Tagged: love
5 More Reasons to Love Summer
Happy first day of summer! June 21st is the Northern Solstice.
You read and loved 7 Reasons Why We Love Summer, so here are 5 additional reasons to love the hottest season of the year.
5. Summer reading
If you’ve got even an ounce of intelligence running through your veins, you’re able to find a curiosity for reading somewhere deep inside of you.
Young people think “summer reading” and envision long lists of books pushed on us by schools, that we don’t really bother with until the week before school starts back up. Even then, many students skip the whole process and head straight for SparkNotes.
But summer reading can and should be something more, something better. We can fill our free time at home visiting another country, another world, another dimension in another person’s body, the hours passing by as if they were minutes. Continue reading
This is How We Lost Each Other
Just as we’re starting to establish a tradition,
phone calls around midnight,
every night except on Saturdays,
my six sevenths. Continue reading
Guest Post: A Little Too Much
Being the horribly nosy person that I am, I couldn’t help but overhear a conversation the other day in my school hallway. Two girls were standing in the middle of the hallway, making everything suck for everyone else. They were loudly discussing the pointlessness of the classes we had to take and the triviality of life in general:
“I can’t stand this school anymore. I hate it and I hate my life. Literally nothing matters.” Continue reading
“Why We Broke Up,” the story of a heartbreak that may remind you of your own
It’s been a while since I’ve actually picked up a book and read it. While on Winter Break, I brought A Tree Grows in Brooklyn with me on vacation, the only book I’ll read during the school year.
This week, however, my schoolwork was overwhelming me and I missed reading for fun so badly that I decided to stop by the library. In the midst of all of this college stuff, I pushed reading off to the side, which is just a real shame, because it has major therapeutic value for me.
The librarian there, my homeroom teacher from last year, recommended four books to me; I told her that I was in the mood for girly novels, and she did not disappoint.
The first book that I picked up was Why We Broke Up, by Daniel Handler.
First impression? I wasn’t very impressed. Maybe it was the writing or maybe it was the hustle-bustle pace of my life for the past few months, but I found myself skipping lines and not appreciating the writing in deep detail.
Eventually, however, Continue reading
The Moments I Knew I Was Falling For You
I adore the details.
The Midnight Reenactment of Middle School Love
Before I had said hi to you,
I knew you just through fantasies.
I watched you, infatuated, and asked myself:
What are the birds and the bees?
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.
A Letter To My Sister on Her First Day Of High School
We can’t always go to school completely prepared, with a pretty backpack and fancy hat.
A service has been invented through which you can send messages to people in the future. To whom would you send something, and what would you write? – Daily Prompt
Dear Vicky,
You are going to start high school next year. You will make the huge transition from middle school to high school. While the jump is not as drastic as it is to leave high school for college, you won’t be prepared. No one ever is. We all have this ideal of high school in our minds that we find is woefully distorted. It is too optimistic. It is too much influenced by the parties and fun that you see on TV. And yet, it’s not as dramatic as the media portrays it. But this is only for me personally, a major introvert.
So I hope I can help you just a little bit.
You need to find friends but don’t cling on for dear life. Your social group is inevitably going to shift every couple of months. You just need to know that it will happen, and it is not the end of the world if it does. People you thought would be by your side for the rest of your life will desert you in a few months. You will make friends with people you never imagined you would. High school will surprise you.
You need to keep your grades up. There’s this evil thing called GPA which measures your grades from day one of year one. The higher it is, the more likely you’re going to go to a good school. Don’t be anal, but don’t take your knowledge for granted. In high school, everything gets a lot harder. You must apply yourself and start reviewing for tests early. You have to find motivation to do your work. You don’t HAVE to learn about the French Revolution, you GET to.
You need to find teachers that will like you. Yes, it’s nice to have them write recs for you, but it’s just nice to have friends that are in positions of authority. It doesn’t look lame. It’s the coolest thing ever. Find one that teaches a subject that interests you and do not be like everyone else in the class. Smile and say hi in the halls. Go to extra help not just to review for a test. Visit them even if they are no longer your teacher. I regret so much not doing so, and I have certainly alienated a good number of teachers that could be very meaningful to me.
You don’t have to find out your passion. You don’t need to decide what you’re going to be. High school is just the very beginning (a very painful and miserable beginning) of a path of stones that will lead you through life. Step completely and heavily and confidently onto the first stone. Explore many options and join clubs. If you find one that you like, you should stick with it. If your friends want you to quit it, disregard their opinion (in this instance). High school is not for your friend group, it is for YOU. It is YOUR experience. You are your own independent person.
Before year 9 you won’t take this advice very seriously because you won’t really know what I’m talking about. Every year you’ll read this letter again and understand it a little better than you did before. And you’ll find out that what I’m saying is true (in some respects, at least). And you will look back when you graduate and regret a little bit but we’re not all perfect, are we?
— Catherine
On Happy Endings
Ideal happy ending, based on my childhood. Not in this real world though.
Daily Prompt: “And they lived happily ever after.” Think about this line for a few minutes. Are you living happily ever after? If not, what will it take for you to get there?
First of all, who is “they”? Right now, it just seems like it’s just me. Alone, but not lonely. Alone, not in the sense that I have no friends or people who love me, but in the sense that this year has been full of reflection time and I’ve changed so much over the last couple of months that I feel totally different. My priorities and my perspectives have shifted. There seems to be just one dominant voice in my head (mine) echoing in a collection of thoughts. Sometimes I get semi-paranoid because it’s just my opinion, distorted and volatile.
Am I living happily ever after? Well, my story isn’t finished yet. I’m just at the beginning of what I hope will be a long, fulfilling life. I’m still in high school, which I always regard as just a stepping-stone in my life. Metaphorically, my decisions will decide whether or not I stay on the correct path. At least, that’s what it seems like. The pressures of high school are starting to get to me. Everywhere, people emphasize that the trivial choices I make everyday determine who I am in the future, especially where I go to college.
It saddens me somewhat that so much of what we do in our teenage years impacts our future. Who are we, hormonal, moody teens? Do we know what we want, or do we just listen to what others tell us? How do we get there? What if we aren’t mature enough to discipline ourselves to reach our personal goals? And even if we eventually come to realize the big picture and the “objective,” what happens if we don’t take a step back soon enough? What if we’re too late?
All around me I see burnt-out people. People who don’t have any motivation or inspiration to do what they love. It seems like we’ve all been brainwashed into mindless, emotionless robots. Okay, exaggerating slightly. No doubt we all have our aspirations and our passions, and I question whether or not these zeals are valid or just hopeful, childish wishing, but in doing a little risk calculus, a lot of people decide not to invest too much in activities that might not work out in the long run.
I think a lot of them COULD work though, provided that it’s a mature, rational passion. Does such a thing even exist though? Who knows. I certainly don’t.
We should be more daring.
THIS. IS. DARING.
^What do you think I’m referring to though?
Happy endings, right. “Happily ever after.” My opinion? No, I’m not at that stage yet. Maybe I’m veering off that path a tad bit as well, distracted by everyday problems and immature desires. What it will take me to get there? A whole lot of discipline, reflection, and sacrifice.
We’ll get there soon enough.
Catherine Zhang 