Mind by Shohei Hanazaki

We are what we are. But that doesn't mean much does it? We forget that we've been brainwashed by society since the day we first opened our squinty eyes to the view of this bright beautiful and jarring world.

I remember hating on my toes, when I was much younger. But before that, I thought my nose was way too big for my face. And I also thought that I'd looked like I was wearing a perpetual frown. Hating on something about myself was a sign that somehow these aspects of me need to be altered and made to appear more society-approved.

The glossy mags and TV shows displayed dainty-legged girls with slender noses. Teenage years were a precarious time. I bruised easily like an overripe banana that verges on rot.

Sounds were louder. Unfolding events were too close for comfort. People's emotions were hard to decipher, what others felt got mirrored in quadruple intensity by my psyche. I regurgitated what I copied. I was floating like a leaf.

I don't mean to sound like I'm trumpeting an out-of-ordinary life as a teen. We were all like that, with physical and mental traits tweaked a little here and a little there. Diverse as we were on the inside in our rich abstract thoughts, sameness was celebrated on the outside.

It's funny when education attempted to mold us all into one thing, nobody thought much of it, including our own parents. People got use to giving up, not giving a hoot as long as they received a pat in the back for whatever good action they'd done.

In my household, nobody wanted to be the rebel, the hipster, the punk, the outcast that stood outside the line. Parents were playing roles invented long before they were even born grasping for the slipping tentacles of idealism they had built in their minds.

Children were copies of the familiar adults that fuss over them (or not). But not too long, of course. Children became teens who then had no choice but to go through crap to find the many versions of the 'self' that were put to rest when they begin to walk and speak.

The act of copying a way of life during the developmental years were a training in making sense of chaos that surrounded us. We had been planted with seeds of illusions, of having it all in control, to appear to have it all together.

Oh bless the teen that did not become a slave to the thoughts of somebody else. Originality was just another pretentious name. Nobody sought to be different at a stage where it was all about mirroring the hip and cool standards that society had advertised.

I remember the feeling of standing on the thin edge between sense and irrationality in my early 20s. It felt exhilarating, dangerous and full of magic.

Now, I've come to realize that those two so-called places were just undefined concepts in my mind. Vague and completely non-distinct, always teetering on what is accepted and what is not. By whom or what? Well you know it.

Being sensible just to adhere to the expected ways of living and thinking is a tiring cop out. And irrationality? What of it? Scared of ruffling feathers, of getting weird looks thrown my way because I'm not capable of genuine conformity?

Thanks but no thanks. Live and let live.

There's a spike of moral/religious policing going on in this country at this time that I have to wonder if we're capable of seeing through the thick and slimy made-up BS that the high-above is shoving down our throats.

Men acting like self-proclaimed deities over petty little annoyances. Laws shouldn't be made a mockery by fits of fleeting emotions.

Get angry and nasty if you must. But trying to rule over other people's preferred mode of living is sadly cave men mentality. The religious maniac and the self-anointed holier-than-the-rest need to be exposed for what they are, a malignant cancer.

Eradication of this insidious disease starts from re-owning your own brain and learning how to use it to the best of its capabilities.

Songs to listen and mentally unwind:
Where is my mind? - Pixies
Read Your Book - Sóley

© All Images Are Copyright Protected