Existing is for everyone. Existing is as staple; everyone alive exists. Existing is like the stem on a rose; sturdy, strong, always there. Living is not. Living is the delicate rose petal than slowly flits to the ground at the slightest touch. But, like the rose, living is the most beautiful. Living is taking a moment in time and putting a golden picture frame on it in your mind. Living is creating mountains of art, science, math, whatever you love, because living is loving. Living is loving and hating and crying and clenching and unclenching your fists, living is wanting and wishing and hoping. Most importantly, living is doing something with your life. It is not sitting on your mother’s couch at the age of thirty, watching day time television and eating sticky potato ships out of the bag; that’s existing and just barely. If I had to define existing, I would merely say “the act of breathing in oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide to keep your brain from shutting down.” But in the dictionary written on the tips of my fingers, living is “cutting up and gluing together different fragments of this shattered world to make them spell out your deepest thoughts and most dire desires.” Living is stopping to smell the roses, existing is never even noticing them.

Sorry I forgot to introduce myself in the article so Im just gonna do it here. I'm a 13 year old Venezuelan living a currently boring life. I have personally awarded myself with the titles of procrastination master, with a phd in the arts of anti-socialism and a recognition for being a fro-yo and sprinkles and cake and sushi maniac. I have never really thought of becoming a writer whatsoever, but I couldn't resist the need of writing that article about existing. I believe that I find pleasure in writing about deep and random and cool topics and would just absolutely love to be in this mag! I hope you consider me and let me write more articles for you! From a radical kiddo named Paula.

With love, Shelly ♥

Wow existing. Existing. Existing. I am one of those people who just think about words that way, repeating them over and over; taking long pauses in between to really think about them. When I read the task and it said to write about the word “existing”, it appeared to me it was absolutely ludicrous, because I had never really thought about the meaning of this word before- hence my poor interest in it. So then I started thinking. The world has been around for a while, so it has existed for a while. Science has been present for a long time too, so it has existed for a long time too and so on. These are things, which mean something, which humanity cares about. They exist. But when we think about people- humans existing, the meaning of the word is completely different. Existence is a synonym for being, for presence, for life. Knowing this, I quickly proceeded to think about my existence. So, do I actually exist? I mean, am I being someone, something? Am I present? Am I actually alive? And I don’t mean any of these in the sense of physically being there, present, alive; I mean being there in spirit. I say in spirit because physically everything is worthless and I mean everything. However in spirit everything has a value, everything just exists. Money perhaps, is this one thing made out of paper; but it isn’t until people start making it have a value that society cares about it. So the word “money” or the words “100 dollars” are nothing until they have a meaning. If someone comes to you with some funny coloured paper printed with some funny old man on it, are you actually going to give a damn about it? No. Not until you discover that paper’s worth 100 dollars. Same happens with people, because you have to start being a hollow set of bones and muscles and organs, which has no value, which is just there physically to then start existing, to then start having a meaning. So it finally got to me that not everyone actually exists, because it is up to us to start becoming something and to start having a meaning. It is up to us to decide who we are and what we live for and what the reason for us being here is- because no one will ever be able to answer us that. Some people live their lives unknown by society and unknown by their own selves- so they don’t exist really. They are just there but don’t have a meaning; they are hollow. Some others are unknown to the world but inside them, there hides an identity and a reason, and that means they exist. 

Hi I'm Isabel and I'd like to be considered for the lolitas/tyro mag.  I'm 15 (but I turn 16 in January) and I'm from the US.  I love cats, elephants, soccer, track, and writing.  I love to write poetry, but I write all sorts of stuff too.  I'm obsessed with tv shows, especially the vampires diaries at the moment. (teen wolf is my life, though)  My favorite color is blue and my lucky number is 13.  I love my friends more than anything in the world, but my family's pretty awesome too.  I'd love to be a part of this magazine because i've never been in an online mag and they seem super super cool.  I love writing, and your mag sounds really nice (i love both titles.  originally i thought i was totally team lolitas but now tyro is really growing on me too).  you're super awesome and it just seems like a fun thing to do.  thanks for considering me, hope you have a nice day! :)

Existence is a funny word.  Do I exist? Do you exist? Is living the same thing as existing? People don’t really like to think about what is means to exist.  I know I don’t.  Whenever I start thinking about my existence, I start thinking about how little I’ve done with it.  I’m almost 16, and what have I really done?  I’ve learned to read, to write, I’ve gone to school and done all my homework.  Sure, I’ve had great times, made some friends, laughed a lot.  But if I disappeared of the face of the planet, the likelihood that it would matter is zero.  While my friends and family would miss me, and the kids at my school would post lovely facebook statuses about me, my absence would not really matter.  And that scares me.  As human beings, what we all really want is to matter.  But in the end, it’s hard to feel like we do.  There are so many of us, it’s easy to get lost in the mix.  And in order to matter, we have to be important, but to what?  What is our purpose?  What is society’s purpose?  Since a young age, we’ve been told to go to school, to learn, to get into college so we may get a job and support a family.  But then that family does the same thing, and the cycle keeps on going.  But what purpose did that serve in the end?  As I think more and more on my life, my existence, and the world, it becomes more and more obvious that nothing I do matters, because nothing in the world matters.  What is the importance of it all?  As of now, there is no identifiable purpose for human life.  I don’t know if that scares you, but it sure scares me.  How am I supposed to do anything, ever, if there’s no purpose for my existence?  But then I realized that I can do anything.  If nothing matters, there’s nothing holding me back from doing whatever makes me happy.  I can sit around and wonder about the insignificance of everything, or I can spend my silly life on myself.  There are a million possible reasons I could be alive, and the beauty of not knowing the real one means that I get to choose.  I’ve chosen a simple existence, a simple life.  My purpose is to be as happy as possible.  What’s your purpose?