Courier New

Shalom. Mir Bosnian. Salam. Ashtee....Peace.

It seems that in a world with so many feelings and so many opposing points of view, it is nearly impossible to unite together and bridge the gaps over misunderstanding between one another. This trend certainly isn't new to us, but its appearance throughout history is often-times staggering. When one looks at the deep social issues that have caused violence and genocide, there is no question that many have died at the hands of a race that simply needs more time and experience. Perhaps once there were the peaceful buffalo respected yet hunted by the Native American, who then met his relative end at the hands of the Spanish and later, the new colonies of Europeans. And then there was a time when a colored man couldn't look the white man in the eye nor a woman could speak against him. Or even a time when the Jew could not experience even the most fundamental of human rights, nor exercise the right to his own holy homeland.

Now look at today...a world still fertile with seemingly endless social issues. The homosexual in America still cannot exercise their right to lawful marriage. The woman in Iran still cannot show more than a few square inches of her body. The child in Uganda still cannot live a single day without the fear of being absorbed into a brutal war, the likes of which they don't and shouldn't be expected to understand.

The human race, though ripe with innovative ideas and endless ingenuity, still seems to lack one of the most fundamental characteristics of humanity; open-mindedness.

I’ve thought a lot about what my father consistently refers to as “the human experience” and I’ve learned quite a bit through considering it in many aspects. Human beings by nature learn and grow, building their own convictions and beliefs as they progress through their own timeline. Historically, disagreements on things as trivial as personal food preferences have led to malcontent between one another. Even so, when it comes to a phenomenon as large as religion, it seems that people tend to have more amplified reactions. The prospect of another person disputing one’s sacred beliefs seems to flip a switch in the human psyche that often-times causes one to resort to aggression and a defensive response. Even if one portrays an air of confidence and disconnection in these situations, they often-times still have these lingering feelings.

It’s these lingering feelings, these aggressive responses that create a wall between each other barring acceptance in all its forms. When someone “shuts off”, they lose that element of compassion that we all experience through our daily communication. It is this apathy and close-mindedness that poses the very real issue; what to do?

And here we are; what to do? It isn’t easy to get an entirely complicated, 7 billion-strong set of people to listen to each other. Nor is it easy to change someone’s mind or inspire them to think a different way. The answer is plain dedication…that and technology. Many people may have learned to tune the common and overdone “compassion speech” out by now, but a new medium is always much-appreciated by modern society. The human race is consistently upgrading as new technologies revolutionize the ways we communicate with each other. As it turns out, this power is being harnessed through common social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter and their stimulation of the forms of communication that modern society now shares.

New media can at times be distracting and faceless, but still provides the basis for ease of communication that many lacked before the oncoming of effective social networking. Many have started to bridge many of the social gaps that have plagued history, such as racism, apathy, and disorganized social reform. In a world where someone can more easily set up a Facebook group than they can a public protest, ideas are being spread more quickly and are working towards the betterment of society.

We are seeing compassion and idealism in all of its forms with updates and links to sites about foreign conflicts, as well as updates and events regarding new ideas, or even boundless topics on public opinion and idealism. New media and the spread of technology have vastly sped up the process of communication and increased the level of meaningful and depth-filled exchanges between one another. Where social issues used to take very long to combat, they are now being discussed and worked out at mass levels and despite the lack of face-to-face contact, they are finding more of a presence in modern-day society.

Soon enough, we will see complex social issues being overcome much more quickly and this notion of open-mindedness will be more prevalent. People will learn to listen to each other, and the rapid exchange of information will continue to revolutionize the ways through which we get our point across. Eventually, the spread of ideas will be rampant, and they will combine to contribute to even more unique solutions to social issues, bridging the gaps to open-mindedness.

This is a three-part narrative piece I wrote about suicide. It is composed of two narrative poems with a short narrative in-between. I hope you enjoy!

Remorse

  I wake up today

I sit and I pray

I walk and I gaze

At the love in the air.

  The weather is fair

I tie back my hair

I glaze and I stare

At everything around me.

  The sun and the breeze

The beach and the sea

Bring me to my knees

Still I keep walking.

  Stuck waiting for the bus

I won’t yell, I won’t cuss

No seats, still I won’t fuss

I adore this.

   School is a bore

Each class is a chore

I sleep and I snore

Dreaming of lunch.

  He texts me

I meet him

Chinese food

With the lights dimmed

He carries with him a gift.

  Some CDs

Some pictures

Of us

Just a mixture

I glance at my best friend.

  I ponder and ask him

He responds with a sigh

“Just cleaning my room.”

I believe him.

    The ring of the bell

The school day ends well

Now I’m home by myself

Thinking of the day

  The day when I’ll go

Far, far from my home

Side by side with him, no.

Now I wonder.

  Now I pace and I wonder

The day torn asunder

Outside I hear thunder

Is my friend okay?

  For the first time I wonder

Is his life torn asunder?

Soaked, I still brave the thunder

On the way to his house.

     I get there

And see her

His sister-blank

And I feel her

On my way up to His room.

  I’m done walking

Now I run

Then His mother

A look of stun

I arrive at the door to his room.

  There He is

On the floor.

The blood seeping

His dad on all fours

The blood seeps inside of me too.

  Think.

So perverse,

My hollow view

Next the hearse

Where is he? What have I done?

He is gone

Nothing more

He is dead

On the floor

The bullet burrowed through His head.

  I sit

And I fall

Back first

Into the wall

How could I be so blind?

  I glance at my best friend.

Regret

            Regret…a sense of loathing that wasn’t there before. No feeling is more true or absolute. No, I didn’t cause this. Trust me. I just…can’t stand this pain anymore. I let my best friend die. I just stared. That’s all I did. I could have saved him, but I just locked up. I lost control. I promise that’s all I did. I wish I could go back and change things, change myself, change my actions. If only I could express my feelings, and be a better person, a better friend. But that just isn’t an option. It isn’t.

            There we were sitting in Times Square, taking in the sights; living the dream. My dream. And out of nowhere, He rose from the darkness and reared his clandestine face. He pulled that 9mm, that instrument of death and despair from his inside breast pocket and struck down the innocent lives of a nearby family. A distant family. My friend stopped; he couldn’t take the pain, the evil, the apathy. The weakness. He tried to stop Him, but stories about evil men and guns never end well. I watched as that shiny bullet broke the air with such force; the world cowered in fear for the plight of good will. Pain consumed my friend. Despair filled him and drove him towards the very end. Regret struck my friend in the head and sent him towards the last fall he would never feel. Ever.

            I could have sacrificed myself instead. Or I could have at least been more aware. I could have. But I didn’t. I wasn’t. I refused. I let my adrenaline, my fear spill into the dark hole that appeared in my soul when He shot my best friend in the head, and spoiled the silence. His silence. He ruined the ignorant contentment. My ignorant contentment. And He destroyed all that was good and all that my friend and I had worked towards; all that we had shared. I could have stopped Him. I could have.

Resolve

  Here he is; his life is crumbling

Each day pushes him further

Every day his mind is fumbling

For that long-lost sense of fervor

  He used to sit beneath a tree

Reading his favorite book

He’d look up to the sky and think

Giving that fabled look;

  I will always be okay.

  He used to lie in wait for her

The girl he wants but doesn’t stir

For he regrets the life he lives

He tries to move but doesn’t give

  He used to feel himself back then

The ambition, it felt him too

Then over time it left him here

The skies no longer blue

  He makes his way to school today

He sees his friends; their cheerful “Hey”

He goes to class but doesn’t stay

He’s leaving for awhile

  He goes to lunch with his best friend

He’s brought him a few of his things

Not much more he could append

Except pictures and CD casings

  He hasn’t noticed he feels this way

It’s clear that he means well

But what to do to stop this pain?

He has to end himself

  He drudges home, pans up the stairs

The walk turns to a run

He hurries to his father’s closet

And searches for the gun

   He goes into his room once more

Contemplating the things he’s done

He puts the gun up to his head

            Here's a short narrative I wrote in English class--please enjoy and ask whatever questions you may have!

Lewis Krane, a genius in every sense of the word, carried with him, self-doubt. With a family of relatively accomplished intellectuals, the boy was bound for IB and for the self-promotional, capitalist world that awaited him at the end of the dark, twisted tunnel that he considered to be his life. Heading towards a sparkling diploma and a few shiny grants, his perfect future wasn’t so far off. Despite all else, it wasn’t just the enormously intimidating future that offset Krane’s sense of self-worth.

Lewis Krane carried intolerance. One large damper on Krane’s personality was his ineffectual loathing towards the superficial inadequacies of the world. When he wasn’t contemplating his school work, he would generally go on in his head about the endless multitude of things he couldn’t stand. He hated preps. He hated stoners. He hated his locker (usually when the dial got jammed). He hated his alarm. He hated late nights with long English papers. He hated beggars. He hated waffles and movie critics. He hated biting into the pickles on a McDonald’s hamburger. And he hated trends. Oh, and he also hated the last couple of crumbs in a Lays potato chips bag after you’ve gone all out and finished the entire thing in one sitting.

The one thing he loved was the notion of success. The near-blasphemous irony of his existence was the fact that he could want so much yet not believe in his ability to achieve it.

Lewis Krane carried shame. That and heavy text books. He carried sallow-eyed yearning. And a 1st-edition encyclopedia set. Weighed down by the self-destructive tumors of his personality, Lewis Krane sought anything that could cure him of his ailment. He generally found solace in his writing. He was picture perfect, but with a self-imposed darkness that loomed under the exterior and through his writing; he could vent all of the frustrations that he could never voice, for fear of ruining his image. Lewis Krane would write about all forms of human emotion (especially depression and inspiration) and manifest his hopes and dreams in those of his characters. His plots cleverly outlined days of his life, or trips he wished to take before he finished high school. His settings were extravagant and went far beyond his modest establishment in middle-America.

Lewis Krane carried discomfort. This discomfort wasn’t only with the massive encumbrance he carried in his backpack, but with himself in general. Krane saw himself as unattractive in the eyes of his peers and tended to doubt his ability to impress others. He dressed in slacks and converse and sweater vests and beanies, but although moderately nerdy-looking, his assumptions of his own appearance were in large part incorrect as his classmates hardly noticed any deviation from the population standard at the school. He also tended to overthink his interactions with others. He would carefully plot out every sentence and dwell in misery for hours if he said one thing out of turn.

Lewis Krane carried attention to detail. His meticulous behaviors were not unlike those of a psychotic mental patient and occupied most of his daily life. Krane took notes in an orderly fashion with headings starting 3.5 inches from the left-top of his paper and the added margin line starting at 2.5 inches from the left. He would bullet main points and only sub-categorize something if it had 2 or more general ideas connecting to the respective main point. Krane also categorized his homework and kept every one of his possessions in perfect order. This care he put into the simpler aspects of his life, though time-consuming, generally made it easier for him to keep track of his actions and his priorities. These behaviors, however neurotic, certainly had their positives. Krane’s attention to detail caused him to look at the world in a much greater depth than many of the people around him. He stopped to pick up trash, and gaze lovingly at the life around him. He observed his place in his biosphere. He poured a good amount of his time and energy into improving his surroundings and making a simple thing spectacular. These feelings of placement in his world gave him hope and steadily improved his views on the world at large.

Lewis Krane carried happiness. Despite Krane’s insane daily schedule, the massive amount of pressure he put on himself and the tragedy of having to work with those less fond of success than him, Krane had a significant place in the grand scheme of things. He started to see how every minute of work he put in would eventually come back out and bring him higher than the rest. He started to appreciate every detail in his surroundings and exploit the talents he portrayed so elegantly. Krane found connections with his peers, with his world and with himself. He bridged the gap that self-loathing had carved. He started to pour compassion into his activities and idolized the value of individuality.

LMS statuses.

Tag posts like the “If you were pregnant” chain post.

When people don’t proofread their statuses before posting them.

When people forget the “r” on “your”.

When people post annoying, dramatic statuses.

“Why, what’s up?” posts…

Posts about Tim Tebow.

Hash tags….THEY DON’T WORK ON FACEBOOK.

When people post pictures of their iPhone screen.

When people post those “like if you don’t want me to delete you” statuses.

Gooey lovebird posts between couples.

Comment fights between couples.

Comment fights in general (I’m guilty of this one, but it’s still annoying).

Esoteric, attention-seeking posts.

Dudes posting half-nude pictures of themselves.

“Bro-tips”, which were, in all actuality, probably written by a 15-year-old girl.

When I see five posts from the same person within two scrolls.

When people quote other people (or songs) in excess.

When people start a chat with me but only use one word like “hi” or “yo”.

When people use abbreviations for EVERYTHING.

When a person posts a heart and gets 20 likes.

When people type two of the last letter for every word: “Everythingg izz great, texx mee :P)".

When people use way too many smiley faces.

When people post facts about themselves.