World without you

“which one of these… is… the lipstick…”

But then your best friend says it’s the one where the two of you are looking at a flower, the one you hate because your arms look bad and your chin is one with your neck. And your sister likes the one of you in the car, asleep with your mouth open, with greasy hair. Your mom likes “all of them, sweetie” but she particularly likes any you smile in.

It’s strange because what we want to show the world - perfection, beauty, effortless picturesque moments - they’re not what our loved ones look for.

They like what they see because it’s usually the real you, the one they love, the ugly unkempt unposed one. They love that you get so excited about nature and that you fall asleep on every car trip. They love your joy, and the way real smiles look, the silly moments and unflattering angles and all of it.

For a long time this plagued me. I can’t fucking take a good picture of myself.

But the other day I was looking through photos of my friends; thinking about what I liked and they didn’t. I liked the one where, yeah, she wasn’t quite twisted to the camera - but there was this glint in her eye I’m so familiar with. The one where he’s blurry in the snow but his smile is obvious anyhow. The one where she’s dancing in her bathing suit, full of abandon. The ones where it’s the memory that matters; candids under out of focus fireworks, overexposed kisses, left-the-flash-on at the top of a mountain.

I mean, I don’t think I’ll ever love my friends less just because they post an ugly picture. They could post a million of them and I’d still be down to hang in the morning. The idea that I’ll somehow become disgusted with them just for an ugly selfie is silly, selfish. Shallow. And not gonna happen.

I used to be a varsity swimmer, and I was damn good, but I was forced into it by my parents and completely lost my love for it and therein my drive. But in high school I was swimming against such talented swimmers like Olympic Swimmer Missy Franklin. I’ve met her, and the main difference between her and me was that I was strong but had no passion, but she was strong BECAUSE she had passion. 

And I could have been good, really good, maybe even Olympic good. I even have the predisposition for it, been swimming since I was 2 years old, have a mom who was almost an olympic swimmer. Missy didn’t have either of those things, she just wanted it, loved it, had been doing it for a long time, and decided she was going to kick ass at it.

Right, that’s great and all, but I completely missed my opportunity to be an olympic swimmer, yeah? and can never achieve those dreams I had as a kid? No, not even though. There was this whole thought that female athletes peak when they’re 17 years old and lose their skills quickly after that, and male athletes peak around 19. But then Olympic Swimmer Dara Torres shows up. She was an olympic swimmer when she was 17, 21 and 25. Pretty normal age for retirement. She had a few kids. She kicked butt at being a mom. 

And then at 33 years old she decides she’s bored or something gets back in shape and kicks so much ass at the trials that she lands herself on the Olympic Team ONCE AGAIN. And then 8 years later, she decides, heck I’m 41 now, no one has ever made the olympic swim team as old as I am, I want to get in shape yet again and teach these children how sports work.

And she still has the record for oldest US Olympic Swimmer, not even any men have beat out that record.

So basically what I’m saying is you could be an olympic swimmer, you really could be. And there are obviously a lot of things stopping you and trying to get in your way: your brain, society, too much chocolate cake for example. But if you really dedicate yourself to it and love it with all of your heart you could, you really could.

And lets say olympic swimming isn’t your jam? That’s cool too. There isn’t a single skill in this world that you can’t learn if you absolutely love it and want to. Any skill you want is going to take time. There are countless famous people who started learning a skill after 20, 30, 40, or even 50. Not a single person has even been president under age 35 (most likely because you’re not allowed to be, but there’s a reason for that). Whatever you want to do you’re probably going to be bad at first, and I’m talking really shitty.

Van Gogh got started in his 20′s and was thought to have no artistic talent at first and was forced to sit in the back of classrooms where the worst artists in the class sat. So yeah you’ll probably be bad, like really bad and everyone including you will think you’re bad. If you stick with it though, if you’re willing to work for years and years, if you keep loving it after all the pain it’s given you, 

then you might just paint Starry Night.