Category: Thoughts

My thoughts on various issues.

Dream in color

Published on by maksu2013Leave a comment

Dream in Color. Begin

On the 16th of March last year, I had a showing of the first play I ever wrote. It really all began the summer of 2012, I was attempting to read a book and then my mind began to wander. My first play really had nothing to do with that initial idea, it was really just me putting everybody else’s thoughts into words. I was still grateful for the experience nonetheless because it showed me that I could do it if I wanted to. In some way I feel it also showed where I was in my life at the time, I was more concerned about what other people wanted me to do than what I wanted for myself.

By the summer of 2013, I was at it again. This time I was going to write from my heart. It took a lot of poking and prodding from my family to get me to expand my vision but it was well worth it. By January this year, I had written something I was truly proud of. The play is centered around the theme of domestic violence. While I may have no personal experience of domestic violence, it hurts me to think that there are several people dealing with this everyday. I say “people” because while many women suffer physical abuse in the hands of men, there are also men who are abused by their partners. For some reason, I felt that I needed to tell this story; which is by no means a perfect representation but  felt that it captured a key piece in the problem of abuse: the disconnect between expectations and reality.

It became clear to me after reading several accounts from women who had lived through abusive relationships that they had held on to the image of who they thought they were with but the fact was, that man had changed. Often times, we continue to hope and trust that someone is just going through a “rough patch”. This expectation that he or she would once again become the person you thought they were at the beginning only leads to more hurt. Maybe that’s why many women remain. They don’t want to give up on somebody they care about so they stay to “help”, so that possibly at some point things would be as they were before. In not letting go, they become the woman that they pitied and despised. The one who didn’t recognize her worth and the one who was too blind to see how awful her abuser was.

I wrote this play with the hope of possibly touching somebody. Perhaps if I put a mirror up to their lives they might try to get help. Abuse is more than just the moment someone physically assaults you, it is the hurtful words, the disrespect, the lack of regard for your opinions or emotions. While some people are really just in a bad place in their lives and will rise above it, you need to know when to back away and be supportive from a distance.

Think Responsibly

Published on by maksu20134 Comments

Think Responsibility

Its the start of yet another semester, with its tests, papers and readings. At the risk of sounding cliche, I will say that I still remember my first year. I came into university with a strategy; read and regurgitate. Unfortunately university required a teeny bit more than that, it required me to understand and apply. This realization was fine of course until I took classes that I thought should require me to not just apply but create and then school and I reached an impasse. Don’t get me wrong I was very impressed with the new way I was learning. Never in my learning career had I been pushed to truly understand the subject matter in the way that I was being pushed and it felt amazing! (Yes I’m a nerd..deal). I guess that feeling made me greedy. Its like this, if all I ever knew was vanilla ice cream, I was fine with that but now that I’ve tried cookies and cream, its kind of made me wonder what the other possibilities are.

What framed this for me was a conversation I had with a few people not too long ago. the general consensus was that essays were a trap. You’re asked to say what you think “and as long as you defend it properly there’s no right or wrong answer”. The  truth however is that there is a right answer which is what was taught in class, then there’s the objection to the right answer which is a bit of a wild card cause your answers still have to line up to what the professor thinks the objection should be. The wrong answer in an essay is any opinion that veers too far off from the professors ideas, and while your thought process may not be wrong, it doesn’t conform so boo-hoo boo boo, you get a C for effort.

I’m not saying that this happens all the time but sometimes it feels like you have to give up expressing what you really think for an A (not that your A is guaranteed  anyhow); but you know what really grinds my gears? Its the classes that are supposed to be “liberal”. The ones that focus on social justice. They are great if you want to learn about the social issues that plague us everyday but the minute you try to talk about solutions, somebody throws you the vaguest possible term “activism”. Then you try to lift the veil on what activism really means because its all well and good to know the problem but where do we go from here? But you find nothing concrete, and when you even try to suggest that we need to think of new ways to implement social justice, they grunt and carry on. Nothing changes, we keep flying the pretentious flag.

You see the problem is that we need to evolve. University should be about much more than regurgitating and reapplying concepts the same way Marx, Kant or Foucault did, not that we should discard their works of course. University should be about creating; new ideas, new theories. Maybe some other person feels completely different but I require more from my classroom. If university intends to work me to the bone, I need more than grades, I need value.

The most wonderful day of the year

Published on by maksu20131 Comment

Besides my birthday..that’s usually a pretty good day.

Christmas always makes me super cheery. There are the days and the hours before everybody arrives where we prep and I start bonding with what is likely to be my Christmas day lunch. Then the day is finally upon us and the house is filled with smells of all things fried and beautiful :). Yea I really love Christmas mornings.

Of course when the family arrives there would be a ton of chasing little children around, or should I say waddling after little children cause you’ve eaten yourself silly. and all the laughs (sigh…good times)

Then of course there’s the end of the night with all the cleaning up and goofing around

But at the end of the day when you have time to reflect, the point of all this is to celebrate the great joy that Christ brings

Begin-family

Random Rant: Grateful, Hopeful, Blessed.

Published on by maksu20131 Comment

happy-stick-figure

Hey hey!

I honestly can’t believe it’s October already. I just looked at my planner and saw a bunch of tests lined up and was like “whaaa?!” when did that happen??

Anyhow, I just wanted to come on here and talk a little bit about gratitude. I was talking to a friend the other day and he was feeling kind of down and overwhelmed with all the responsibilities that he had. After having a pretty extensive conversation about what was wrong with his life, I asked him to tell me 15 things he was grateful for. To be honest its usually a lot harder for us to think about the good things that we have going for us because we have been socialized to discuss the bad.

When I speak to some people, I almost feel like they take more pride in their pain than in their success. It’s almost noble to constantly acknowledge what’s not going right for you. I think we would be generally happier people if we remind ourselves constantly of all the things that are going well for us. My mom has a “praise book” where she writes down daily miracles, or you could just make a mental list of what you’re thankful for. I just know for a fact that when I think of just how blessed I am, sometimes it seems almost silly to be miserable over certain things.

This doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be those days when you just want to pout, but if you spend everyday sulking and pouting about how unfair life is, you WILL miss out on a ton of happiness. One thing that always inspires me is this ;”the fact that you’re alive means you still have something the world needs”. That in itself (the gift of life) is something so special that we can be thankful for everyday.