Sweating the Small Stuff: The Political Correctness of Personal Opinion

I used to be a pretty negative and hateful person. I know it's hard to believe, but it's true.

Just a few years ago, at the beginning of college, I used to allow myself to get so upset and angry about things because I took everything personally. Any time I ran across something or someone in my life with which I disagreed, or which I thought rubbed me the wrong way, I chose to let it bother me -- deeply so -- to the point that I was just always perpetually pissed off about something. And let me tell you, it was exhausting.

Then, sometime around the end of my sophomore year, and at a point in my life which has since proven itself to be pretty pivotal for a few reasons, I read a book by Richard Carlson called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff (and it's All Small Stuff). It changed my life.

I learned that things are not meant to be taken so personally. I learned that I was actually the one choosing to get offended by views I did not agree with. I realized that the whole world did not, in fact, revolve around me, and what I thought was the one correct way to do things. I came to understand that life is entirely what you make it -- and that if you choose to make it an "emergency," as he called it, then that's exactly what it's going to be. Basically, I grew up a lot. And my life has been infinitely better, happier, calmer, and overall more enjoyable for me and those who are in it, ever since.

But what does that have to do with anything?

Well honestly, it has a lot to do with everything. You see, that moment in my life has helped change my perspective on a lot of things. Don't get me wrong; I still screw up on occasion and I am still very much learning as I go along. But I can clearly see progress from where I am now, compared to where I was then. If I had to choose one aspect of my life which has benefited the most from changes like these, it has got to be the way in which I react to things now.



Billions of people all over social media get offended nearly on a minute-by-minute basis nowadays. They watch something or read something, and their reactionary fingers are quick to the keyboard in anger. Have I done this myself on several occasions? You betcha. Did it make me feel better in the moment? Oh yeah. But was it good for my happiness and well-being in the long run? Did it help me in any way, with learning to let things go? Not at all.

Now, until recently in my life, I would have been the first person out of everyone I know to unyieldingly support the idea of political correctness. And why not? I value mutual respect in the political sphere, as well as between two human beings in their everyday interactions. To me, for most of my adult life, political correctness has always meant treating other people the way you would like to be treated. It has meant respecting one another's differing opinions and working together to not offend one another with things like slurs and bigoted comments. Being politically correct, for me, has long been something I value. Until recently.

Perhaps this is a part of my impending adulthood and the realization that it's not the bed of daisies some of us have always imagined it to be. But recently, I have reached the conclusion, that perhaps being politically correct all the time is not appropriate, after all. That is, I have arrived at the belief that there is a time and a place to be politically correct -- and that is about 98% of the time in 98% of the places -- but there is also, absolutely, without a doubt, and rightfully so, a time and a place to simply put your middle finger in the air and politely offer two words to those who may take issue with it. And that time and place is when it comes to your own damn personal opinion.

In my life experience, I find that we humans seem to get awfully caught up in not wanting to hurt anyone's feelings. In fact, I have noticed myself tiptoeing around others before, in order to not offend them because I know their opinion is different than mine. And I have got to say: I've had quite enough of that in my lifetime, and I'm only twenty-two years old.



Put briefly, I'll explain: I have an opinion, and I have a right to have it. My opinion can be a lot of things. In fact, it can be any single thing in the world that I choose for it to be. And there's not a damn thing that says you have to like it. You don't have to agree with it. In fact, you can blatantly and grossly disagree with the very fundamentals of it. And vice versa. I can think your opinion is the most nonsensical, absurd, and downright stupid thing I've ever heard. But I don't have to agree with it, in order to understand that you have the same right as I do, to have it.

Furthermore, I can wholeheartedly disagree with you on something, and still choose not to react to it as if I have been personally offended by your differing opinion. This is a pretty heavy intellectual concept that I think many people fail to utilize in their everyday lives.

You see, before I read that self-help book a few years ago, I saw everyone who had a different opinion than me as a threat to my own stubborn belief system. I viewed every discussion on abortion, same-sex marriage, and gun control as a showdown of epic proportions, where I had to fight to the death (that is, until I was emotionally drained and physically exhausted) until I could persuade the other person that my opinion was correct and that they had so personally offended me before. I simply could not let it go when someone did not see every little thing in exactly the same light as I did.

Thinking and behaving this way cost me a lot. It cost me my happiness and peace of mind, it cost me sleep on some occasions, and it even cost me some relationships. It robbed me of the truly zen outlook on life which comes with knowing that not everything is intended to personally offend you or piss you off -- in fact, most things people do are done from their own self-serving intentions, without you in mind at all.

Once I  realized and better understood that, I really did stop sweating the small stuff. I was able to comprehend that being politically correct is called for -- most of the time -- in a public setting, on touchy subjects, when talking to a large group of diverse people. But when it comes to my own personal opinion, and my own set of beliefs which govern my personal life, I can say and do whatever I want. And nobody else has to like it.

Everyone has an opinion. Chances are, out of some 7 billion people on the planet, you're not going to be able to find someone who agrees with you on everything. The more quickly you learn to accept that we all think and feel differently, and that there's nothing wrong with that, the more quickly you will realize that it's your choice to be offended by someone else. And in the grand scheme of your life, someone else's opinion really is the small stuff. And if you want to enjoy the kind of inner peace that everyone deserves, then you really shouldn't sweat it.

Letting things go is just so much easier than carrying around resentment and anger in your heart over the course of your life. So the next time someone says or does something that offends you, ask yourself if it is worth taking personally. Is it something truly offensive and politically incorrect, like Donald Trump hailing Hitler or yelling racial slurs? Or is this person simply exercising their right to have an opinion different than yours, the very same right you reserve for yourself?

We Are Only in Our Twenties

I went out one night recently with an acquaintance who I had not seen in a while. With graduation quickly approaching for myself and many of my friends, it is fair to say things are overall pretty hectic in all of our lives at the moment. Naturally, many of our conversations are focused around our lives as young adults as they are preparing to begin (as if our lives did not already begin over twenty years ago). All of these future-focused conversations have really got me doing some introspective thinking as of late.

Now, this acquaintance and I, we do not always see eye-to-eye. A lot of the time, we do. But one major difference between us that I have noticed increasingly as graduation has approached, is our outlook on life moving forward. Of course, there's nothing wrong with either of the two ways we envision our lives to be from this point on, but I just can't help but be fascinated by the very fact that such a difference exists. Like many other things, I suspect this is the result of our culture and the messages we have constantly heard for our entire lives. I'll explain.

While I was chatting with this acquaintance, we got around to such topics of apartment shopping, career paths, and starting families. She was worried sick about her future. She has a pretty good internship now, and she was worried about whether it was going to lead to a permanent full-time position, post-graduation. She has to find a new place to live, and she is hoping to move in with her current boyfriend, in hopes that this situation *obviously* leads to marriage, children, and a quiet, safe life in the Kansas countryside.

Like I said before, there is certainly nothing wrong with this path, if that is the way your life goes. In fact, I know someone else who has already graduated, started her career, gotten married, and settled down in the Kansas countryside. Happily ever after.

But to me, in my own honest opinion, that seems downright crazy. Why? We are in our early twenties, not our late thirties, and we have so much life left to live to figure everything out. There's no rush to know all the answers and settle ourselves down forever.

Back to my acquaintance. When she asked me what plans I have for after May 14th when we become full-time adults, I simply shrugged and told her, "I dunno." Her eyes widened and she almost spat out her drink. "What do you mean, you don't know?" Well, I don't know. I can't tell the future, and I have learned to accept this fact because there's no way worrying will ever make me a psychic, and even if it could, there's no way seeing the future can actually help a person change it, anyway.

(Side note: I'd like to really emphasize just how foolish it is to be so shocked when someone says they don't know what the future holds. Because even though this acquaintance of mine has an internship, a relationship, and soon maybe even an apartment, she still knows just as little about the weather tomorrow as I do. She's just fooled herself into a false sense of security thinking she *knows* the future thanks to a few material things which give her a semblance of safety.)

My acquaintance was shocked by my seemingly blasé reaction to her surprise. But I'm used to this by now. Because, as I mentioned earlier, this is a concept which our culture has manufactured and spoon-fed to us from the beginning of time. It freaks us out when we don't have a clear idea of what the future looks like. And understandably so, especially for Millennials, who are used to having the world at our fingertips and thus being able to find an answer for just about anything in a few seconds' time, provided that the Wi-Fi connection is strong enough. But we can't Google what our futures hold.

No, there's a necessity for patience and flexibility that one must have about seeing where their life will take them. It's extremely uncomfortable for someone my age (myself included) to sit tight and wait and see how things go. We are ill at ease with the idea of being comfortable in the uncomfortable unknown that must accompany change if it is to be accepted, because we are so used to knowing everything right now.

Add to this the fact that we, as young people, have been enculturated to believe we need to have all the answers the very moment we enter the "real world," (nevermind the fact that we have no experience to actually draw from in this mythical world). We are told we need to land an internship, graduate, get a good foothold on a longterm career right out of the gates, find someone to love, get married, and settle down to raise a few kids in order to start the cycle over again.

And that's fine. We can do that, if we choose. But do we have to be in such a damned big hurry to do it all right this instant? Are we not allowed every single second in our lives to get to know ourselves and grow and learn more about the world around us, before we are pressured into quickly making so many decisions which will affect us in the longterm? I think we are.

I've only really been taking care of myself on my own as a semi-adult for about four years now. I'm in no hurry to grow up and try to take care of others, too. I really don't feel the pressure to start my career right now. I want to have some fun first. I don't know what I'll be doing after graduation. I don't have it all figured out right now. And that's okay. I can't tell the future, and that's the point. It's not supposed to be determined yet. It is open-ended and left up to me to decide. I want to take for granted that privilege and all the choices I am able to make as a result of it. I can't afford to waste any freedom on worrying about the fear and anticipation that the world has tried to instill in me.

My generation is the one who birthed the phrase "YOLO," and perhaps that's because, as a whole, we are so used to instant gratification that we don't have much of a longterm orientation. Living only once is often accredited for young people doing a number of stupid things, in the name of maybe being dead tomorrow (although statistically unlikely). While it is true that I will live only once, that doesn't mean I have any inclination of how long my life will be. Maybe I will die tomorrow. Or maybe I'll die at the ripe old age of 78. I'm not worried about it. Either way, I have plenty of time to figure stuff out before I rush into any decisions about marriage, career, apartments, or even getting a house plant. After all, I'm only in my twenties.

What Are You Going To Do After Graduation?

This is the question I have been asked countless times over the course of the last year of my life, but particularly this semester, and particularly more frequently as the days have passed.

It's April now. I graduate next month. And I have no plans as of yet for the future. It's a daunting fact and a realization that carries power with it to haunt me for days. I don't have a job lined up -- least of the beginning of a career and I don't have the first idea where I am going to live. It's terrifying.

And yet, I have remained pretty calm throughout all of it. At the beginning of this year, my goal was to find a job by second semester. At the beginning of second semester, my goal was to find a job by spring break. After spring break, my goal was simply to find a job. And it hasn't been for lack of trying. But I just don't seem to be having any luck.

I've applied lots of places. Locally, and in Boston. All last week and the week before, I have sat in class, multi-tasking as I attempt to feign interest in whatever the teacher has been talking about, while simultaneously sifting through internship opportunities and online application portals. I have revised my cover letter so many times, I think I could recite the introduction paragraph by heart. I have pleaded in desperation to companies to please hire me, veiled thinly with phrases like "I await your response" and "let me know if you have any questions". And all to no avail.

I just spent some time surfing through Boston's Housing Wanted link on Craigslist where I ultimately posted an ad asking for a room to stay in during the summer, even though I have no job lined up and no money for a down payment. What can it hurt?

I so don't have my shit together. I don't have a place to live -- here or there -- and I don't know where I'm going to work after May 14th. Sure, I've booked myself a roundtrip ticket to France for a two-week post-graduation vacation in the country I love, but upon my return, I will be landing not only in Wichita, but in reality. A reality which is likely to see me unemployed and homeless.

Over the last several months, my friends have been discussing apartments in Wichita and things like rent and roommates. They've started new jobs at big companies and things are looking great for them and their continued lives in the Midwest metropolis which is Wichita. But not for me. I want something more.

Of course I do. I always do. And isn't that exactly what always gets me in trouble? I demand euphoria, excitement, drama, perfection. I need things to be big and bold and absolutely not boring. I have to go and do things on my own and far away from everyone else. I can never simply be satisfied to stay where I am, and live my life among those who seemingly do not long for faraway places in the same way I do. No, I have to make things difficult on myself.

I know that, but I also know that making things difficult is just another way of saying that I am making things worthwhile. All the struggles and moments of sheer fear when I have no earthly idea of what is coming next, that's going to be the stuff that makes it meaningful later on, right? Right?

Nobody has the answer for me. Least of all, myself. Nobody has any idea what is going to happen to Alyssa in the future, or even right now, for that matter. And that thought alone is enough to make me want to enroll in more classes until I die.

After graduation -- out there, in the real world -- that is the place where scary things happen. The unknown lurks around every corner and there are bills to be paid and responsibilities to be had. It's the total opposite of the warm security blanket of college education which has coddled me for the past eight semesters. It's a harsh wake-up call from an angry mother with a shrill voice the morning after a night out with friends, as she rips the covers off of your face and turns your hungover, disoriented world upside down. It's sudden, it's scary, and it's very, very real.

And yet, I find it most comforting to recognize the fact that there are others who are in the very same boat as me. Even though I haven't had enough time to catch my breath in two weeks, even though I have an exam tomorrow which I should be studying for now, and even though I won't see the end of my to-do list until a few days before graduation finally arrives... I think it is somehow calming to accept the fact that I am not in this alone.

Sure, I may be freaking out about my future. But everyone does, at some point. And yeah, hindsight is always 20/20. But foresight? You're going into that blind. There's no way to tell the future. There's no way to know if the next best decision of your life lies just around the corner. There's no way to know. Until you get there. You just have to go.

You just have to have faith in yourself and your life and know that whatever happens, will do so for a reason and it will all inevitably lead you down the right path at the right time and you will arrive exactly where you are meant to be, to stumble upon the opportunities which are meant for you. And that's horrifying. But what other choice do you really have?

So no, I don't know what I'm going to do after graduation. I don't know where I'm going to live, either. Maybe Wichita. Maybe Boston. Maybe France. Maybe somewhere else entirely. I may work two jobs earning minimum wage as a barista and a waitress, putting in 50 hours a week. I may land my dream job tomorrow when one of the internships in Boston finally replies. I just don't know.

I haven't the foggiest. Because, for the first time in my life, the protective, familiar structure of academia has not dictated what I am supposed to do or where I am supposed to go. I am free to choose what I want to do, where I want to go, and who I want to be. I am vulnerable and, finally, I get to make all my own decisions. That's terrifying, and I haven't really figured it all out yet. And that's okay. I'm twenty-two and new at this. I don't have to have everything figured out. Thanks for asking.

Your Happiness Will Become So Important To You

When did I become so preoccupied with caring about what others think of me? At what moment in time did that become so important to me? Sometime in college, surely.

I remember sitting in Dr. Matson's class the spring semester of freshman year, frantically scribbling notes in my textbook with every word of wisdom that traveled from his mouth to my ears. I remember many things from that class and that man, but in this moment I remember a specific sentence he uttered, which I suspect will only grow in value to me as time goes on. He was talking about happiness in our careers, and he said, "Happiness leads to success, not the other way around. A lot of people think it is success that leads to happiness, but it's not. And if you want any shot at real happiness in your life, you'll realize that pretty fast." The part I remember so clearly is what came next. "Your own personal happiness will become so important to you, that you will do whatever is necessary to attain it." He said we would cut ties with people, quit bad jobs, and even move elsewhere eventually, if our happiness dictated it was necessary.

At the time, I was newly nineteen years old and it is honestly amazing to me how little I had experienced in my life up to that point. That was only three years ago, but my god, it feels like so much of my own naiveté has worn off since that time. Now, a few months away from graduation and having to enter the Big Girl Job Market with nothing more than hard work and good luck between now and then, I understand what he was talking about. Freshman year, I felt no pressure whatsoever to pick a career which would be personally fulfilling, financially secure, and also provide a good deal of upward mobility, all at once. Those thoughts weren't even blips on my radar. My, how life changes... and fast.

I think about the wonderfully wise words of Dr. Matson quite often, especially during any rough patch I have gone through during my college experience. And as many college students could attest to, sometimes rough patches seem to happen a little more frequently than not. My close friends like to tease me when I quote Dr. Matson, and they say I have a crush on him. But I really just can't help but internalize messages like these. He has really played an important role in my education - both academically and otherwise.

While on the subject of happiness in career, the conversation veered off a bit into the territory of personal happiness, and especially in interpersonal relationships. (This was a sociology class, after all.) What I appreciate most about this quote of his, is that like most of his advice, it applies not only to career, but to the rest of life as well.

Recently (within the last week), I have noticed myself feeling so aware of other people. At first, I thought to myself, "huh, that's weird," and went on about my life. But the more I noticed it, the more uncomfortable it made me. I have never been one to care much about the opinions of others before. What changed? Now, this didn't settle well with me. So naturally, I had to dig a little deeper within myself to investigate.

What do I mean, I cared more about what others thought? What I mean is, over the course of the last few years, I think I have unwittingly become hypersensitive to how others perceive me. Perhaps it has been a combination of so-called friends telling me I am "too much" for them (yes, seriously) and also learning so much about the roles which are socially acceptable for women to play in society. (Being a Gender Studies student means it's only a matter of time before you start to analyze everything you do and what your motivation is for doing it.) I dunno. Some combination of these events led to my sudden hyper-conscientiousness about all my words and actions.

It really culminated this week, when I realized I was acting differently around a new dynamic of friends in a social setting I'd never been in before - and one I'll never be in again. I didn't realize how aware I was of how I was acting until after it was over, when I was alone in my own quiet time at the end of the day, and I felt that familiar proverbial exhale as I was finally able to fully embrace my solitude.

I was sitting on my bed by myself tonight, literally laughing out loud at the comedy documentary I was watching on Netflix. I laughed as a totally involuntary bodily reaction to the hilarious media I had just absorbed. I realized a few seconds too late, that I had laughed quite loudly, and that it was past quiet hours in the dorms. "Oops," I thought. But then, something weird happened. Immediately after I caught myself acting in a way which was bound to get me in trouble, I also thought, "Wait a minute, that was kind of incredible. I was just being myself and laughing and not thinking about it at all." But this beautiful thought had only been floating above my head for a few moments before it was replaced by another: "That's kind of sad, that I just realized that. Why don't I just naturally act this way without thinking all the time?" And so on and so forth. Then I had a cup of tea and slowed my brain down long enough to form my bumbling thoughts into words on this screen.

If you were to ask many people who know me, they would probably tell you that I am very much myself most of the time and that I oftentimes lack a filter. This would lead you to believe that I have no problems whatsoever with being unapologetically myself, and that I do so quite freely. But you would be wrong.

I'm not sure that it was a single moment in time when my brain decided, "Okay, we're going to suddenly care much more about everything we do now," rather than a gradual escalation of social cues on which I learned to pick up. In fact, I think most of it started when I began to examine so many social interactions under the microscope of feminism. I used to just act in the way which was most natural and comfortable to me, and screw you if you didn't like it. Granted, I ran into my own fair share of confrontation that way as well, but I didn't really care. That was the whole point. And I'll tell you what, I was pretty happy in those days. Like, really "I know what I want to do with my life" happy.

Then I began thinking about how I was acting, rather than just simply acting. That was the problem. I started putting thought behind the things I was doing, calculating. "Okay, if this is how I am expected to act, then I will actually act in the total opposite way. I will defy the expectations placed on me by society, and I will create social change all while being a rebel. I'll win!" became a common thought process in my head. But goodness, if that isn't exhausting. It downright rips the fun out of life, because instead of living, you're thinking.

Earlier this week was the moment when I realized this sort of pattern occurring and I kind of just decided enough was enough. I was thinking about so many things before I did them. It was not natural to me, and it just didn't feel right. If I can't just be myself and act however I feel is best, then I'm spending time with the wrong people. I think the goal is to be able to have that moment - that proverbial exhale - in the presence of others. That moment I had where I let it all out in my quiet alone time - that is the exact kind of myself I would like to be, without thinking before acting. And screw you if you don't like it.




So I'm not really sure when it was exactly that I started caring so much about what others think of me. I don't remember the moment in time when I started thinking before acting. But starting right now, I'm taking it all back. I no longer have the energy to be anything but myself. If being myself means I adhere perfectly to the expectations placed on me, then so be it. That's all right. If it so happens that being myself means I break every single one of the rules that were intended for me, then so be that, too. I don't care. I figure I'll lose the wrong friends and make the right ones this way. People will either love me for it, or not. Either way, I know it'll all work itself out in the end, after the dust of all this growth and self-exploration has settled.

Because my own personal happiness has finally become so important to me that I will do whatever is necessary to attain it.

The Pleasure and Pain of Travel: Always Holding On, Always Letting Go

I know I am young - a few weeks shy of twenty-two - and I have not experienced nearly enough of the world. I've only ever been to three countries and I haven't even graduated college yet. But I still have my fair share of valuable experiences to offer me guidance and to help me continue to grow.

Something I have learned during my short time on this planet is that life is a balance of holding on and letting go. This lesson became especially close to my heart after I experienced a little bit of traveling and learned what the world looked like from the other side. Of course I had experienced the joy of cherishing a moment before, as well as the anguish of letting go. But it really wasn't until I took myself so far away from my comfort zone, acclimated myself and got comfortable, then had to leave again, that I had a deeper grasp on understanding how these feelings work - or how natural and common they actually are in so many parts of life.

Falling in love is so easy. I can fall in love with anything, really. People, places, food, television shows, boy bands, clothes, foreign languages... There is a doe-eyed, hopeless romantic hidden away deep inside of my heart, and she loves to love. Over time, as is the case with many people, the romantic inside of me has learned some tough lessons from her own experiences with pain. But despite being immersed in agony at times, she remains eager to explore the world and all it has to offer, greeting everyone and everything she encounters with an open mind, an open heart, and a ravenous curiosity.

A few years ago, I fell in love with traveling. I had no idea what I was in for, but I know now that when it comes to not being heartbroken, I never stood a chance. I went to France for a summer to study abroad as a sophomore in college, and my life - and my heart - was changed forever. I fell in love with the abstract idea of traveling itself, as well as the country of France, the culture, the architecture, the food, and most importantly, the people. I had no idea how difficult it would be to let all of these things go when I had to come back home.

Last year, I went to Boston for half a week by myself. Nearly everyone I talked to thought it was such a terrifying idea, a single woman flying across the country alone. But I had to go. I had to know what it was like in the city where I'd never been before, but that was calling me steadily towards it. I needed to experience it for myself. My heart needed to feel what it was like. Four days came and went, and before I knew it, I was on a plane heading out of Logan Airport, just like that. Once again, I felt that familiar twinge of sorrow as I watched the tops of tall Bostonian buildings fade from view as we rose higher into the clouds.

All of these experiences and memories - all of the things I think of fondly when they cross my mind - make me so happy because I hold onto them; I do not let them go. I keep these wonderful tidbits of my life safely tucked away in my heart, filed between other sweet memories like childhood birthday parties and perfect first kisses.

I remember how it felt when that plane landed in Paris at 9:30 in the morning local time after almost 24 hours of traveling. I remember the warmth I felt when I hugged my two adorable and ornery little host sisters for the first time. I remember the fun I had together with an American friend as we drank and flirted with French boys on a Saturday night.

I remember boarding my connecting flight in Atlanta and hearing Boston accents in the rows near me, as we prepared to head northeast. I remember slurping oysters and drinking beer in the oldest restaurant in America after a morning of solo kayaking on the Charles River. I remember the blisters on my feet after a long day wandering around the big city in a sundress and taking photos of skyscrapers.

I would never willingly let any of those memories go. I cherish them. They're beautiful pieces of my life and together they help add up to me, so I clutch them tightly, very near my heart. But I have learned, after some time, that there are things in all of this mess of life that I do have to learn to let go.

Each semester, there is inevitably a new crop of international students who arrive on campus and who create unforgettable ripple effects in my life, if only for a moment. Each semester, after finals are over and celebrations have begun, the time comes when I have to say farewell to a friend I've known for four months. After seeing this person on a daily basis for so long, I have to accept that we will only be communicating over Facebook for the foreseeable future. I have to hug them and tell them to have a safe flight and try not to be sad about someone else leaving. And each semester, it never gets any easier.

These feelings wash over me when my new friends leave for other continents, mainly because of the fun we've experienced and the relationships we've shared across international borders, language barriers, and cultures. But I think these moments remind me of something else, on a deeper level; something that shaped me during such a pivotal moment in my development as a traveler: the morning I had to leave my host family in France.

It was early enough that the sun hadn't yet risen, and in France during summer, it seems rare that the sun is ever down for long. This was such a gloomy morning in comparison to the sun I had known for four weeks. I put my last few belongings away and zipped up my suitcase, carried it down the stairs, and prepared to tell two precious pieces of my heart good-bye. I remember trying in vain not to cry, and hugging my host mother tightly like the American women we are. I remember a sleepy seven-year-old, in the backseat of the car as her family prepared to leave for vacation, wagging her finger at me and very seriously telling me to "continue à apprendre le français" because my French sucked. I remember closing the door, and walking away toward the tram stop, rolling my suitcase behind me, and bawling like a baby.

I remember feeling as if some kind of monster had reached down through my throat and ripped my heart from my chest. My heart, which had just previously been smothered with love, compassion, curiosity, and wanderlust. My heart, which I thought I was keeping safely inside my rib cage, but which had somehow found its way out onto my sleeve. I had built such strong, beautiful, meaningful bonds with so many people in such a short amount of time, and now I was being forced to tell them all good-bye. It didn't seem fair. To subject a human being with such a vast emotional capacity as myself - who feels things before she thinks things - to such an emotional roller coaster ride, is simply cruel. Unless... These feelings exist for a reason, and they are there to teach me something about myself.

Historically, I've never been particularly good at letting go of things once I have become emotionally attached to them. And why would I be? I don't think it's something which is necessarily natural-feeling or innate to human beings. Moreover, it was certainly not something I was explicitly taught to do growing up in Western culture. So I knew how to hold on, how to fall in love with something or someone. But I had no idea how to get over it and let it go once this wonderful thing was gone. I didn't know how to handle the time after it was over, or what the grieving and recovery process should look like.

Boyfriends, sure. I'd loved them and lost them, and strangely enough, gone on to be better than fine without them. Best friends, yeah. I'd lost them too, and I knew I would be just as well without them. Family members and pets, I'd lost before, and I knew how to grieve then. But this was different. This was more than a person or an animal leaving me.

The notion of traveling as an abstract idea is fascinating to me, because it is so malleable and able to be customized to fit any individual's experience. No two people travel the same way, either literally through the rugged countryside or metaphorically throughout life. It is deeply personal and the traveler oftentimes learns more about themselves during their journey, than they originally set out to do. So how can something so beautiful that offers such wonderful experiences, also be the cause of such heartbreak and pain when it's over? Well, that's true with anything we love, isn't it?

Life is a balance of holding on and letting go, but you've got to not only know how to do both, but you've also got to learn when to do both. Perhaps most importantly, you've got to learn that both are equal and necessary counterparts to life and have faith in yourself that things will work out as they are meant to be. You've got to learn that letting go of the experiences and people you love is a part of life, and although it causes you pain, that is only because it first brought you so much pleasure.

The catch about being so alive and feeling so much pleasure, is that the parts of your brain and heart which feel that pleasure, can feel exactly that same amount of pain. All that your nerve receptors do is receive the message you send to them, and transmit it back with the same intensity, regardless of what the feeling is. And if so much love and euphoria can send your heart flying into the sky, that means that anything which hurts it can just as easily bring it crashing back down to the ground. It can be scary. The fact that something like intersecting lives and connecting souls around the world can affect you in such a way, and that it can influence and shape who you are as a person, means that we are vulnerable to being molded and changed at any time. But isn't that beautiful?

The first reaction to pain by many people, is to run from it. To ignore it and avoid it. To try to tough it out in hopes that it will go away. But that approach seldom works for the person experiencing it, and that's how problems go unresolved for quite some time. What if instead of running away from our pain, we ran towards it instead? What if we reach out and touch it, embrace it, hold it close and let it crack apart all the beautiful pieces of our heart and then use the fragmented voids to fill it up with a new kind of love? Get downright vulnerable with our pain. Let it wash over us and consume us, because if we do, it will heal us.

At first pain demands that we feel it - and we do. Then it sucks for a while. But eventually, if we run toward it rather than away from it, we will run so far into it that we meet ourselves. And when we come out from the other side of whatever this painful experience is, we will have changed. We will have been transformed into a different version of ourselves, and there will be no going back to the people we were before. Feeling so deeply can seem like a curse sometimes. But at other times, it provides you with a euphoria so much higher than everybody else. And that makes it all worth the pain.

I've grown so much and learned a lot about holding on and letting go during the last few years of my life. I have fallen in love with people and places and then a short time later, had to leave, every bit as in love as when I arrived. I've driven friends to the airport and hugged them good-bye, and told myself I'll see them again someday. My life has been touched by so many people, places, and experiences, and there's no doubt it is all the richer for it. But that's exactly why it's so hard to let go.

As a traveler, nobody prepared me for the moment when I'd have to say good-bye and return home. As a person, nobody prepared me for how to handle loving so many people in so many places at once. I don't have a solution as to how to let go, because I'm honestly just not very good at it yet. But I know life requires balance, so that must mean that I have to let go in the same capacity and intensity with which I try to hold on.

The people I love will still be there the next time plane tickets go on sale. The places I long to explore are not going anywhere, either. Maybe in the future, I can go visit my international classmates on their soil, rather than waiting for them to return to America. There are so many options for letting go.

Once your heart has made a connection to traveling, once you understand how liberating and beautiful it is, then you begin to understand why it's necessary to let go. By its very nature, traveling is a transient act. You move. You go. You leave. And while that certainly means something incredible is waiting to be seen ahead, it also means you're leaving something else behind. The beauty is found in the act of leaving, of letting go and letting be.

Travelers who master this art have simply opened their hearts so wide, that it has shattered time and again from the pain of leaving love behind. But they understand that anything which is beautiful is also oftentimes shrouded in pain. They open their hearts to feel all of the wonderful things about exploring new lands and new people. But in so doing, they make themselves vulnerable to feeling all the torture and anguish that comes with it, too. And in turn, that shapes and molds the person they are, just as any experience with love does. That's how we know we're alive. One of the most beautiful things about the human experience is that we can feel a full range of emotions from touching the lives of others, and having them touch ours; whether that happens when we are holding on, or when we have to let go.

The Battle Between My Brain & My Heart

Boys. I love them and I hate them. Not in a feminist ideology, equality-of-the-sexes way. In a "I've loved them and hated them since middle school for all the joy and pain they've brought me" way.

A handful of them have left marks on my life at different times, and undoubtedly, this has changed who I am as well as how I go about living my life afterward. I love it at the time; the excitement and the schoolgirl squeals and the butterflies in my tummy and all that jazz. But god, looking back at it, I can't help but roll my eyes and laugh. Why? Because I'm a cynic or a pessimist? No, I don't think so.

More likely it is because every time I have started with those squeals and that excitement, I have immediately imagined this perfect fantasy in my head, and once my heart is on-board with it, I am doomed. Doomed, because the actual relationship in reality has no chance of ever living up to the scenario in my head. So I laugh and roll my eyes afterward, because not a single one of those boys, just as young and inexperienced as me, had a prayer for giving me the perfection I didn't even realize I wanted.

One of the mind's favorite games to play is thinking without ever having the intention of acting. My brain loves to sit idly and fantasize about an imaginary future where everything is easy and things go perfectly according to plan. I like to dream up alternate universes where boys do exactly what I want them to do, and I have all the time and money in the world to make everything perfect. But I am a smart girl, and I know in reality, that's not how any of this works. Real life is not a Taylor Swift song. Time and money do not facilitate a perfect relationship. Manipulating others into doing what you want them to do, does not cultivate love and respect. It would be so easy if that's how things worked, but unfortunately it would not be even half as rewarding.

I have felt the highs and exciting squeals, and soon thereafter, the lows and the disappointed eye-rolls. I have played it cool and I have internally freaked out. I have played along in the game, just as I have been taught to do, and it worked out pretty well for me at first. But then my brain caught up to my heart and it metaphorically bitch-slapped it back into reality where it belongs. What am I thinking? What am I doing? This stuff is exhausting.

I am at odds with myself, and I have been for what often feels like forever; because my heart is busy painting big pictures and dancing around in the same euphoria it always demands, while my brain is scrambling to keep up as it files these grand ideals away neatly in their proper, alphabetized, places. I have always been a dreamer with a big imagination and enough ideas to never worry about coming back down to earth. That's why it has always been a less-than-graceful face-plant when I do come crashing down. I haven't ever really been bothered with the necessary planning that is required to build the steps on which I climb so high in the first place. But the existence of those steps is crucial for when the clouds of joy and excitement eventually fade away and I need something solid on which to support myself until my imagination can take off again.

I have always, for as long as I can remember, relished my individuality. I enjoyed alone time long before I ever enjoyed time spent with boys. My solitude means so much to me, that no obscene amount of money could ever compete. That's why I hate that I ever let a boy change that about me. There have been times in my life -- multiple in fact -- when I have felt myself lost, consumed almost entirely by someone else's being. Almost completely gone, I don't know if I would have been able to recognize who I am today in a mirror. It was a nightmare for someone like me, whose independent spirit demands to be recognized. I wondered how I ever allowed myself to get to that awful place. It is paramount that my individuality, my independence, remain untouched and intact, throughout every relationship with anyone that I ever have. I have known the feeling of losing myself in someone else before, and that is exactly why I now understand the importance of finding myself and never letting go again.

But it is so tough sometimes, when my dreamer's heart takes hold. It's like a kite caught by a strong northern wind, and all I can do is clutch helplessly onto the handle at the end of the string, holding on and being dragged along wherever it takes me until the wind dies down and all is calm again. My childlike heart does not care about the times it has been hurt before; it does not count the stitches in it or the scars it has collected over time. My heart has amnesia when it comes to the bruises and contusions it has suffered from all the times when I have lost myself in another. All it knows is, cute boy + possibility = grand illusions. My heart never paid attention to anything past this in math class.

My brain, on the other hand, gets it. My brain loves my independence more than almost everything else. Once the alcohol from the night before has worn off and the sunlight is streaming in through my window, my brain is awake and fully alert, demanding answers from my heart as if it is the main murder suspect sitting in an interrogation room. "What were you thinking? What were you doing? Didn't you learn anything from last time?" My brain is hesitant about making big commitments now, after what they have done to it in the past.  It understands that commitment to another person comes with the possibility of sacrificing a part of the whole person I already am. And my brain won't stand for such a betrayal of self anymore.

These two quarrel back and forth time and again, garnering experience and wisdom very slowly over time. My heart, throwing all caution to the wind and ordering just one more drink at the end of the night; and my brain chasing my heart frantically around, wagging its finger in its face like a disapproving mother. When will I learn?

I guess I will learn when I am ready to sacrifice a piece of my individuality for a piece of someone else, again. Out of unsolicited desire, rather than implied necessity. It will probably happen when the idea of taming my wild heart is no longer an option at all. Likely when someone else comes along and scoffs at the idea with the same disdain as I do. Someone who is appalled at the mere notion of me ever reigning my heartfelt ideals into the boxed-in framework of logic. I will finally know better when my brain draws a blank because my heart has already found the answers it seeks reflected in that of another.

But who knows when that day will be? Who knows what I will have to go through and experience in order to prepare myself for that opportunity? I sure as hell don't. So until that day arrives and hits me in the face like a ton of bricks, I guess I can just keep on dreamin', doing all the things that make me wonderfully myself. I can keep wearing my heart on my sleeve and gaining glorious experiences and having my hopes shattered time and again. Because really, it all adds up to the net sum of myself in the end, anyway. And none of it is so bad that it cannot eventually be overcome. I've got twenty-one-and-a-half years of empirical proof of that.

I'm not ready just yet to give up any part of myself or my freedom just because I like someone else. Yeah, I may like them, but I love myself more. This is something I have learned through experience over the years. And the way I see it, if someone is stupid enough to ask me to like them more than I like myself, well... they're just not a good fit for me. The day my brain draws a blank and doesn't know what to tell my heart to do, will be the day when someone comes along and tells me, "Don't you dare change any part of who you are for me. I love you for you, not for being a reflection of me." My brain will be perplexed by such an idea, and it won't have a file to reference. But my heart will finally understand.

Hitler, Voldemort, Fear, Love, and Terrorism

You know what I think? I think terrorists like it when countries are so occupied with fighting against themselves that they can’t work together to present a unified front for combating terrorism. I believe that they count on all of us, as individual citizens, feeling isolated, terrified, and angry. Their success depends on our failure to act cohesively against them. How do you take out one of the most powerful threats to your cause? You break them down into their individual, weakest links, and dissolve their hopeful morale so much until the unified hatred you can offer them is the best option for solace they have – from the very fear which you manufactured and instilled in them in the first place. United we stand, divided we fall.

That’s what Hitler did. He showed the German populace that the Nazi regime was a valiant cause to protect German nationalism and the best interests of the people. He told the citizens of a fearful, war-torn country that he would help pull them out of the wreckage left behind from World War I. He gave the hopeless, vulnerable people something they could believe in. Then he twisted their well-meaning faith into brainwashing and persuaded many to support a message which was contrary to his original rhetoric.

He conveniently provided the German people with a scapegoat for their woes; an entire group of people where they could place the blame. He focused his arguments around how these people were different from the Germans – they were “others,” they were inferior, and they were most certainly worthy of hatred. Hitler stripped the Jewish people of their humanity, and he made doing so seem so trendy, that an entire country jumped on the bandwagon. And in case they weren’t so easily convinced, he had a militant regime of weapons-yielding marionettes ready to help enforce his hatred.

Hitler preyed on the Germans’ fear; he hooked them with illusions of a better life, showed them the actions they could take to make it a reality, and then he manipulated masses of people into fighting his cause for him – his cause, of violence and bigotry, convincing the German population to turn against themselves and fight their own brothers and sisters, resulting in the most death the world has ever seen from a single war – a war which dragged nearly every country in the world into violent death and despair. A war, started out of manufactured fear, and after which, FDR eloquently pointed out, "The only thing we've got to fear is fear itself."

Hitler was a real bad guy. He actually existed, he lived and breathed, and walked among places we can still visit today. But since Hitler’s time, fictitious bad guys have been based off of some of his qualities – his authoritative leadership, his implicit coercion and explicit threats, his dependence on fear and isolation among the masses. Take for instance, Voldemort.

Voldemort did much the same thing as Hitler, though Voldemort is a fictional character in Harry Potter. The reason why so many fans love Harry Potter and its characters is because it is so relatable – Voldemort is to the wizarding world what Hitler is to ours.

There is a scene, in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, toward the end of the movie, where the always-wise and unconventional Luna Lovegood tells Harry, “If I were You-Know-Who, I'd want you to feel cut off from everyone else. Because if it's just you alone, you're not as much of a threat.” And that’s exactly it. People like Voldemort (referred to as “You-Know-Who because people feared him that much) and Hitler understand this fact better than anyone else, because it worked for them. If a dictator – a terrorist – can successfully isolate the people whom they wish to target, then it is suddenly much easier to manipulate them. How does a terrorist successfully isolate people whom they wish to target, you ask? Well, historically speaking, it seems fear tactics are a pretty good place to start.

Voldemort murdered hundreds of thousands of people needlessly; he enslaved others to do his bidding for him; he held others hostage and tortured them for information. He was a pretty bad guy, in general. But how did he get to such a position of power? Fear.

He spouted rhetoric to the Pureblood witches and wizards of the world that they were superior creatures. He provided this fictional Aryan Race with a scapegoat of their own – the Muggles, and well, anyone with a blood status less than Pureblood. He focused on how people were different, strategically ignoring (and actually not even knowing) the humanity common to all. Voldemort told the masses that these people were “others,” they were inferior, and they were most certainly worthy of hatred. Sound familiar? He also had his very own legion of loyal, militant puppets with weapons (okay, wands) ready to enforce his hatred.

Voldemort showed the Pureblood witches and wizards of the world how Half-Bloods, Muggleborns, Muggles, house elves, centaurs, and pretty much every other living creature on the planet contributed to the bane of their existence. He promised the Purebloods their lives would be better if only they could wipe out these inferior creatures – do his bidding for him – and those most loyal to him (who committed the most war crimes) felt the safest from his own dangerous power. In hurting others, they felt they were protecting themselves from becoming targets. In fact, he invoked so much fear, that people were actually afraid of even saying Voldemort's name. However, as our beloved Hermione Granger points out, "Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself."

Voldemort reduced the wizarding world to fighting against itself. He distracted great, intelligent witches and wizards from fighting the true evil – hatred, fear, and bigotry – by emphasizing differences among themselves and telling one group they were better than the rest. He robbed his scapegoats of their humanity, just as Hitler did with the Jews, and he taught the aggressors that they would finally have the power and respect they deserved, if only they could eradicate the world of its scourge of Muggles.

He did all of this by preying on the fear of Purebloods. He was able to convince one half of the population to murder the other by simply playing into the things that scared them most – losing their lives, their loved ones, their power, their reputation. Whatever the individual feared, Voldemort worked on a personal level to threaten, in order to rise to power. He did so by strategically disintegrating any remaining sense of community among witches and wizards. He made sure everyone felt alone and vulnerable, untrusting of those around them, and concerned only with protecting their own self interests. By fostering a toxic environment rife with uncertainty, fear, and hatred, Voldemort was able to manipulate full-grown adults into waging a war against themselves, against humanity.

Why is any of this relevant? Why am I sitting at my keyboard, passionately typing away in a blaze of fury about Hitler and Voldemort, drawing comparisons between the two and their fear tactics? I’ll tell you: Hitler and Voldemort were dictators, yes. They were also terrorists. They struck fear and hatred into the hearts and minds of millions. They both began wars with their respective worlds, born out of their own prejudices and bigotry. They manufactured fear in large groups of people, fear that did not exist before, and then they conveniently provided a solution to the problem they just created.

They told their audiences: “Look at how miserable you are! Aren’t you miserable? I know why. You are miserable because of this other group of people. They are different from you, and you are better than them. Your life is worth more than theirs. In fact, your life would be better if theirs ceased to exist. They are the cause of all of your problems. Hate them. Kill them. Follow me. I will help you in this cause, and together we will be happier without them.” They preyed on the fear of their audiences and brainwashed them into fighting an imaginary war which had real consequences.

This is what terrorists do. They terrorize. They create fear in others that never would have grown organically. They plant the seed of doubt in the minds of so many; and they water it occasionally, fertilizing it with hatred, bigotry, xenophobia, and transferring blame and responsibility to someone else. They tend to this garden regularly, and eventually, fear has grown to its full size. Then they harvest this fear they’ve created and nurtured from conception, and just like a vegetable, they use it to nourish themselves, to further their cause. Fear provides nutrients to terrorists. It is what they depend on to survive.

If you fear another group of people, who don’t look like you, speak like you, dress like you, or come from the same place as you, then you will likely turn to what is more familiar and comfortable to you. And what is easier and more comfortable for us than blaming someone else, who we already fear, for the problems we think we have?

Don’t let the terrorists win. They’ve already won too many battles before. Don’t let them create a feeling of fear inside of you that doesn’t need to exist. The best way to do this is by reaching out, facing that supposed fear. If you would only take a moment to recognize the humanity which resides in all of us, you would realize that people who are different from us are nothing to be feared. If you do not allow the terrorists to cultivate a shadow of doubt within you, then you will understand that we are all one common, human race; and that in hating our sisters and brothers, we are, in fact, hating ourselves.

The terrorists have planted the seed. They are encouraging it to grow. They’re counting on it for their harvest in order to survive. We can choose to believe their fear tactics and water the seed, or we can remain resilient in our faith in humanity, and resolve to be as hard to crack as the Kansas earth in the planting season.

There’s another scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which comes to mind. Upon realizing the seriousness of the impending war, Harry remarks, “Even though we've got a fight ahead of us, we've got one thing that Voldemort doesn't have… Something worth fighting for.” Harry knows that unity among all is the answer, and he knows that Voldemort literally cannot feel love. That is why he strives so hard to achieve power through hatred and evil. But Harry understands that the solution for winning a war against terrorists like Voldemort is not fighting against a cause or a group of people. It's not fighting among ourselves which will win. The answer is fighting for all the things and people you love, with all of the differences between you which make up a united, differentiated front. Fear of others never had a chance to blossom inside of Harry, because he was too busy nurturing love for all.

Turning our backs on those who need help and lumping entire groups of people together as scapegoats is not only morally irresponsible, but it is playing directly into the hands of the terrorists. Fear in the hearts of the masses is the best tool they have for succeeding, and they know it. They're bloodthirsty for it. Holding love in our hearts, in place of fear, is our best weapon against them.