Learn Inspire Fight Excel

Create for yourself a world from which you need not escape.
~Mikavelli~

Dear all,

I write to you a personal one from the heart, a theme I embrace for the coming year and would much like to share.

Needless to say, 2016 has been a roller coaster year for many, not just in daily life but also in the world. It has been physically confusing with global warming and cold spells hitting various parts of the planet, it has been mentally straining with the influx of politics sprawled across social media, it has been socially challenging with people’s personal views suddenly becoming  measurement of friendship, not to mention financially challenging for the younger generation who have been struck with wanderlust.

Many of us have spent this past year hyped by the definitions our generation has been adopting: LGBTQ, religious affliation, political stance, racial profiling, defining of gender and so forth. I, myself, have been susceptible and vulnerable to the perceived security a “definition” can hold, even the most simplistic ones such as “single” or “taken”, “drunk” or “sober”, “happy” or “sad” and what not. But this year, a few conversations and human experiences made me realize that every rambled answer boiled down to the exact same common factor: It’s all situational. Single or taken? Depends who’s asking. Drunk or sober? Depends on the company.

We hold onto definitions because we want to feel understood, to feel accepted, to feel like we have a community of people who agree with who we are, fundamentally. We allow ourselves to be defined by the same society we so openly criticize, not realizing that we are society. We generate for ourselves a new word to better describe ourselves, hoping that maybe, just maybe, the government will give “someone like us” rights or freedom. Truth be told, if you are accepting of how you define yourself, be it in any language, symbol, code, song or anything, then societal definitions should have no bearing on you.

I sit here as an actual writer with the knowledge of how much limitation there is to diction. How a single word is never enough to encompass the full essence of whatever concept is being expressed; knowing that no adjective can accurately describe the exact depth of beauty you see in a person’s eyes when (s)he smiles at you, knowing that no suffix can convey the intensity and magnitude of inner strength, knowing that only a combination of words can perhaps get a reader close to the passion one bleeds onto the screen.

Nay, words have their limitations, and for that exact reason, I still have not found a word that can accurately “define” me. The actual me. I’ll be honest, when I realized that, truly experienced the lack of words at the core, it was groundbreaking, earth shattering, and so magnificently liberating that the earthquake from my world caused ripples in the worlds around me.

Yes, being undefined, uncommitted, and unburdened, is liberating in a sense, but also completely disconcerting. It is a new challenge that some have faced, some have avoided, some have feared, and others have embraced. Whatever the outcome, undefined and therefore free will be my theme for 2017, and for those who are sick of the social media labels tying you down to what “words” tell you is “socially acceptable behaviour”, then all I can say is: create for yourself a world from which you need not escape. Build your world with the right connections, live your world with the right people, be your own world at the core.

2016 broke the world, but “you gotta break ‘em in order to make ‘em.”

Your past will make you or break you
It’s up to you to decide.
You can always rewrite the future
By living in present times.

Undefined and therefore free
That’s my 2017
If you choose to follow me
Then welcome to your new reality

~M.G.~