Friday, October 1, 2010

Manifest Destiny & Confessions Of A Teenage Mind: Week 6!

Yet another week is over, and I am still finding myself having to lift myself up from my inner struggles that don't seem to go away no matter how many times I tell myself, "be optimistic-be optimistic-be optimistic-it's not over-be optimistic".  I know that I have enough strength to achieve all that I want to do, but the constant reminder of my struggles prevents me from focussing on the important things and how I can better myself.  I am not the most optimistic person as many of you may think, but really, I am a bit negative and I only cover that by trying my hardest to think positive; I mean, I am positive in some ways, but in others I am not because you can not see the future, you don't know what it holds for you, and since that is the case, I always find myself thinking about that constantly hoping that I will live a nice long life, hoping that I will fufill my destiny, hoping that I will do everything that I was sent here to do before I die, while also hoping that I will be able to cope without the people I love being there with my pyhsically.  So, yeah, I think about this a lot and  I try to come up with a plan, and I just hate changing that plan because I get the impression that I will have to completely start over.  Like when I had my heart set on going to Clark Atlanta and then I realized that school is just horrible, and then learning that I might not be able to go to school in Atlanta period threw me off as well.  I guess you could say that my outlook on life is based on this plan that I have for myself, this plan that may seem impossible, but a plan that is possible; that is something that I want to stress to everyONE: ALL things are POSSIBLE and there is nothing holding you back but yourselves, and it is worth it to strive as high as you can because life is rough and just aiming low just because you think it is the easy way is not going to help.  Hard work and optimism take you a long way, as it will take me: the future CNN corrospondent/Journalist-Essence Magazine reporter-Magazine owner-School founder-and crusador for civil rights.
I know that we ourselves are our worst critics and I sometimes find myself criticizing me for the fact that I am NOT you average teenager girl.  I don't walk around school with a comb in my purse and I don't spend 10 minutes in the bathroom between every class to check myself in the mirror, I don't sit around in class and talk about boys and that party that I went to on Saturday, I don't come home and run to the computer to check my Facebook, I don't get a million text messages or phone calls a day from all 100,000 of my closest friends, I don't cling onto a cute boy's arm in the hallway to whisper to him my plan on how to get him into the house when my father leaves home, and I don't have sex.  It's not that I want to be any of these things, but I wonder why I'm not; I know it has a lot to do with parenting, and environment blah blah blah, but a lot of this stuff is what a teen instinctively does, and since I don't do any of this, I guess I'm abnormal; I guess this is why I haven't had a boyfriend in 2 years, I guess this is why no boy has been brave enough to show interest in me-and I'm not counting Donkey! , I guess this is why I only have 5 friends in my cellphone,  and I guess this why the only time my cellphone rings it's my mom or my grandma.  Even when I get a text message it's just some random guy trying to sell me some car insurance.  Sometimes I actually envy those girls who 's phone is constantly ringing, even though it can get really annoying, because I wish I could just feel as if a friend thought about me.  The good side to all of this is that because I have just an exclusive group of friends, I don't have to worry about drama, and that is the only reason why most of the time I don't care.  I just have this "old soul" and am constantly wishing that I lived back in the 50's where I could of really made a difference in my community, and even met Martin.  I actually prefer the music from back then over the music I here now, and I'm not up to date with a lot of the stuff that my classmates are listening to because I'm stuck back in the '50s, maybe even the '20s, and sometimes the 1800s!
But too often do I ask Martin, "when is morning coming?!"  Then I ask God, "when will the sun shine on me?" God and Martin just tell me that, "it's coming", but they never tell me when.  I just want to know when!  But at times I can see signs that good luck might be coming my way, and other times I can just feel it.  So it's always a question I have on my mind constantly as I continue my existence.

It feels so GOOD to get this off my chest!

Lastly, I want to discuss "MANIFEST DESTINY".  I got the word from my Hill Harper book "Letters To A Young Sister: DeFINE Your Destiny", and his definition was that it was your purpose in life, your destiny basically.  So I began using the word in some of my papers, and one of my teachers had took offense to the word.  Now we go into another meaning of the word.  Manifest Destiny is also used to describe a time in history when Americans were expanding westward, and they notoriously took Native American reservations for their own selfish gain, while also killing many innocent Native Americans, and the first person to use this word in print was John L O'Sullivan, a New York journalist, who called for expansion and Thomas Jefferson died 13 years prior to the "Manifest Destiny" time period.  My teacher is Native American, and this particular example of the word is so imprinted in her history that I can understand her concerns, and I respect them and I firmly believe that there is no way that a bad word can ever be made good, which is why I'm COMPLETELY against the "N-word", but I was not implying to the political/historical context of the word, I was implying the purposeful meaning, the meaning that will inspire and has inspired me to be a better person.  I know she knew I didn't mean it in the other way, but I just wanted to clear this up and I want to note that a teacher should remain neutral on this, but I hope we can discuss some other political and social issues sometime in the future.

Love,
            Blackness

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