about you. They will be equally inspired by your “firmly established” resolutions, and follow suit with their own personal goals.

In reality, you can and should make resolutions and goals to accomplish whenever you want, at any time of the year. It’s a good idea to do so, because it gives you something to work towards. New Years Eve is simply an established time of year, when you know for certain that you are not alone, because millions of people around the world are probably making the exact same resolutions as you.

I wanted to write this article right around the time of year before exams and major tests generally occur, and before everyone else on the blogosphere starts writing about it, so I thought this moment of time was appropriate.

Thanks for reading; care to share some of your potential New Years Resolutions?

Here are a few of mine: