Alone

There's a difference between being alone and being lonely.

I think it is important for an individual to be alone sometimes, especially at this age where we are about to venture off into new territory of life and discover our paths as people. The world is a cold, cruel place and if you don't ever have to stand alone, you won't make it. On a smaller scale there is simple bliss is doing things alone. Reading a book alone. Listening to music alone. Sitting and admiring beauty alone. Everyone needs these little moments to themselves. I do think, however, that we live in a society that is teaching its inhabitants to become dependent on each other. Teens in this day and age are attached to their phones, social networking sites, etc. and it's really wearing down on the individual. Everyone is so focused on what the next person is doing that we are all essentially becoming robots... one in the same. I'm not saying that everyone is falling into line like this, but a vast majority is.

There is always going to be someone that stands out. That one person who unknowingly doesn't fit the mold.

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about the future. He asked me what I wanted to do with my life and I told him that I couldn't see myself doing anything but dancing. We've all heard my story, but when I asked him the same question his answer became etched in my brain. He admittedly doesn't know what he wants to do, like a lot of friends I have, but he knows he wants to travel to find these things out. Now I'm not saying that he's about to go all Siddhartha in the future, but he essentially wants to find purpose. We were looking out at the expressway at all the cars and he said "I don't want to be like them." Driving everyday to work. To their career. To drive home. To do it all over again. He knows what he needs to do and before him, I hadn't heard that type of realization from anyone. That got me thinking...

I'm so scared to do what everyone tells me I shouldn't do because it isn't practical or ideal, but why? I'm always so wrapped up in what other people say and think that it gets hard for me to make me own decisions. I always want to keep everyone else's feelings in mind and put myself on the back burner... but what do I want?

In order to find out, I need to stand outside of everyone's grasp. I need to stop looking for answers in my companions and do what I think is necessary for me. You don't know who you truly are until you're all you've got. Alone.

I know this means something.

I once heard in a not-so-popular song the lyric

and I never share my thoughts 'cuz that's all a n**** knows.

To put a spin on it, the only thing that I am certain of is how I feel about something. The feelings that you have for something or someone can mean everything. There are so many people, teenagers especially, that put up the front that they don't care what other people think and have no feelings for anything but I highly doubt that to be the case. The way somebody feels means something to me. Feelings are the only true validation that I can have about a situation because in the end words are just words and you can lie with them, but you can't deny the feelings you have. The thought that the way I feel about a person is definite, even though I might not be able to verbalize those feelings is amazing to me.

I know that something is important to me if I feel that it is. It doesn't matter how many people tell me that I should feel a different way than I do and I can lie and say that I feel a certain way but that doesn't change they way that I actually feel about it. I think everything we do is subconsciously based off of feeling whether we acknowledge it or not and that is a truly powerful thing.

Who am I thankful for...

Ask anyone who they're thankful for and you'll probably get a spew of answers ranging from family to best friends, but that's not the question. You're asking me who I'm thankful for in my 5th period philosophy class. The class where I'm probably the most silent.

Don't mistake my silence for lack of appreciation. The reason I don't speak very much is (aside from the fact that philosophy is a class that constantly causes my thoughts and opinions to change therefore making it difficult to verbalize on a large scale) I am quiet because I am listening to what everyone has to say. While I do admittedly sometimes find myself staring out the window or aimlessly gazing at either side of the room, I am always taking into consideration what the discussion participants are saying. I'm learning from them the same way that I learn from any other certified teacher.

I have a certain admiration for those in my class who openly speak up and stand up for their ideas. We have students like Steve, Josh, Artem, Sydney, Jack and Max among others who aren't afraid to say what they have to say with no fears of rebuttle. So thank you guys. Even though it happens silently, you are opening all types of intellectual doors in my head.

If Voltaire and Camus could vote...

With the presidential election of 2012 being just days away and my excitement to cast my first ballot, questions of whom people from the past would vote for tend to surface. In this class we've read pieces by Voltaire and Camus, both writers who wrote pieces to make a specific point. Who would they vote for?

In reality voting is an American right, but people don't always exercise this right. In my opinion, even if Camus had the opportunity to vote in an election I don't think he would. In The Stranger Camus speaks on the topic of the absurd and the question "does our life have meaning?". I don't think Camus would vote because to him our voice doesn't matter. He paints the picture of our character Mersault that gives me the image of a man with no feelings. Why should it matter who I vote for? I don't care.

Looking at Voltaire, I don't think he would vote in this election or any election. From reading Candide we see that Voltaire is very humorous and he pokes fun at authority figures from priests to lords. If there was a way to vote in order to prove a satirical point that the American people are absurd for choosing either candidate, that would be the route I would take.

Sidenote: I'm voting democratic in the upcoming election, so to choose a side that is "ridiculous" from an outside stand point would be unfair (as in my point with Voltaire) but I believe that both of these men would opt to not vote based on their works that I've read.

Our meaning...

What are we living for? What drives our actions everyday?

I think about this all the time, especially now since I am preparing myself to take control of my own life and go off to college. People are constantly asking me what I want to major in or what I want to be in the future. The reactions that I get when I tell people I want to be a dancer vary from shock to confusion. The follow-up question is typically "What do you want to do after that?" and the awkward silence commences. I have always been told that I should want to study something "practical" so I could make money. That is society's standard. In a sense, society wants people live to be successful.

I, on the other hand, think people should live to be happy. The likelihood of each one of us impacting a large enough mass of people to create a true legacy is slim to none so essentially it's as if we didn't exist. In the end it doesn't matter who's approval you get about anything because in the end if it makes you happy that is all that really matters. Who's to say that what you're doing isn't satisfactory when you think it is? Everyone has the liberty to have their own thoughts and ideas as well as to do as they please (at least in this country). Realistically, our country has to be based on some rules and standards to maintain chaos and as long as you're doing something ethical that makes you happy, then there is nothing wrong with that.

We're living to be happy and content. We're willing to live in a way to make the most out of the life that we live and that may vary from person to person but that doesn't make someone wrong. Everyone should strive to be happy. That's what drives our actions everyday.

Candide's Punishments, Do They Fit the Crime?

From the beginning of the book up until Chapter 19, we've seen a shift in Candide's behavior. The only reason I wouldn't call him bad is because I don't think he is aware of his behavior and how they way he is acting has shifted from being that blank slate in the beginning. When Candide and Cacambo reach Eldorado, they are suddenly living in a world that has almost everything they could want. The only thing Candide was missing was his love. I support his decision to leave Eldorado to go find Cunegonde but the way Voltaire described their plan of departure made them seem as if they were leaving because of greed. While I was reading about how Candide and his servant left Eldorado with tons of riches, I simply knew it couldn't end well. It was almost as if the greed had overtaken their critical thinking skills. It doesn't even make sense in my head to assume that all these sheep with riches and food would survive the treacherous journey from Eldorado.

By the time the two reach Surinam and encounter the negro, I was hoping that all that Candide has experienced would make him less naive. Just seeing how the negro was treated should have sent up a red flag before he even entered Surinam. At this point in the book Candide has turned into someone who thinks he can just throw money at all of his problems and without realizing it he is setting himself up as a target. When he encounters Mr. Vanderdender it is as if he has no regard for the value of money and in one sense it is beautiful that he loves Cunegonde enough for this but at the same time he's dealing with someone who he has seen isn't the nicest man and the instant I say that Vanderdender was the one that would take Candide to Buenos Ayres, I knew he would lose his riches.

I think Candide deserved to be stolen from and to be fined the way he was when he went to the judge. In my opinion he was spinning out of control and as much as I wanted him to learn his lesson, he didn't and continued to throw money at people to be his companion on his journal. The constant unsettling twist throughout the story is that while Candide is committing all these moral evils, he isn't aware of the way it looks from the outside and maybe the point that Voltaire is trying to make is that those who commit evils may not see them as evils, thus creating this imperfect world were everyone's views are different and you can punish the wrong do-ers and they still don't learn their lesson.

How do I know what I know?

One thing I know is how to do a clean double pirouette. Admittedly, they aren't always executed properly but in theory I know how to complete it.

In order to know this, first off someone had to explain it and teach me. There are always those people who tend to mock pirouettes jokingly and end up looking ridiculous (especially in a dancer's point of view) and at one point that was me. When you're being taught how to do even a single pirouette you don't start turning right away. There many different steps and aspects of the body that need to be taken into consideration before you can just fling your body in a circle.

It all starts with a teacher showing you how to go to posse (toe to the opposite knee). Then after that you practice balancing that posse on your toes. After that you practice preparations and finally, you can execute a single turn. Even though these sound like easy steps, there are so many things that could go wrong and I learned that the hard way. When teachers give me corrections about my turns, even at my level of dance I get exposed to new things and new aspects to help me execute properly.

While I was in North Carolina at UNCSA for a summer intensive this past summer, I learned a really good tip that I hadn't been very aware of when it comes to turning. I know to bring my foot to posse, turn out, plie, hold my center, and spot a specific place in the room, but I wasn't aware of my arms being opened too wide or my upper body tilting back. After a few ballet classes I began to get the hang of turning properly.

So although I may not execute a turn perfectly every single time, I have experienced doing them well on several occasions. I know how to do a clean double pirouette from experience.

Unexamined Life + Modern Gadfly

Is the unexamined life worth living?

Interesting question. Before I even considered taking Philosophy, a question I often found myself thinking about was "what am I living for?" We live in a world where it can sometimes be difficult to do the things that make us happy because they aren't "practical" or won't truly benefit us as we become established adults. I personally think everyone should live to be happy and I've always wondered why that's not the way it is. To answer the question, do I think an unexamined life is worth living? No. How enjoyable can life be if you're just going through the motions of living? I believe the true joy of life comes through creating your own individual experiences and figuring out who you are as a person. In all honesty, you simply cannot create yourself and your own bank of experiences if you stick to what everyone tells you. Things need to be questioned, that's just the way it is. How would a world with no questioning be? Sure, at some points the question "why?" can be quite a nuisance when you don't have an answer but at the same time that simple question causes so much information to blossom to more and more things to share. The world needs that.

Modern-Day Gadfly

Trying to rack my brain to figure out a single modern day gadfly was driving me crazy. Admittedly I'm not very knowledgeable on many figures in politics, talk-shows, or anything of that nature. Going back to the discussion we had in class, children will forever be gadflies. The only difference between a child and Socrates is that children are more often not taken seriously. When I'm doing something around a child and that start to ask questions, in many instances I might say anything to them. Many times I only do it to feed their imagination but at other times it's just to get them to go away. I will say that sometimes I genuinely don't know the real answers to the blunt questions they ask when I thought I did. With young minds your answers are never enough and that has made my question why the answers I had where at one point enough for me.

Eulogy

      Gabriella was born on October 14, 1994 on a rainy fall day. At a premature weight of two pounds and two ounces, Gabby was placed in an incubator with fears that being born exactly two months early would cause her lungs to fail or other problems later in life. Those problems never surfaced. She was a happy child, but she wasn't a handful. Starting from her days in preschool, she was quiet, friendly, did what teachers asked of her and by 2nd grade her mother decided to put her into the gifted program. In her young, adolescent years Gabby was an avid reader. In class when others were reading Junie B. Jones, Gabby was submerging her eight-year old mind in the stories of Harry Potter. In addition to her passion for reading she had a deeper passion for dance. Her parents claim that when Gabby learned to walk she always walked on her toes and they took that as an indicator to enroll her in dance classes. At at four she took her first class at Mayfair Academy where she trained up until she was sixteen.
       As she grew older and transitioned into high school, her passion for reading died down but her love for dance did not. She became a dedicated member of the school's dance company Guys & Dolls and remained dedicated even though her enrollment in other dance studios changed and changed. One day something clicked for her and she realized that dancing was something she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Maybe it had something to do with the time she had a cast put on her foot but still managed to dance at a game her team worked so hard on. Maybe it was the time she developed a terrible knee injury a week before the GnD show and she was determined to dance through the pain, just because she couldn't let her team down. They were her family. Her dance family was just as important to her as her family at home. Like with her younger sister at home, her dance sisters fought, but they always knew the loved each other and Gabby always tried to set the example.
       Overall, she was a compassionate person who made people laugh just by being herself. I'm not saying that everyone loved her, but she didn't leave this earth completely alone. We must remember her legacy.