A Subjective Candour

40,000 years ago, early humans painted hands on the wall of a cave. This morning, my baby cousin began finger painting. All of recorded history happened between these two paintings of human hands. The Nazca Lines and the Mona Lisa. The first TransAtlantic flight and the first voyage to the Moon. Humanity invented the wheel, the telescope, and the nuclear bomb. We eradicated wild poliovirus types 2 and 3. We discovered radio waves, dinosaurs, and the laws of thermodynamics. Freedom Riders crossed the South. Hippies burned their draft cards. Countless genocides, scientific advancements, migrations, and rebellions. More than a hundred billion humans lived and died between these two paintings—one on a sheet of paper, and one on the inside of a cave. At the dawn of time, ancient humans stretched out their hands. And this morning, a child reached back. 

you’ve heard of a deadbeat dad... you’ve heard of a deadbeat boyfriend... now introducing... the world’s FIRST deadbeat daughter ❕

the obsession with aesthetic-izing everything is a disease that companies have sold us via influencers. it's all about turning your private space into a perfect backdrop for videos and photos, everything has to be a soundstage to market a product. making you view your own private space like a voyeur, already imagining the comments people might leave if your home isn't what they deem ideal. your fridge does not need to be aesthetically pleasing, you don't need to empty out spices from plastic packaging into a glass jar of the exact same size of the original packaging. not everything has to be pinterest goals. there is so little time, just live life.

you are not the soil from which you sprang, nor the rain that fed your roots. you are not the feet that pushed you down nor the sun that drew you up. you are not your seed– you are something new, shining in each branch and furling leaf, and you are still growing.

being in your early 20s is crazy bc there’s people who are literally married and people who’ve never even dated and people who are trapped in their childhood bedrooms waiting to get out and people who are trying to live out romanticized dream lives and people who are completely on their own and people with multi tiered support systems and we’re all supposedly peers and none of us think we’re doing it right at all