Mindless Snippets

Let me just begin by saying that Facebook and homework have never been a good match. But then when you make the completely foolish decision to make Facebook part of your homework, you're pretty much screwed because now, before each blog post, I am basically guaranteed a good hour or two of just mindless scrolling. 

But hey, I’m just prepping myself to write a blog post, right?

Let’s just say that I have dug myself into a very, very deep hole.

But all joking aside, in my past two hours of procrastination homework, I've clicked through a good number of inspirational quotes and snapshots of the lives of the people of New York. Each photo comes with either a moving story, a one-liner quip, something intelligent, inspirational, or as one commenter aptly put it, “something worth putting in a fortune cookie.”  Which got me thinking. What would I say if someday Brandon Stanton came up to me and asked me what my biggest struggle in life is, or a time when I felt scared? Being from Connecticut, New York City is not too far away, so hey, the opportunity may present itself one day. A girl’s got to prepare herself.

In all honestly, if I were to be asked any of these questions, my answer would most likely come out something like this:

“Ask me another question. Not that one, another. Another. I have no idea what to say. Is this going well? This isn’t going well. Can I phone a friend? What are you going to write about me?”

Poor guy.

He gets a once-in-a-lifetime-chance to say something philosophical for over twelve million followers dissect on social media and he just completely flubs it.

But yet, at the same time, by answering nothing and saying nothing really of importance, humble man quotes probably one of the most relatable things on the blog.

Humans of New York is ultimately about documenting humanity and the human condition and maybe the most human thing is our stream of consciousness; the everyday things that pass through our minds, our thoughts, feelings, reactions, all uninterrupted and unfiltered.

So keeping this idea in mind, here are some quick snippets from my stream of consciousness regarding some of my favorite photos from HONY. Unfiltered, unedited, just whatever comes to mind.

1.     You just have to love a guy who uses the word “schmuck”.

"People call themselves animal lovers, then let their dogs chase the squirrels. You're scaring the shit out of the squirrels, you schmuck!"

2.     We all need a Ms. Lopez in our lives. Society doesn’t fully appreciate how much teachers do for their students and how much they truly care.

"Who's influenced you the most in your life?"

"My principal, Ms. Lopez."

"How has she influenced you?"

"When we get in trouble, she doesn't suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter."

3.     Feminism at its best. Feeling like you don’t need anyone shouldn’t be a weakness.

"What's your biggest weakness?"

"When I'm in a relationship, I don't know how to make someone feel needed. Because I don't feel like I need anyone."

4.     If you can’t avoid taxes, play the system. A little humor and potential romance along the way never hurts either.

"We’re getting married tomorrow. For tax purposes.”

So there’s just a few of fragments of my thoughts, raw and unfiltered. As you can clearly see, my mind is not the most organized of places and I most likely didn’t say anything profound or worthy of slipping in to a fortune cookie. But at the end of the day, the characteristic that holds all of HONY’s photo’s together is its honesty; unedited and real. No one prepares what they say and that is exactly what makes what’s said so human and relatable.

So I guess I won’t prepare my sad swan story or earth shattering philosophical belief. Mr. Stanton can just takes it as it comes.

That, or I’ll just avoid NYC until Facebook is no longer relevant.

Shelf Life: Seven Years

"Every time I try to make a friend, I try too hard and come off as irritating."

When does one become friends with someone else? When do you decide, "Ok, we've seen each other enough times, I like you enough, we're friends"? It just...kind of...happens, doesn't it? How many of us can actually pinpoint the exact moment when we make a friend?

Not many.

Yet, just as friendship doesn't really have a beginning and just "begins", it can just as easily end; it simply dwindles off into no man's land where neither of you officially recognize that it's past the point of no return.

And then it's just awkward.

But maybe it's all meant to happen this way? Maybe we're meant to cycle through the circle of friendship and slip out of the cycle just as seamlessly as we slipped in. According to a research conducted by Dutch sociologist Geral Mollenhorst, the majority of our friendships are fleeting and exist merely out of convenience and circumstance. When it is no longer convenient and the circumstances no longer stand, the friendship will slowly fall apart and fade into a nostalgic distant memory.

According to the research, friendships expire at around seven years. Thinking it through a litle more thoroughly, that sounds about right. In seven or so years, people will experience at least one milestone in their life. Whether it be moving, physical or emotional growth, college, graduation, getting a new job, marriage, parenthood, retirement, or death, each event becomes a dogeared page in the book of life, marking a period of change and progression (or regression). When we change, the circumstances of time and or place that made a friendship so easy and natural no longer hold. And as it goes with human nature, when something requires work, instinct says that its better left untouched.

Because whether we recognize it or not, real friendships require work. Because a true friendship will extend past seven years. If something is important enough to us, we will find a way, if not, we will let it go.

I'm someone who lives by the idea that if something has to be forced, it's not meant to be, because if it was meant to be, it will happen naturally on it's own accord. Follow me? To clarify, if mom has to force me to play with my sisters, it's going to be rough for everyone involved. If you have to force motivate yourself to wake up in the morning, ah, stay in bed. But no, really, on a more serious note, if you have to force a friendship to continue, maybe time's just up. And maybe that's ok because that's just how it's meant to be.

But then again, this doesn't mean that we should drop relationships the second they require a little more work. I've met some very good people in high school but I haven't seen or spoken to since graduation. The convenient social environment of high school no longer exists to make some of the relationships I've had hold.

But hey, a quick text isn't that much work, right? And if they really matter to me, they really deserve a personal phone call.

A Heavy Dose of Reality Greatness

“When you first come out of the gate, you feel like a young rock star. You look at the work of other people and think: ‘I can do it better.’ But the more you learn, the more your ego plummets, because you realize that those people had their reasons for everything, and you realize how much work it takes to be great. I was looking through some of my old portfolios, and the execution wasn’t nearly as great as I believed at the time. But there were some pure ideas in there. I had a fearlessness back then that I’d love to rediscover.”

I don't remember a lot of the things I've done in my childhood (strange that I can now officially say that at 19), but the few memories that I can pull out right away tend to be, well, somewhat nonsensical and ok, dumb. 

Like that time when I was four?five? and I really, really wanted to wear my plaid blue dress with the white terrier but mom said no and I cried for forever until she gave in. 

But of course at that point, victory wasn't so satisfactory because I had basically shriveled up into a prune with all the tears that triumph demanded. 

Or the time I cried when my younger sister Michelle beat me at chess even though she had absolutely no idea what she was doing (have yet to live that one down). 

Or the time I accidently stepped on my laptop and tried to hide it (unsuccessfully) for a month. 

Wow. I was a pretty difficult kid. But hey, it could've been worse, right?

But on a more serious note, in between all the hodgepodge foolishness, there are distinct memories that are much more profound and significant. 

Like the time mom was trying to motivate Michelle to practice piano and told her that she was "the best of the best" and could do "anything she put her mind to." Of course mom said this is a much more animated and enthusiastic mom-ish manner but I distinctly remember asking her after (to spare Michelle's feelings) why she said that. Because "Come on, Mom. We all know that that's not true. She's not that good, why bothering telling her that?" 

Two things to note here. First, I was a blunt, coldhearted, harsh kid. But more importantly two, there's nothing I wouldn't do to hear mom say that to me everyday and truly believe it like my no-longer-so-innocent little sister. 

The thing is, when we were the younger, more or less naive versions of ourselves today, there was nothing positive others told us that we would question. We truly, truly believed that we could do anything, and achieve everything, bigger and better than everyone before us. All it took was someone to tell us so, whether or not it was true. 

Unfortunately, age is humbling. We become more knowledgeable and with that knowledge, we also become more skeptical of ourselves. By realizing how much we know, we also realize how much more there is that we don't know. And by being released into the realms of the real world, we are really, maybe, not much better than the average person. So yeah, this all sounds incredibly depressing but what kid didn't grow up believing that he or she would be the next president, the next peacemaker, the next movie star, and be much better off than their parents?

Like the man says in the photograph above, being great takes enormous work and effort and most people won't reach that level of greatness. But you know what? Maybe reality just means that we need to redefine our definition of great because honestly, greatness is relative. And as long as we believe in ourselves, and are happy with what has been accomplished, that's all the greatness anyone will ever need.

So you go, Michelle. Work that piano ;)