09 2 / 2013

blackpoemusic:

1969, the Free Breakfast for School Children Program was initiated at St. Augustine’s Church in Oakland by the Black Panther Party. The Panthers would cook and serve food to the poor inner city youth of the area

(Source: artof-poetry, via sinidentidades)

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19 1 / 2013

anarcho-queer:

Series of Brooklyn Billboards Put Racial Inequity on Display

Billboards are everywhere in New York City. They’re on subway trains and in stations, and on top of and inside taxis. But few, if any, have been anything like a series of anonymous billboards that have popped up on bus shelters in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. They’re not selling anything but a delcaration: that racism still exists.

That’s also the name of the appropriately titled campaign. At least half a dozen billboard sites have sprung up around the neighborhood since August, with each month dedicated to highlighting racial disparities that impact black people in America. So far, the billboards have touched on topics ranging from the entertainment industry, education, fast food, smoking, policing, and black wealth. Each month’s billboard is also accompanied by an detailed post on Tumblr that provides background information, news articles, studies, charts, and statistics to back up each claim. 

A brief statement on the Tumblr page says, in part, that “RISE is a proejct designed to illuminate some of the ways in which racism operates in this country.” But who’s behind the project remains a mystery.

For the time being, the project seems dedicated to its anonymity. Both the Tumblr page and the billboards themselves are devoid of any contact information. Similarly, the private advertising company that’s contracted by New York City’s transit agency to host advertisments and billboards said that it does not give out information about who paid for the advertisements. 

Even local activists who spend their time dedicated to working on racial justice issues can’t figure out who’s behind the billboards. Nonetheless, they’re intrigued by the campaign. This month’s billboard is dedicated to Stop-and-Frisk, the controversial NYPD tactic that’s drawn national criticism for its disproportionate impact on black and Latino men. The billboard’s provactive text reads, “Don’t want to get stopped by the NYPD? Stop being black.” On the heels of New York City’s 2013 mayoral race and the prominent role that critics of Stop-and-Frisk have taken in city politics, the billboards have become a meaningful part of local discussion.

It’s no accident that of all of New York City’s neighborhoods, the billboards have targeted this one. A historically black neighborhood, Bed-Stuy has become one of the most contested spaces in New York City. A 2012 study from the Fordham Institute found that Brooklyn is home to 25 of the country’s most rapidly gentrifying zip codes. That’s created a stark contrast between those in the neighborhood who have more upward social and economic mobility than others. Several high profile media accounts have recently noted Bed Stuy’s so-called “hip” transformation and “resurgence”, but the borough’s medium per capita income in 2009 was just $23,000, which was $10,000 below the national average.

The content of the billboard’s messaging may not exactly be news for most residents, but the presentation has nonetheless been powerful.

(via newwavefeminism)

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12 1 / 2013

tranqualizer: When eating organic was totally uncool Before hipsters got rooftop gards, my poor, refugee family ate that way because we had to. And we were ashamed by Pha Lo To me, the organic food movement has become dizzyingly, surreally chic. Farmers have become rock stars; the most exclusive restaurants name-check them so much you can almost see dirt on the menu. But before organic produce exploded into a $25 billion industry, before city gardening became cool, I grew up in a Hmong refugee community, living the urban organic lifestyle not because it was fashionable, but because we were poor. I couldn’t wait to leave it behind. I grew up in Del Paso Heights, a mixed-race inner city of Sacramento, Calif. — the kind of neighborhood that had just two grocery stores between endless fast-food and liquor shops, and where we all paid for our groceries with food stamps. It was where we grew organic food and raised chickens in our backyards to survive. And where we did it in secrecy. Like most Hmong in the United States, our community was from Laos, transplanted here after an alliance with the CIA turned our isolated tribe of farmers into mercenaries — a failed secret war against the Communist Vietnamese that left Hmong as the targets of ethnic cleansing. Lifelong farmers-turned-international refugees, the older generation was ill-prepared to thrive in modern America. They settled into inner cities where many turned to social services as safety nets. I remember watching grown-ups lose their identities and self-worth, slip into depression and cycles of poverty, illness and suicide. These were clan leaders who once commanded the respect of entire villages, tough guerrilla soldiers trained by the CIA — like my father — and proud providers who had, without writing, committed to memory centuries of the best farming practices. And they were humbled, receiving welfare and food stamps because there was no opportunity then in urban America for their main skill. Still, they farmed in the city for two necessities: food and a wistful connection to the old way of life. We grew crops in every plot of soil that hinted of fertility — parking lots, front lawns, even inside discarded paint buckets, which made terrific homes for lemongrass and chili peppers. When I was in elementary school, the families in our apartment building worked a farm just outside of Sacramento. Every person, every age, had a job. Meals were planned around what we gathered: We scraped fresh cucumbers, serving them with sugar over ice on hot summer days; we pounded the signature Hmong mix of hand-picked peppers, cilantro, green onions and lime in a mortar and served it as a dip for meat and sticky rice. I remember loving our imperfectly shaped cucumbers because I got to watch each one grow into its own unique shape and thought they all had more character than the “beautiful” ones wrapped in plastic at the grocery store. And I loved mustard greens, which grew in abundance once a year but could be pickled for year-round consumption. We bartered with each other. We raised chickens in the backyard, letting them out to roam and feeding them by hand. We didn’t have a label for this back then, though now I suppose people call it “free-range,” and it costs more. We slaughtered our own hens, sometimes with rituals honoring the sacrifice of the animal’s life. With the costs of vegetables offset by our gardens, all the families pitched in to buy a pig or cow from the closest farmer, dividing the meat. This way, we could also afford to buy rice. But we had to keep our locavore tendencies secret. America’s food rules, which seemed to us to go against nature, left us fearful of punishment. At the time, exactly one person from our clan had attended an American college and became our cultural broker, translating to shamans the world of Western medicine, and to lifelong hunters and fishermen the rules of hunting and fishing. What license was needed for what, how many of what thing could be caught during which season, if you could take fruit from a tree depending on which side of a fence it hung. All of it was too complicated to keep straight, and so it felt safer to keep our food producing regimens to ourselves. I can’t remember how many times my father built, tore down and rebuilt the chicken coop, afraid that neighbors who heard crowing would report us. “Don’t tell the Americans,” my mother would always say, and, eventually, as I grew into adolescence, I couldn’t agree more. I was afraid of being judged. My mother sprinkled only fresh-cut grass in her garden, swearing by its ability to grow bigger and tastier vegetables. She often crossed dangerous lanes of traffic to get to a pile of lawn clippings. My sisters and I would jump out of the car to bag the grass, and we did it with the speed of a NASCAR pit crew, terrified of being seen by friends. The parking lot of our neighborhood Kmart was a regular pickup spot for lawn clippings. In my teens, when merely being accused of shopping at Kmart was an epic embarrassment, you can imagine the horror I felt about being spotted stealing grass from its parking lot. “If anyone sees me, MY LIFE IS OVER!” I’d say. Unfortunately, dramatic teenage declarations of “life being over” didn’t fly in Hmong households, not when there would always be someone around to remind you of the time he narrowly escaped the death camps. As the adolescent me tried to find her groove, navigating deeper into the treacherous social maze of an American high school, I tried to talk my mother out of picking cilantro and scallions from her garden, cleaning and separating and selling them for 50 cents a bunch at a local Hmong store. It never made her more than $20 a week, but she didn’t care. She was obsessed with the idea of doing something she knew how to do, something that could earn money. My family searched for new places to grow food while I became increasingly afraid that outsiders would find out we lived in a replica Hmong village, built to resemble what the older generation knew as “home.” Then one day, I was outed by a classmate as a food stamp user as I stood in the collection line to count money for my mother. That was the day that I decided I hated everything about the way we got food — from the paint-bucket chili peppers to the communal pig, cut up in pieces, ready to be bagged and shared. I wanted to run away from this mess. I wanted to be one of the cool kids. I would feed myself like they do. Now, as an adult, I don’t have a garden. Years after I finished college and was well into the working world, long after credit cards made checks obsolete at the grocery store, I still insisted on writing checks to pay for my brand-name groceries. The defiant child food stamp user in me still needs the validation that comes from putting pen to paper and declaring, in writing, that I earned the right to take this food home. But who’d know that, just as I finally shed a former life of organic necessity, my mother would be the hip one? Now I go to the market and hear people boasting about the eggs in their backyards, or how much their garden looks like the one on the White House lawn. My best friend, also a former Hmong child gardener, laughs with me about collecting lawn clippings. If only we had had cool recyclable cloth bags with eco-friendly slogans, we joke. If only we could be heroic, claiming to be launching a food revolution. But for us, there was no room to think about glamour. That life just felt backward. I imagine now how many “I told you so’s” my mother would impart on me if she could grasp the enormousness of today’s food movement: Pesticide-free produce, hand-fed chickens, cuisines boasting minimal ingredients all represent billions of dollars to be made. And, irony of ironies, now people’s food stamps can’t even cover the costs of organic and local produce at our markets. But I stood recently at a popular farmers’ market in San Francisco, where I now live and where my relatives have a vegetable stall. Surrounded by a flurry of patrons enthusiastic about locally grown food, I felt … proud. Proud that Hmong farmers owned their own stalls, their tradition of necessity now trendy and profitable. That day, my uncle gave me a bag of cucumbers and tomatoes from his stall. He said he had heard all about my schooling and my travels, and that he was proud I had made it. But as I looked at my bag and at all the customers flocking to his stall, I couldn’t help thinking he was making it in his own right. Pha Lo is a freelance writer/nutrition educator and teaches food budgeting skills to low-income parents.

tranqualizer:

When eating organic was totally uncool

Before hipsters got rooftop gards, my poor, refugee family ate that way because we had to. And we were ashamed

by Pha Lo

To me, the organic food movement has become dizzyingly, surreally chic. Farmers have become rock stars; the most exclusive restaurants name-check them so much you can almost see dirt on the menu. But before organic produce exploded into a $25 billion industry, before city gardening became cool, I grew up in a Hmong refugee community, living the urban organic lifestyle not because it was fashionable, but because we were poor. I couldn’t wait to leave it behind.

I grew up in Del Paso Heights, a mixed-race inner city of Sacramento, Calif. — the kind of neighborhood that had just two grocery stores between endless fast-food and liquor shops, and where we all paid for our groceries with food stamps. It was where we grew organic food and raised chickens in our backyards to survive. And where we did it in secrecy.

Like most Hmong in the United States, our community was from Laos, transplanted here after an alliance with the CIA turned our isolated tribe of farmers into mercenaries — a failed secret war against the Communist Vietnamese that left Hmong as the targets of ethnic cleansing. Lifelong farmers-turned-international refugees, the older generation was ill-prepared to thrive in modern America. They settled into inner cities where many turned to social services as safety nets.

I remember watching grown-ups lose their identities and self-worth, slip into depression and cycles of poverty, illness and suicide. These were clan leaders who once commanded the respect of entire villages, tough guerrilla soldiers trained by the CIA — like my father — and proud providers who had, without writing, committed to memory centuries of the best farming practices. And they were humbled, receiving welfare and food stamps because there was no opportunity then in urban America for their main skill. Still, they farmed in the city for two necessities: food and a wistful connection to the old way of life.

We grew crops in every plot of soil that hinted of fertility — parking lots, front lawns, even inside discarded paint buckets, which made terrific homes for lemongrass and chili peppers. When I was in elementary school, the families in our apartment building worked a farm just outside of Sacramento. Every person, every age, had a job. Meals were planned around what we gathered: We scraped fresh cucumbers, serving them with sugar over ice on hot summer days; we pounded the signature Hmong mix of hand-picked peppers, cilantro, green onions and lime in a mortar and served it as a dip for meat and sticky rice. I remember loving our imperfectly shaped cucumbers because I got to watch each one grow into its own unique shape and thought they all had more character than the “beautiful” ones wrapped in plastic at the grocery store. And I loved mustard greens, which grew in abundance once a year but could be pickled for year-round consumption.

We bartered with each other. We raised chickens in the backyard, letting them out to roam and feeding them by hand. We didn’t have a label for this back then, though now I suppose people call it “free-range,” and it costs more. We slaughtered our own hens, sometimes with rituals honoring the sacrifice of the animal’s life.

With the costs of vegetables offset by our gardens, all the families pitched in to buy a pig or cow from the closest farmer, dividing the meat. This way, we could also afford to buy rice.

But we had to keep our locavore tendencies secret. America’s food rules, which seemed to us to go against nature, left us fearful of punishment. At the time, exactly one person from our clan had attended an American college and became our cultural broker, translating to shamans the world of Western medicine, and to lifelong hunters and fishermen the rules of hunting and fishing. What license was needed for what, how many of what thing could be caught during which season, if you could take fruit from a tree depending on which side of a fence it hung. All of it was too complicated to keep straight, and so it felt safer to keep our food producing regimens to ourselves. I can’t remember how many times my father built, tore down and rebuilt the chicken coop, afraid that neighbors who heard crowing would report us.

“Don’t tell the Americans,” my mother would always say, and, eventually, as I grew into adolescence, I couldn’t agree more. I was afraid of being judged.

My mother sprinkled only fresh-cut grass in her garden, swearing by its ability to grow bigger and tastier vegetables. She often crossed dangerous lanes of traffic to get to a pile of lawn clippings. My sisters and I would jump out of the car to bag the grass, and we did it with the speed of a NASCAR pit crew, terrified of being seen by friends.

The parking lot of our neighborhood Kmart was a regular pickup spot for lawn clippings. In my teens, when merely being accused of shopping at Kmart was an epic embarrassment, you can imagine the horror I felt about being spotted stealing grass from its parking lot. “If anyone sees me, MY LIFE IS OVER!” I’d say. Unfortunately, dramatic teenage declarations of “life being over” didn’t fly in Hmong households, not when there would always be someone around to remind you of the time he narrowly escaped the death camps.

As the adolescent me tried to find her groove, navigating deeper into the treacherous social maze of an American high school, I tried to talk my mother out of picking cilantro and scallions from her garden, cleaning and separating and selling them for 50 cents a bunch at a local Hmong store. It never made her more than $20 a week, but she didn’t care. She was obsessed with the idea of doing something she knew how to do, something that could earn money.

My family searched for new places to grow food while I became increasingly afraid that outsiders would find out we lived in a replica Hmong village, built to resemble what the older generation knew as “home.” Then one day, I was outed by a classmate as a food stamp user as I stood in the collection line to count money for my mother. That was the day that I decided I hated everything about the way we got food — from the paint-bucket chili peppers to the communal pig, cut up in pieces, ready to be bagged and shared. I wanted to run away from this mess. I wanted to be one of the cool kids. I would feed myself like they do.

Now, as an adult, I don’t have a garden. Years after I finished college and was well into the working world, long after credit cards made checks obsolete at the grocery store, I still insisted on writing checks to pay for my brand-name groceries. The defiant child food stamp user in me still needs the validation that comes from putting pen to paper and declaring, in writing, that I earned the right to take this food home.

But who’d know that, just as I finally shed a former life of organic necessity, my mother would be the hip one? Now I go to the market and hear people boasting about the eggs in their backyards, or how much their garden looks like the one on the White House lawn. My best friend, also a former Hmong child gardener, laughs with me about collecting lawn clippings. If only we had had cool recyclable cloth bags with eco-friendly slogans, we joke. If only we could be heroic, claiming to be launching a food revolution. But for us, there was no room to think about glamour. That life just felt backward.

I imagine now how many “I told you so’s” my mother would impart on me if she could grasp the enormousness of today’s food movement: Pesticide-free produce, hand-fed chickens, cuisines boasting minimal ingredients all represent billions of dollars to be made. And, irony of ironies, now people’s food stamps can’t even cover the costs of organic and local produce at our markets.

But I stood recently at a popular farmers’ market in San Francisco, where I now live and where my relatives have a vegetable stall. Surrounded by a flurry of patrons enthusiastic about locally grown food, I felt … proud. Proud that Hmong farmers owned their own stalls, their tradition of necessity now trendy and profitable. That day, my uncle gave me a bag of cucumbers and tomatoes from his stall. He said he had heard all about my schooling and my travels, and that he was proud I had made it. But as I looked at my bag and at all the customers flocking to his stall, I couldn’t help thinking he was making it in his own right.

Pha Lo is a freelance writer/nutrition educator and teaches food budgeting skills to low-income parents.

(via beautyinthebr0ken)

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10 1 / 2013

In this photograph, Coretta is upset with her husband, who had been attacked the night before by a disturbed white racist but had not defended himself. Though the police urged King to press charges, he refused. “The system we live under creates people such as this youth,” he said. “I’m not interested in pressing charges. I’m interested in changing the kind of system that produces such men.”

In this photograph, Coretta is upset with her husband, who had been attacked the night before by a disturbed white racist but had not defended himself. Though the police urged King to press charges, he refused. “The system we live under creates people such as this youth,” he said. “I’m not interested in pressing charges. I’m interested in changing the kind of system that produces such men.”

(via amerikkkan-stories)

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02 12 / 2012

reallifedocumentarian: boehner-trollolol: Here is a picture of the Alpha Chi Omega, Beta Mu chapter Penn State sorority that decided to do a Mexican theme, presumably for Halloween.  As you can see, all the girls are wearing sombreros, fake mustaches and they have maracas in their hands. But the kickers are the two signs they have in the middle. One says “Will mow lawn for weed + beer” and the other says, “I don’t cut grass, I smoke it.” Yeah. This is racist. It’s insensitive, inaccurate, perpetuates harmful racial stereotypes and it’s a lazy attempt at a group costume. But if any of you recognize these women and/or know which sorority they’re a part of, please let me know in my ask box. When I find out which sorority is responsible, I will report them to the University and to their national headquarters. They deserve to get their sorority suspended and get kicked out of the sorority.  EDIT: Okay, listen up! After some sleuthing around the internet, I have confirmed that this photo is of members of Alpha Chi Omega, Beta Mu chapter at Penn State!  Soooo, here’s contact information for the parties that must know about this: Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Penn State Phone:814-863-8065 Email:greeks@sa.psu.edu Penn State University Panhellenic Council Advisor: Susan LeGally - sul33@psu.edu President : Julianne Robbins - jer5229@psu.edu Penn State Office of Student Conduct Phone: 814-863-0342 Email: studentconduct@sa.psu.edu National Alpha Chi Omega Headquarters Phone: 317.579.5050 Email:http://www.alphachiomega.org/contact.aspx Susan Hogle, Receptionist - receptionist@alphachiomega.org Jessica Kelly - Director of Collegiate Experience -jkelly@alphachiomega.org Cheri O’Neill - Executive Director - coneill@alphachiomega.org Arianna Maggard - Chapter Consultant - amaggard@alphachiomega.org LET’S SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE. LET’S NOT LET ANOTHER GROUP OF STUDENTS BE RACIST AND NOT GET ANY PUNISHMENT FOR IT. Racist. As. Fuck. Y’all are horrible. They deserve charter revocation and serious disciplinary action.

reallifedocumentarian:

boehner-trollolol:

Here is a picture of the Alpha Chi Omega, Beta Mu chapter Penn State sorority that decided to do a Mexican theme, presumably for Halloween. 

As you can see, all the girls are wearing sombreros, fake mustaches and they have maracas in their hands. But the kickers are the two signs they have in the middle. One says “Will mow lawn for weed + beer” and the other says, “I don’t cut grass, I smoke it.”

Yeah.

This is racist. It’s insensitive, inaccurate, perpetuates harmful racial stereotypes and it’s a lazy attempt at a group costume. But if any of you recognize these women and/or know which sorority they’re a part of, please let me know in my ask box.

When I find out which sorority is responsible, I will report them to the University and to their national headquarters. They deserve to get their sorority suspended and get kicked out of the sorority. 

EDIT:

Okay, listen up!

After some sleuthing around the internet, I have confirmed that this photo is of members of Alpha Chi Omega, Beta Mu chapter at Penn State! 

Soooo, here’s contact information for the parties that must know about this:

Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life at Penn State

Phone:814-863-8065

Email:greeks@sa.psu.edu


Penn State University Panhellenic Council

Advisor: Susan LeGally - sul33@psu.edu

President : Julianne Robbins - jer5229@psu.edu

Penn State Office of Student Conduct

Phone: 814-863-0342

Email: studentconduct@sa.psu.edu

National Alpha Chi Omega Headquarters

Phone: 317.579.5050

Email:http://www.alphachiomega.org/contact.aspx

Susan Hogle, Receptionist - receptionist@alphachiomega.org

Jessica Kelly - Director of Collegiate Experience -jkelly@alphachiomega.org

Cheri O’Neill - Executive Director - coneill@alphachiomega.org

Arianna Maggard - Chapter Consultant - amaggard@alphachiomega.org

LET’S SPREAD THIS LIKE WILDFIRE. LET’S NOT LET ANOTHER GROUP OF STUDENTS BE RACIST AND NOT GET ANY PUNISHMENT FOR IT.

Racist. As. Fuck. Y’all are horrible. They deserve charter revocation and serious disciplinary action.

(Source: iblamereagan, via uglyisbeauty)

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12 11 / 2012

"There are the occasions that men—intellectual men, clever men, engaged men—insist on playing devil’s advocate, desirous of a debate on some aspect of feminist theory or reproductive rights or some other subject generally filed under the heading: Women’s Issues. These intellectual, clever, engaged men want to endlessly probe my argument for weaknesses, want to wrestle over details, want to argue just for fun—and they wonder, these intellectual, clever, engaged men, why my voice keeps raising and why my face is flushed and why, after an hour of fighting my corner, hot tears burn the corners of my eyes. Why do you have to take this stuff so personally? ask the intellectual, clever, and engaged men, who have never considered that the content of the abstract exercise that’s so much fun for them is the stuff of my life."

Melissa McEwan, of course, on the terrible bargain. My life as a woman, as a queer person, as a fat person, is not your thought experiment.  (via sanitywatchers)

(via badwolfxvx)

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12 10 / 2012

bailapelirroja: thefoxxypoet: My only problem is that I wish this graph came with a link to the source of this information. I know this is true, but just to back up facts for people who may not know this information, a source would be awesome. It’s an easy google. :) Here ya go: http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/pdfs/factsheets/10-Fact%20Sheet%20-%20System%20as%20Racist.pdf http://fcnl.org/resources/newsletter/feb00/drug_trafficking_prejudiced_assumptions/ http://cwsl.edu/content/benner/aaRacialDisparityinNarcoticsSearchWarrants.pdf Fucking bullshit by the way.

bailapelirroja:

thefoxxypoet:

My only problem is that I wish this graph came with a link to the source of this information. I know this is true, but just to back up facts for people who may not know this information, a source would be awesome.

It’s an easy google. :) Here ya go:

http://www.publiceye.org/defendingjustice/pdfs/factsheets/10-Fact%20Sheet%20-%20System%20as%20Racist.pdf

http://fcnl.org/resources/newsletter/feb00/drug_trafficking_prejudiced_assumptions/

http://cwsl.edu/content/benner/aaRacialDisparityinNarcoticsSearchWarrants.pdf

Fucking bullshit by the way.

(Source: onlyexperiments, via platanos-fritos)

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24 9 / 2012

"The thing about not having much money is you have to take much more responsibility for your life. You can’t pay people to watch your kids or clean your house or fix your meals. You can’t necessarily afford a car or a washing machine or a home in a good school district. That’s what money buys you: goods and services that make your life easier. That’s what money has bought Romney, too. He’s a guy who sold his dad’s stock to pay for college, who built an elevator to ensure easier access to his multiple cars and who was able to support his wife’s decision to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s great! That’s the dream. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car, or the agonizing choices faced by families in which both parents work and a child falls ill. The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it."

Ezra Klein (via azspot)

(via ethiopienne)

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18 8 / 2012

"Caucasian students receive more than three-quarters (76%) of all institutional merit-based scholarship and grant funding, even though they represent less than two-thirds (62%) of the student population.
Caucasian students are 40% more likely to win private scholarships than minority students. These statistics demonstrate that, as a whole, private sector scholarship programs tend to perpetuate historical inequities in the distribution of scholarships according to race."

The Distribution of Grants and Scholarships by Race

i am so sick of white people coming to me talking about “affirmative action” and how there aren’t any scholarships for white kids. let me get my fucking violin out 

(via esaedders)

(via platanos-fritos)

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09 8 / 2012

My conversation with a Yale grad. He was accepted to every Ivy League, and is currently at one of the top occupations in Microsoft.

  • 1: I know right now, everything seems so unfair. You need to study, all to get compared with other people. Your future is dependent mostly on whether you go to this school, major in this thing, receive this much money, or get this job. I know. I was there, I was you. Studying my ass off for an easier life. You're told that everything right now is the most important, that you need to get As, go to a great college, have an amazing job, generate immense revenue, therefore become happy. But, there's just one thing that I failed to understand. And let me tell you, there are barely any things that I do not understand. Yet, I have no idea why I'm not happy. From a young age, you're told to take these steps and if you succeed, you'll reach happiness. It's not true. I've done every step every mother would tell her child to do, to become, but here I am, unhappy. After many years of trying to find where I went wrong, I realized that I had been looking in the completely wrong place.
  • 2: Then where do you look?
  • 1: At your friends. Your relationships. Your family. Your coworkers, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your social life. Many of the richest men in the world aren't happy, why? Because they spent all their lives trying to achieve happiness in the wrong place. You have a ton of money, great. But in the end, we're all sitting in our rocking chairs, and nobody cares who had the most money or who went to the best college. It's about who had the most fun. Who had the most people to look after them, who had the most to look after. The happiest are the ones that have people to call in times of trouble, the ones that had the time to spend with their family and feel all that love. That's what people lack! Love. When you're on your deathbed, everything doesn't matter anymore you see. You'd want people that love you to be around you, to be comforting you, to tell you about all the great things you did for people. You don't want to be alone, with what? A degree? Cash that will never be used? Nobody ever says "wow, I went to a great college and therefore I'm satisfied" in the end. Only the lucky ones get to say "wow, I was surrounded by love my whole life. My time on this earth was beautiful."
  • 2:
  • 1: But you know, I'm not telling you not to get into a great college or not to do any of the things society tells you to. Go for it, it pays off! It doesn't give you happiness but it takes a lot of stress off your shoulders. All I'm saying is don't make it your everything. If you don't get in somewhere good, don't stress about it. As long as you're okay with the people around you, you're going to be fine. I'm sure of it. Priorities change in the end. We're only people.

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