Friday, July 18, 2014

It's A New Art Form




 
So I’ve been trying to figure out when and why exactly it started being cool to not give a shit? How did we become such an emotionless and unaffected generation? It’s like we’re all constantly under this pressure to play it cool and everyone’s default setting is now ‘nonchalant’. Basically, we’re all just walking around wearing dark sunglasses, shrugging our shoulders and saying “It’s what ever, dude.” all the time. Lorde says it best in her song Tennis Court with the line “It’s a new art form showing people how little we care.”

Personally, I think that we’re all just entirely too scared of getting hurt or being taken advantage of. We’ve decided that feeling nothing is better than feeling any kind of pain. So we created a rule book on emotions and the first thing it teaches you is that he who cares least, has all of the power. However, when we first wrote this book, I don’t think any of us really thought ahead to what the consequences of “giving no fucks” would actually be.

We’re so afraid of failure that we’d actually rather not try. Whether it be in our school work, our artistic crafts, or our relationships, if we try and do not succeed, we’re failures. However, if we just don’t try at all, there’s no risk. A majority of us would rather not study and accept a C on our midterm, than get a B on a test that we studied all week for. We can’t handle the fact that  a lot of the time, OUR best isn’t THE best.

It’s hard for us to remember that there is no such thing as perfection. Everything is relative and everyone has a different idea of perfection. So, the sooner we all accept this, the sooner we can all move on with our lives and stop feeling so shitty about ourselves. There will always be someone who is more talented, or smarter, or better looking. And if you haven’t come to terms with this yet, then you need to burst that little bubble you’ve been living in and join the real world. Just because you’re not in first place doesn’t mean that you aren’t fucking amazing. The fact that you joined the race at all is enough to be proud of.

We’re under this giant misconception that the world owes us something. That if we just can hold out long enough, without making fools of ourselves or completely screwing everything up, we’ll be granted some kind of success. If you haven’t figured it out yet, then I hate to be the one to break it to you, but no one owes you anything. You’re not just going to magically wake up at 35 with a big beautiful house and all of the money in the world. Obviously, you’re going to have to work for it. And that means, you’re going to have to learn to care about SOMETHING.

If you want to be successful at anything, you’re going to have to give a shit about it. In fact, you’re going to have to give a lot of shits about it. I don’t care if it’s the relationship you have with your best friend, the career you want, or the competition that you’d like to win, you’re going to have to TRY. And most importantly you’re going to have to fail a few times. You’re going to fall flat on your face and be hurt. But it will be worth it.

Life is all about the ups and downs. Whether you find that cliché or not, it’s still the truth. You’d never have been able to appreciate gain, if you hadn’t before experienced loss. Just as you’ll never be able to value success without knowing the feeling of failure. Life is about FEELING and this whole trend of ‘not caring’ is robbing us of happiness and growth.

Personally, I would rather not spend the rest of my life emotionless and just going through the movements. I want to experience everything that I can possibly experience in the short amount of time that I have to be alive and I’d like to think you would too. Whether you’ve accepted it or not, one day you’re going to die. Sorry, but it’s the truth. So, we might as well make the most of the time we’ve been given.

We should all aim to live a life of passion. A life of highs and lows, of good days and bad days. We should want to laugh and cry with love and loss. We should be working our asses off to get what we want. We just can’t sit around and wait for someone to hand it to us anymore. We should be going out and taking those risks we’ve been so afraid of. Even if we make mistakes, at least we’re doing SOMETHING.

Stop acting like you don’t care. Be honest with yourself and those around you, even if its difficult. Not caring and not trying isn’t cool, it’s dysfunctional. And you’ll only be able to pass off your insecurities as indifference for so long.

I recently read a quote somewhere that tells us to “chase down your passion like it’s the last bus of the night.” And I think it’s something we should all be doing.


XOXO, Dani Kye

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