Thursday, January 12, 2012

Starting Over (A Project)



Be prepared for a freakin’ essay. I’m sorry.
For a long, long time I’ve been fascinated with the idea that our mental states, and the moods and attitudes that we project on the world around us influence the material world and the moods and attitudes of those around us. This may have been largely triggered by my honors English class’s study of Transcendentalism in 11th grade. There is a lot of Transcendentalism that goes beyond the ideas that I’m trying to work with right now, but one of its founding notions is that God is present and immanent in everything and everyone. In combating the wave of rationalism and Calvinism’s manifest destiny that was popular at the time, transcendentalists believed that religion and philosophy should be derived from people’s inner spirituality and consciousness. I’m not religious and never really have been, but I do believe that all humans and nature are spiritually connected. Whether or not you want to refer to that as God is up to you, but I would definitely consider it some sort of higher power. Within this belief that we are all connected to the world around us is the assumption then, that as our consciousness shifts, the world around us (even minutely) does the same. For instance, if you are consistently putting out bad energy to your friends, family co-workers, you’re going to be receiving that much more bad energy.
This philosophy that I adopted was solidified when someone explained the premise of the movie What the #$%^& Do We Know to me. This movie looks at Quantum Physics and how in science they are discovering that our consciousness actually affects MATTER. Physical, actual, real matter. You know how no matter is created or destroyed? Someone once told me to imagine it like a big infinity symbol. If your consciousness is negative, it’s effecting matter in a negative way. Boom, that enters the infinity symbol, cycling forever through the world until there’s enough positive energy to counter-balance it. For some reason whenever I felt like I was being a bad person, this metaphor drove me to start thinking more positively. It’s kind of magical.
My point here (I have a point, what??) is that thinking and acting positively as much as you possibly can, in every aspect of your life, can change the world.
Now onto what I was actually getting to:
Becoming friends with Kristina at the beginning of the last year of Five Awesome Girls was very interesting for our friendship and just as something for me to observe. I guess I could say this about coming into the Harry Potter fandom, and the world of YouTube, and Tumblr, and cons as well, but for now I’m going to focus on 5AG. In my young adulthood I have really tried to be someone who can be present in the moment constantly, and who does not focus on overthinking the future or past. It can be really, really, really hard sometimes. Maybe I met Kristina just at the right or time or maybe I was already getting there myself, but the message of Five Awesome Girls really hit home. The idea of just being able to put your emotions, worries, whatever aside, and to just be able to publically tell a bunch of people why you had an awesome day is brilliant. So simple, so easy, and so brilliant. I don’t know why, but until I found 5AG, the thought of keeping a journal or blog where my only obligation was to just write down one awesome thing from that day, had never occurred to me. It kind of blew my mind. But anyway, as 5AG drew to a close, I got surprisingly emotional. Not only because IT was ending, but because I felt like everyone had a little less motivation to think about something awesome in their day, every day. So long after they stopped making videos for the channel, the thought of somehow continuing that idea elsewhere has been hounding me.
If any of follow the stunning and lovely Rosianna on the YouTubez or the Twitterz, you probably know that she’s participating in this amazing project from Channel 4 called New Years Revolution. There are three different types and she’s doing the Try Something New challenge, but the whole thing is awesome. I don’t often keep up with daily vlogs, but I haven’t been able to stay away from Rosi’s videos because they make me so happy. Part of this is her incredible eloquence and insight that I could only ever dream of achieving, but these challenges definitely keep bringing me back. Every day the participant has to try something new or do something out of their comfort zone, and (well, in Rosi’s case because she’s making videos about it) reflect on the challenge. I’m just bringing this up because this is just another thing we can do to surround ourselves with positivity. Challenging yourself to try new things sounds scary, but if you look for what was interesting and fun, or what you learned, it will always be a positive experience. Rosi’s videos have reminded me that even though it’s seems comforting to stick to your routine; it creates more positivity to put yourself out there and try new things. This blog, for instance, is me putting myself out there and trying something new. I feel like I can express myself in writing better than most other media forms, but it’s still kind of terrifying putting yourself out there.
Last, but certainly not least, Kayley’s video about being kind was the icing on the cake for me finally spewing out this novel of a blog post. If you’re a Nerdfigher, take a moment to think about how lucky we are to be a part of a community where being kind to one another is so highly valued. A lot of communities don’t get that luxury. Being polite, saying please, thank you and sorry, opening doors for people or refraining from being rude if someone does something to annoy you can honestly turn your day around. Kayley was mostly focusing on kindness to strangers, and going out of your way to do nice things for people on a daily basis, which is of course extremely important, but it reminded me that there’s another place where people need to be really conscious of this. Nerdfighters are amazing, generous people, but I have seen people in this community be horrible to each other on the internet just the same. It’s hard because you’re not face-to-face with the people you’re arguing with, or whatever, but considering how big a part of our lives the internet has become, being kind here is just as important as being kind outside your house. So as she said, let’s all take a little extra time to go out of our way to be better people. Even if that just means trying to smile at people every day.
Basically my point is, we could all use a little more positivity in our day, and it feels good to be the one putting it out there. So I want to get back into this for real (I say that every time). I doubt I'll post every day, but I really will try to post as much as I can. Little nuggets of happy things.
If you read this whole thing, I commend you.

I would especially like to thank Kristina, Rosi and Kayley for giving me the ideas and motivation behind what I want this blog to be.



2 comments:

  1. Yes.

    About 2 years ago I read an article (from Men's Health, of all places) called The Hazards of Cynicism and it literally changed my life. It focused on eliminating cynicism from your life, not just in yourself, but with those around you as well.

    I am so much better off now, having done that. My quality of life is greatly improved and this post really made me think of that. I look forward to your nuggets! I tried to do something similar with my blog this past year by ending each post by listing one thing (no matter how trivial) I'm thankful for.

    If you're interested in reading the cynicism article (and I highly recommend it) here's a link: http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/hazards-cynicism

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  2. This is such a good post. I think I felt sort of like that with 5AG too. Ever since I first found it a few years ago, at the end of each day no matter if it's been good or bad, I like to think back and remind myself of at least one awesome thing that I can take from that time. I remember a while ago Kayley started keeping a notebook in which she drew her reason for why her day had been awesome. I think that something as little and simple as that genuinely does make a difference to the kind of person you are choosing to be. :)

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