Tagged: perspective

March 14, 2013

Why You Shouldn’t Just Assume that North Korea is Crazy

When I was in ninth grade, the debate topic was military withdrawal from certain countries, one of which was South Korea. A large portion of the debate community advocated for the withdrawal of our troops because of we didn’t, Korean provocations would escalate and North Korea would eventually use its nuclear weapons against the US and South Korea, and a global extinction would occur. Raise your hand if you advocated this?

*raises hand*

In this day and age, this might seem like a reality. You’ve probably read multiple news articles (or skimmed the headlines) about how North Korea is flexing its nuclear muscles, trying to look threatening by carrying out nuclear tests. You’ve read about the irrationality of Kim Jong Un and his predecessor, and how this nonsensicalness is eventually going to lead them to launch nuclear weapons at the United States. Some assert that these claims are merely empty rhetoric. What do we believe?

Have you read about the brainwashing and corruption that exists within the borders? The government propaganda allows the citizens to believe that their dictator is their god, and that the places outside of North Korea are much worse.

I’ve changed my perspective on North Korea. In ninth grade, I generalized everyone within North Korea’s borders into a group of people that were absolutely crazy, irrational, and threatening. But that’s not true. There have been a substantial (while still relatively small) amount of people that have escaped from North Korea, come abroad to places like China or the United States. Some of these refugees have even created documentaries to portray the life that they lived. They are all not the same; we are all humans. It’s taken me a bunch of years a lots of news reading to understand this.

– Daily Prompt

March 13, 2013

Why Are You So Nice?

Sometimes I wonder about nice people

Do they know just how delightful they are?

Do they make an effort to be that pleasant?

If they’re conscious of their niceness, why do they choose to be so?

But then I wonder, are they actually nice?

Or do they just want to be known as someone who is warm and benign on the outside,

so that they’ll be more liked?

And then I ask myself whether or not it’s bad to make an effort to be such a pleasant person

Purposely saying nice things for the sake of being nice

Is it because they figure there’s already so much hatred in the world,

Or because they were taught that that was the correct thing to do?

But no one can be 100% nice.

Sadness and frustration always chips away at the shell of politeness and happiness

Do they deal with stress very well?

Do they just really appreciate life?

What if they only want good things to happen to people?

What if they just like you? Maybe they like me.

Sometimes I wonder about anti-nice people.

Horrible, nasty, pessimistic human beings.

Are they just permanently not nice?

Except, what if they just had a bad day? What if they didn’t sleep well?

Has something in their past caught up to their present?

What if they don’t think it’s necessary to be nice?

What if they think that no one deserves their niceness

Or maybe it’s just me – and the way I measure niceness

Not in how many words or good deeds

But by the intentions behind the words and deeds

Because we’re all different

And we all see the world differently.

What if they just don’t like you? Maybe they don’t like me.

– Writing Prompt

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.

February 27, 2013

My Thoughts on Personal Disasters

Murphy’s Law says, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

I can’t write about a time when this actually happened because it has never happened to me – or to anyone else, probably.

I’m going to guess that the majority of my blog readers are adults because there are only so many adolescents that can be interested in reading blogs.

If you’re an adult, everyone’s bound to have a mid-life crisis sooner or later. Of course, I’m not a grownup but I think it’s safe to assume that MOST adults are much more mature than kids.

If you happen to be a teenager, then thanks for reading!

Sure, we’re all teenagers. We have our day-to-day dramas and our world seems to turn upside down every other week but whether or not you react rationally to such a “crisis” depends upon two things: your perspective and your maturity.

We just don’t get it. This – my not being an adult – is precisely the reason why I can’t talk about a time when Murphy’s Law has ever applied to my life.

When I was in seventh grade, unlimited texting was the cool thing to have. I didn’t have it originally and I used to argue with my parents for days, coming up with stupid explanations to justify them buying me an unlimited texting plan.

Same thing happened with an iPhone. Or a certain clothing item, or a pair of headphones.

Those are the things that consumed my life when I was just a little younger. These sorts of material possessions seemed to determine my self-worth, and thus I just “had to have them.”

Sadly, not having one of these things would turn my world upside down and I’m ashamed to say that it would make me sullen for days on end.

So if I had started this blog back in seventh grade and been given this quote about Murphy’s Law, I would probably rant about not having unlimited texting or something.

Eventually, I got an iPhone, and a pair of cool headphones. While there are definite perks to having such things, in this present day and age, it really doesn’t matter to me anymore. I’ve got more important priorities to manage right now, and it’s amazing how much these desires shrink when compared to more substantial, reasonable goals.

If you maturely define what actually matters, anything that can go wrong will never always go wrong, especially not at the same time.

There will be “travesties” that can easily be disregarded simply because they don’t really impact your life in much of a way. There will be huge upsets in your life that you won’t expect that will make it seem like the end of the world, but seldom does that actually mean your life is ruined. Your day could easily be ruined though.

But what if we woke up everyday and decided that we were in a good mood? Would we reach world peace? Or would everyone just look a tad bit less cranky every morning?

These are my thoughts on personal disasters.