By the standards of the justice and education system, I am an absolute failure. And yet I’m sure if you were to ask any of my peers or family- really anyone who knows me on a personal level at all- they would tell you that I am bright, compassionate, and full of so much wonder and potential. I don’t think I’m being boastful at all in saying that. I’ve worked extremely hard to face my faults and accept them, and it’s made me a much better person overall.
It’s difficult when the institutions most people govern (no pun intended really) their lives by classify you as less than satisfactory, but really, what bearing does that actually have on your life? Granted, I don’t want to go to prison, so I try to stay relatively within the confines of the law, but a few unsavory blemishes on my record shouldn’t define who I am.
A poor grade point average doesn’t actually measure my intelligence. I know I’m smart. It’s time to stop belittling myself and realize that I do learn things easier and I retain information really well- I’m just horrible at staying within the confines of what my professors expectations.
Whenever I lose sight of what’s important to me in life, I try to picture myself at 75 looking back on everything I’ve done in my time on earth, and I realize that I don’t care about how I did in my Introduction to Surrealism class sophomore year of college, what matters is that I feel personally fulfilled and I have taken in maybe just 1/1000th of the beauty the world has to offer me.
I used to look at the world and see only evil. Now I realize that I’ve seen very little of the world, and there is infinite beauty in people- if we would only take the time to look deeper and see it.
Posted 1 month ago with Notes