Category Archives: Issue 22

Two on Song of Myself: Discerning the Meaning of Meaningless Poems and Unentwining the Deadness from Being Alive

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Alice Minium

Whitman probably would not have considered himself a teacher, let alone the guru of words and wisdom that the modern world has made him out to be.

In his own time, Whitman was, by all accounts, the simplest of men. He was not stuffy or pretentious, as we are when we sit in our classrooms debating the intellectual finer points of whether or not Whitman might have been gay.

He probably would have laughed had he known entire classrooms of students would spend hours dissecting the meaning of his punctuation and his reasons for ending a line. “Who was the 29th bather?!” we ask wretchedly, clawing at our eyes and throwing our hands to the sky in exasperation.

The funny thing is that Whitman probably didn’t even know.

Poetry is transmutation, an incarnation of abstraction into the tangible plane of mind and linear ideas, and poetry by its nature does not bend to our linear laws, nor is it defined by them. The laws serve poetry in conveying its purpose, and the way they fall and are constructed so delicately infers to us, like fingerprints, traces of the soul of the poem, but they are not in essence the poem itself- only fragments. A poem is not its words, symbols, punctuation breaks, or any other syntactical components. A poem is an energy above, within, and without all of that.

The poem is what you hear between the lines, that which can only be implied in words — that which speaks directly to the soul, like sacred wind chimes, an ancient siren cry of summoning to our inner self that knows more than world, “Wake up.” That is the part of us that receives poetry, if we are receiving it properly.

 Much like music, which is not simply heard, it is utterly felt and inspires raw physiological and spiritual reactions within us, and draws out emotion endlessly like water from a well. Have you ever heard a song from your childhood, and tried not to feel anything as you listen? It is impossible.

Though we live mostly in mind (thanks to modern life) and to a small extent within the body, most of who and what we are is completely and utterly Soul.

Soul masters all of that, and mind can say, “Feel nothing,” but the Soul will not obey, as it cannot be extracted from its other manifestations. Soul is inherent in all things, the thread which flows within and between all entities, and we cannot escape it, for we are Soul. All of the universe is Soul.

It is to our Souls that Whitman speaks most directly and profoundly. It is our Souls upon which he impresses an indentation of exotic and primal laughter, and it is our Souls to whom Whitman sings. He flirts with our souls, mesmerizes our souls, challenges our souls, calls our souls into our bodies with his words like fast magnets zapping consciousness into our molecules and presence into our nucleotides and irrefutable magic into our moments. It is the Soul within us we find so entranced by the words of Whitman.

Whitman would not have called himself a teacher, for he laughed at the Men of Mind peddling words and playing Jenga with interlocking thoughts and dreams and transmutations endlessly, day after day, forever entranced with analysis and forgetting to live. Whitman would have said that it is better to play in the grass than to read a hundred books, or better to sing a song of joy than to study for hours and master the algorithms of matter and math.

He had this very Christ-like notion of drinking from the raw tap of human experience, a very Taoist ideal of this very moment and all that it contains being the infinite sum total of all things.

Such a mentality is the “Stop” at the end of the telegram; such fullness needs no motion. Yet through motion, and the interplay of opposites, smoke curls, flowers bloom … and the universe comes to know itself.

Every expression, every action, every entity, every tangible and intangible thing are simply the universe laughing, playing with herself, stretching her arms out, writing a poem in a thousand different languages and via a thousand different mediums.

Such is the myriad dimension and delirium of the canvas of life. Its nature cannot be known in mute, fixed laws. It is not mechanistic, dead, or inert. It cannot be known by grammatical structure or the arrangement of words within poetry.

It cannot be dissected by taking apart all the components of a radio, hoping to find music, or disentangling from the thoracic cavity all the organs of the body, hoping to find life. You will find only machines and matter there.

Life cannot be mapped, cannot be defined, cannot be extracted, cannot be indirectly known. You must know it yourself. You must meet it for yourself. You must hear it yourself, drink from its well yourself, and play with it yourself. Life cannot be taught, you must touch it yourself.

It is not earned, or learned, or acquired, and Whitman would have laughed at any who claimed him as teacher of elite sacred spiritual arts. Whitman’s spiritual truth was knowable to every human, and to every nonhuman despite their category, already.

Whitman’s spiritual truth was Being Alive. Whitman was, above all, truly the teacher of that. We can eviscerate and analyze his poetry for years yearning to tap the meaning from its component parts, but that is not where his teaching lies, and that is not how we will know it.

“Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?/ Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems” (section 2: line 18-19).

We have felt so proud of our meanings, but the joke is that there’s nothing to discover or extract from them that we don’t already have — there is nothing we can ever find whose origin is not the same as our very own.

“Stop with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems.” Stop with me, and feel for yourself. Breathe for yourself. Touch for yourself. Drink for yourself. Taste it yourself.

Do you feel that? That is meaning. Do you hear that? That is the poem. And of that, above all, we can be our only teacher.

Two on Song of Myself: Stop Working and Look at a Flower

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Alice Minium

I. Machines.

I do not envy the modern lifestyle. Working a repetitive, soul-sucking job where humans are required to behave like machines makes me feel dead inside. As Whitman alludes to many times, there is no insignificant job, and in any job I can use my imagination and share goodwill with all the world.

However, modern society will absolutely make you feel like a machine, if you let it. If you inside your little box-house long enough, staring at your picture-box, and eating things out of boxes, and arranging all your ideas into boxes inside boxes into boxes. You will forget that things without boxes can exist. Humans were not made to live life out of boxes, and boxes are not our natural state. It chokes you, for a reason. You feel constrained, for a reason. You feel tired, for a reason. You forget that you can unplug the box any time.

At least, I forget.

I forget, sometimes, that I am not a machine. Everything I do and say is so task-like, preprogrammed, and empty. I have to entirely unplug myself from social convention to, as Whitman says in Section 5, line 3, “loose the stop from [my] throat.” How dangerous is such an act. How deviant it is to wildly abandon the groupthink, without hesitation or apology. Every day I find myself straddling the juxtaposition of these two opposing principles, awkwardly balancing a medium between the two, so I can be free and yet stereotypically functional within the world. Deep within, or really not so deep at all, I yearn to be wildly free. Yet one cannot be wildly free and still be nondescript about it. How dangerous it is to unplug oneself entirely. How fundamentally disruptive to modern society.

Whitman’s teachings are fundamentally disruptive to modern society.

The modern way does not “ask the sky to come down to my good will,/Scattering it freely forever” (14:18-19) nor “tenderly…use…curling grass” (10:12). To embrace the sky is absurd. Society regards the sky as an inert ceiling, not a door. The curling grass exists for lawns and is meant to be mowed, of course.

Not according to Whitman. In a highly controversial move, Whitman tells us in Section 5, line 3, “Loafe with me on the grass.” To loafe means to just kind of hang out without any objective at all. When was the last time someone told you to just go hang out aimlessly? We are more familiar with the scolding, “Work harder,” than with someone telling us to do the complete opposite of work. Work less, says Whitman.

The feeling of Song of Myself is songlike, and slow. It is rhythmic and unhurried, like a long summer’s day spent loafing in the grass, celebrating your own existence for exactly no reason at all.

In the modern world, we are discouraged from doing anything for no reason at all. Everything must be productive in some way. Everything must be busy, and fast. All of my life is fast. Even my mind is fast. Even when the noise and stimuli stop, still my mind is chattering away like a sick seizing ape bouncing neurons around, deluded with the importance of objects, drunk on the toxicity of Normal and Daytime. Better to be an animal, as Whitman frames so beautifully in Section 32, lines 3-6:

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied with the mania of owning things.

We are erratic, thirsty, yet perpetually dehydrated beasts gone absolutely mad with the mania of owning things. Whitman makes an astounding proposition in Section 2, when he beautifully satirizes the fallibility of his own medium, poetry, which is revered and consumed by so many, who fuss over its mysteries, hoping to extract from it “the origin of all poems.” In line 20, he invites us, “Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems.”

In other words, how do you get where you are going? Stop.

II. Stop.

Can you imagine the implications if we were all to suddenly, stop? If we put down our books, abandoned our work, and decided to wildly, recklessly play? How ever could society function if we all just looked at flowers? How on earth could we ever produce a commodifiable good?!

Perhaps, instead, a better question, is why is the production of commodifiable goods the ultimate goal of society? Is that really the best we can do? Is productivity and efficiency and material output really the prime potential of the oh-so-great and sentient homo sapiens?

Do we not call ourselves “enlightened?” Do we not call the era of rapid philosophical development the Enlightenment, out of which, we are taught, sprang the modern material era in which we now live? And if that is so, and modern man is, unlike his planetary cohabitants, enlightened in his world of materialism, then I ask you, where is that light?

I do not see it.

I see a world that is hungry and sick in its soul. I see a world of consumers and producers. I see a world of souls hammered into commodifiable goods and dissected to extract their most profitable components.

I see minds like televisions that have been on mute for years, and don’t even remember they are capable of song, so they purchase a laugh track for $9.99 to distract them from the SILENCE that is ABSENCE that we have not heard in so long that we are terrified. We hear the sound of our own breath, and ask in horror WHAT IS THAT MONSTER. We hear the music of the mind and it is alien. It is raw and real, alien and un-plastic, the same electric ahhh that hums through all of nature, innervating every membrane of dimension into sensation and form, and we cringe at it, because we do not know it.

We cringe at it because, like an animal kept in a cage its whole life, we neither understand nor desire to know the world beyond the cage. We are penitent, pitiful pets of some sadistic extradimensional creatures who feed on fear and hatred and by god we keep them well-fed. How disgusted we are by anything that lives outside the cage. How fearful we are of those beasts. How wild they are. How uncontained. How unenlightened. How vibrantly and violently the electricity of Being Alive pulses through them like electric shock even to the blazing profusion of a growl or a shriek? How uncivilized their UTTER ALIVENESS.

Look into the eyes of your cashier clerk or picture of success and tell me we are not dead.

Do you regularly, as in Section 1, line 1, “celebrate [your]self”? How often do you do that every day? Do you, as in Section 1, line 4, “loafe and invite [your] soul”? Have you invited your soul to be in attendance today? Would you even know its address?

Look into your own soul, and tell me, do you even recognize it? Or is it a formidable foreign land to you, once whose labyrinths you have yet never to wander? Have you met yourself? If you did, would you like her? Have you yet to meet a flower? Have you met the acid sky, the spray-paint grass, even the soft warm woodness of your desk? Have you met it for what it is, stopped to feel it and only it and do no other thing, felt and breathed its every scent and color with the unjudging eager attention of a lover (Section 3: 20-21, 24:48)? Have you even met your own body so? Or do we know these things only to be Things, as extensions to be utilized for production, as inert meat and matter, COMMODIFIABLE GOOD? Where does commodifiable good end and Realness begin? Is it the physical objects in closest proximity for which we most greedily perspire? Is it with our bodies? Is it with our minds? Are any of these things even ours anymore?

In Section 30: 1-3, Walter reminds us:

All truths wait in all things,

They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,

They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon.

These questions Alice raises, and these precepts Walt proposes, are absurd and dangerous. Of course modern life is fulfilling. To hypothesize that it is not will create an error in the algorithm.

III. Play.

Let us dissect this hypothesis with the obstetric forceps of a surgeon and extract the cancer of fragmented meaning that so errantly has grown here. The cancer of inspiration can prove fatal to the organism, and is almost universally malignant to the capitalist-industrialist paradigm when left unchecked. Passion unbridled and a wild MOAN, an errant SHRIEK, an existential YAWN, a SITTING ON THE TABLE AT THE AIRPORT have been known to rapidly metastasize into the infectious WILD of a Being-Poem; and men will awaken to their own breath and love the taste, and they will laugh, and women will realize they are men, and men will realize they are cats, and children will giggle at the poem of this in the airport, and everyone will run around; and no one with a PriceTagNameTagVeryImportant will tell us to “stop,” and if they do, we will not hear them; or if we do, we won’t know how; because we have unstopped, and now unlive our lives in a single molecule of stretched-out simultaneous moment.

All of essence is available to us Forever And Ever Always Now in every flower and each breath (“All truths wait in all things,” says Section 30: Line 1), we need not wait. We need not painstakingly throttle life by the throat, choking it, dying to extract a droplet of Essence to haphazardly drip from its sponge-like skeleton for … we are so thirsty and the world is dead, and sick, and we meet ourselves at night in the blank white walls, and we meet the kiss of God in the sinews of our sweat within the grinding mechanical motion between Must and Pain; we feel Her So-Invasive Intimate Kiss, and it feels profane, it is so Everything, and I have stared at this screen for so long. My eyes burn, I stare and see nothing. My wild dendrites of yearning and yes are numb, and clipped, and freshly manicured for academic-industrial-workplace Exhaustion; drink this cup until you fulfill you unless you’ll drink it or die (or maybe you won’t, but Nobody’s lived to tell the tale). Is this not nonsense?

When the modus operandi of logical truth is actually nonsense, is absurdity not the only way to defy it? Is it not revolutionary to be absurd? Are Whitman’s truths not absurd by the standards of society?

“I exist as I am, that is enough/ If no other in the world be aware I sit content,” he declares in Section 20: line 25. Wait, what? What about all the things you need? What about all the things you have to do, all the modifications you need to make to your body, all the goals you need to accomplish, all the toys you need to buy? What about all the friends you need to impress, all the legitimacy you need to obtain through the recognition of other people? To say “I am enough,” is a counterculture act.

Please, the world will say, package up your aimless abstractions and deposit them in the Recycling for they are simply cluttering up productive space which could be occupied by an advert. You’re not good enough, be hungry, and purchase some accessories on your way out the door. Nobody has time for your abstractions, Alice. They are absurd, and you will be expelled from the belly of the capitalist organism like an acidic virus we must vomit up. You will destroy it from within.

Would such expulsion really be horrific? Is freedom from containment, in fact, the worst we fear? If that is why we are not wild, then, by all means, please expel me! If that is all we fear, why don’t we do the ridiculous things we always want, and sit on tables supposed to be chairs? Stop showing up? Check out completely? Look at a flower? Drop our tools? Forget our plans? Put down our phones and drink the sky? Would that really be so bad?

We live inside of paper plastic prop-up houses fabrications of fabrications of fabrications of fabrications of something that resembled a Real Thing once. Now it is “more convenient,” and dead, and made of Styrofoam. Mankind is dead, and our minds are made of Styrofoam. We don’t dislike it, because we don’t remember how. We are Styrofoam bubble-wrap brains that pop Reaction at pre-programmed synapse site. We simulate original emotion, but oh, it has been ages since we have felt a real thing. We numb the impossibly potent penetration of syringical injection of love and dying (events that command us to genuinely feel) with So Sorry Feed Me Baby Eat Me Like A Rich Food (consume another person). We have packaged even that into commodity.

In the crevices between the tectonics plates of moment, we feel the ache of dissonance on occasion. It grinds like Old, though we are Yet Young, and have forgotten. Ever since we picked up tools and found our “civilization,” we’ve forgotten how to delicately finger the velveteen skin of a single blade of baby grass. We have forgotten how to loafe. We have forgotten that we are happy; and that this is not a test, this is a game; that we are not mute, we are laughter; and all the world breathes with us in this music we need only to hit

play

play with me, stay with me, flowy lotus of nonprocedural juxtaposition of chaos and complexity utterly devoid of catechism drippingly infused with sex-sweet nectar of holographic need (only, now.).

Such is my prayer, my invitation, and such was Whitman’s.

The invitation begins, “Forget your plans.”

This invitation is to my own soul, my own soul only. This song is to you, my soul.

I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you. (19:17)

I am telling you, my soul. Hear my invitation, for I love you. I recognize your presence. I have not heard your voice in so long. I have told you my secrets. Now, I can do nothing but listen.

Blind and Deaf and Remembered: Ludwig von Beethoven

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Emma Kenney

Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the most renowned composers and pianists to walk the earth, even nearly 200 years after his death. Credited with writing 9 symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, 5 piano concertos, 16 string quartets, and countless other works, the man left quite an impact on the world. However, the life of this musician was not as splendid as one might be inclined to assume.

It is unknown for certain when Beethoven was born, but due to when the musician was baptized — December 17, 1770 — it is readily accepted he was born on or very near December 16, 1770. He was the oldest of three children born to Maria Magdalena and Johann van Beethoven in Bonn, Germany. Beethoven was introduced to music by his father at a young age, first in the form of the clavier, and then in the form of the violin. However, this was not a pleasant experience for the boy as his alcoholic father was often physically abusive toward him. There are multiple accounts of the little boy being beaten, deprived of sleep, or thrown into the family cellar by his father for any mistakes or hesitation while practicing music. Still, the boy developed not only talent but a love for music as well and performed his first concert at the age of seven on March 26, 1778. His father announced he was only six, because Mozart had been six at the time of his first performance. This ultimately led to Beethoven believing he was younger than he really was, even after being presented with his baptism certificate. It is unknown whether his brothers, Caspar and Johann, were also trained as musicians when they were born.

Meanwhile, the boy was attending Tirociniun, a local Latin school. He struggled to maintain proper grades, as school did not come easy to him. It has been theorized the composer might have been dyslexic. In his own words, “Music comes to me more readily than words.” Beethoven, however, did not have to struggle with school for long. He was withdrawn from school to study music full time with Christian Gottlob Neefe, the Court Organist, at the age of 10. Under Neefe’s wing, Beethoven published his first composition by the age of 12 and became the official Assistant Court Organist in 1784 at the age of 13. Finally, in 1787, the court sent him to Vienna to study music and composition. Legend states here Beethoven studied under Mozart, but there is barely enough evidence to support Beethoven having met Mozart, let alone studied music theory and composition under him during this short time. Only a few weeks later the boy returned to Bonn after receiving word his mother’s health was failing. By this point, he was the one supporting his family as his father’s drunkenness worsened and prevented him from being a productive member of society.

Beethoven returned to Vienna in 1792, hoping to study music under Joseph Haydn, who was accepted as the greatest living musician of that time. He did indeed study piano with the man, as well as counterpoint with Johann Albretchsberger and vocal composition with Antonio Salieri, both of whom were also considered top musicians of that age. Word spread of this rising musician with a gift for improvisation, and Beethoven made his debut in Vienna on March 29, 1795, supposedly performing his piano concerto in C Major. Soon after his debut Beethoven published his “Opus 1,”  which turned out to be incredibly successful both in terms of monetary gain and critical review.

Still Beethoven’s success continued to grow, leading to his performance of his Symphony No. 1 in C Major at the Royal Imperial Theatre of Vienna. His performance was incredibly successful, leading to become even more famous and anticipated. This piece successfully established him as one of the top composers of the age, though the musician would later grow to detest that composition.

After this performance Beethoven continued to compose. His work of that era included a popular ballet titled The Creatures of Prometheus performed at the Royal Imperial Theatre of Vienna over 25 times and “Symphony No. 3” (also known as the “Eroica Symphony”), published in honor of Napoleon in 1804 directly after he declared himself emperor. The “Eroica Symphony” yet again established Beethoven as something spectacular. This piece was incredibly different from anything that had been composed up until that time. In fact, it was so different in style during rehearsals the musicians struggled to understand how it was to be played.

After this, Beethoven decided he was ready to leave Vienna. Before he could do so, his friend Countess Anne Marie Erdody struck a deal with him. As long as he stayed in Vienna he would be paid a large annual sum, allowing him to live without worry of supporting himself or his family. By accepting this deal, Beethoven became one of the world’s first independent composers, not working for a church or any other group. This granted him complete freedom over what he was allowed to write and when he would write. Between his musical freedom and the large sum he was receiving, Beethoven experienced some of the best conditions musicians had been granted up until then.

Unfortunately, things would not continue to be easy for the composer. Around this time, Beethoven realized he was going deaf, though he would do everything within his power to conceal this fact from the public knowledge for as long as he possibly could. The weight of this deafness caused the man to fall into a numbing depression and struggle with suicidal thoughts, as well as an anger and hatred toward mankind. The man had already been an introvert up until this point, but after this he became downright antisocial and hostile. He fought with everyone around him, and he even went as far as to attempt to break a chair over the head of on of his closest and only  friends of that time, Prince Lichnowsky. He wrote:

I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people: I am deaf. If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession it is a terrible handicap….O you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me. You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you and I would have ended my life — it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me.

Despite his increasing deafness and hostility toward the world and everyone who was occupying it, Beethoven continued to compose, at times claiming music was the only thing convincing him to keep going in life and not take his own life. He composed over 100 pieces during this era, ranging from overtures and trios to symphonies and concerti. His work during this time included the incredibly famous and beloved “Moonlight Sonata” and Fidelio, which was the man’s only opera.

One theory for Beethoven’s deafness is arterial disease, as it explains not only his deafness but also his quick temper and moodiness. It is more readily accepted, however, the cause of his hearing impairment and ultimately deafness was the nasty typhus he battled over the summer of 1796.

Beethoven’s challenges continued in 1815 after the death of one of his brothers. He engaged in an enormous custody battle with his sister-in-law over her son and his nephew, lasting for seven years. Ultimately, Beethoven won the legal feud but lost the respect of many of his family members, including his nephew. Soon after this, Beethoven lost the majority of his beneficiaries and began to struggle financially to support himself and the family he felt such loyalty to and responsibility for.

However, Beethoven’s challenges were not over even here. The musician, who was entirely deaf by this point, lost his eyesight as well. What would have ended the musical careers of most composers only seemed to spur Beethoven on. During this period of his life Beethoven composed some of his most beloved pieces, such as his Missa Solemnis. During this period he also composed what can possibly be considered his most famous piece of all time, his “Symphony No. 9,” simply referred to by many as “Beethoven’s Ninth.”

Before going blind, the composer fell in love with a woman by the name of  Antonie Brentano. He wrote her a letter over the course of two days in 1812, but he never sent it. The letter stated: “My heart is full of so many things to say to you — ah — there are moments when I feel that speech amounts to nothing at all — Cheer up — remain my true, my only love, my all as I am yours.”

However, nothing would ever happen between the two. Unfortunately Brentano was already happily married when the composer developed feelings for her. It is believed she was the only woman Beethoven could ever bring himself to love.

The musician passed away on March 26, 1827 at the age of 56 in Vienna, Austria due to a post-hepatitic cirrhosis of his liver. Recently scientists examined fragments of his skull. They found high levels of lead, which causes some to believe the man died of lead poisoning instead. However, this theory is controversial and highly unpopular with most, as immediate evidence was found at the time of Beethoven’s to point to post-hepatitic cirrhosis of the liver. Yet another theory for Beethoven’s death is he died of a common cold, but once again this theory is not readily accepted, especially within the medical community.

He died without a family to bear his legacy or a son to carry on his lineage, as he never married or had children of his own, between his distaste for humanity and his supposed relentless heartbreak over Antonie Brentano. The closest thing he had was his nephew, Karl van Beethoven, who still hated him at this point in time. Though he didn’t have a family of his own, he had a large number of supporters. An estimated 20,000 people attended his funeral. The man’s last words were, “Plaudite, amici, comoedia finita est,” which translates from Latin to “Applaud, friends, the comedy is over.”

Beethoven faced many challenges over the course of his life; the odds were almost always stacked against him. Even so, Beethoven worked to overcome all he faced in order to produce the music he so loved. Through every situation, even overwhelming depression, he clung to music in order to find purpose. He faced financial peril, blindness, and deafness, and still the man is known as one of the greatest composers to have ever walked the face of the earth. Ultimately, Beethoven is a perfect example of why one should never allow challenges to stop one from achieving one’s dreams, even when those challenges seem like they should reasonably end all possibility of success, such as deafness to a musician.

Bibliography

“Beethoven Piece Is Discovered After 192 Years.” CORDIS. University of Manchester, 25 Oct.  2012. Web. 20 Sept. 2016.

“Biography: Beethoven’s Life — Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Website.” Ivbeethoven. Ivbeethoven, n.d. Web. 24 Sept. 2016.

“Ludwig Van Beethoven Biography.” Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2016.

Being Trustworthy Shows Character

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Tim Seaton

It is important to be trustworthy. When you are trustworthy you tend to have more leeway in life and decisions. People viewed as trustworthy often get more privileges and more freedoms. If people find you untrustworthy, then you won’t be able to do many things in life that are worthwhile. Others won’t trust you with their belongings or want to hang out with you. They won’t trust anything you say or do. They will just think you are trying to get yourself to sound better than you actually are.

There are two primary ways others will begin to view you as trustworthy. One of these is through the character qualities you demonstrate. Some of these characteristics are honesty, dependability, sincerity, integrity, and selflessness. The other primary way is by your actions. Examples of these could be following rules set before you, always telling the truth, even when it gets you in trouble, finishing the tasks given to you, being a good student, and being consistent in work.

In contrast, certain actions can lead to a person being seen as untrustworthy. When you are deceitful to get yourself out of trouble, disobey rules set for you, leave tasks unfinished so others have to complete them for you, are inconsistent at work, in school, or at home, or are disruptive and self-centered, you are viewed as untrustworthy. As previously stated, both actions and characteristics can display trustworthiness or untrustworthiness.

Luke 16:11-12 talks about trustworthiness: “So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?” These verses are saying when we are not trustworthy in handling something obvious like the resources we ourselves have here on earth, other people will not let us use their wealth. They will also be far less likely to trust us with friendship and property they may give you, and instead take things back they had given you. Demonstrating you are worthy of people’s trust is an important task to grow in relationships.

Another great verse that helps us think about trustworthiness is Proverbs 22:1. It reads, “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” This shows having a good name, which is also a good reputation, is one of the best things to have after a relationship with God. A good name is hard to repair once it has been established as untrustworthy. It is hard to replace that perception because you have to gradually show others they can trust you again. It takes time and consistency to make up what was lost. Your reputation precedes you, so if you have a good reputation, you will be known as a trustworthy person by others you may not even know.

One way to know about trustworthiness is to look at people who are and aren’t trustworthy. We can learn much from the examples of others.

Many politicians are known as liars and cheaters; therefore, we tend not to trust any of them. Many try to mislead voters about opponents so they can be believed as the better candidate and be selected for an office. When someone they are supporting is running for an office, they use their power to make them look like they are good candidates and vice versa with candidates they oppose. We know they often make promises, then it appears they don’t fulfill them. This leads to the impression politicians are just out for their own benefit, not for the benefit of the people they claim to represent. This has led people to the assumption many politicians are not trustworthy, coining the term “slimy politicians.” When asked who they trusted, people said politicians would be last, and only 13% of them said they would trust them. This illustrates the fact once trust is lost, it is extremely hard to regain. When promises are not kept, even when there might be really good reasons why because of the deals that must be made in politics, people’s views become established. Thus, the overall perception in our country politicians can’t be trusted exists.

But not every politician has a reputation of lying a lot. One politician who was selfless and definitely was not a liar was known by the name of “Honest” Abe, Abraham Lincoln. The name caught on when Abe was a young boy. As legend has it, it all started when he found some change on the ground and realized a customer had dropped it, so he had left that customer a few cents short. He took the change after work that day and walked all the way to her house just to give her a few cents. Another time, he had given a lady a little bit less tea than she had paid for, so he boxed it up and walked it to her house after work that day. The lady had never even realized she didn’t have all the tea she had bought until Abe brought the rest of it. This reputation followed him into his career as a lawyer and later as the President of the United States. He also stood by what he had said, even at great personal cost, such as his life, during and after the Civil War.

One person who was selfless, and was therefore very trusted, was Mother Teresa. She was trustworthy because people knew she would do what was right for everyone, not just her. At the young age of 18, she decided to devote her life to missionary work for God. In 1948, she founded the Order of Missionaries of Charity. Since she had given up all of her money to charities, she often had to resort to begging for food and supplies on the streets wherever she lived. She said her mission was to take care of “the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.” Her order helped found orphanages, hospices, and charity centers worldwide. At the end of her life, Mother Teresa had founded 517 missions in over 100 countries. For her selfless work, she received numerous awards in multiple countries all over the world, including the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Being given this award among many others shows her selfless work was universal. She wanted to aid as many people as she could, no matter where they lived, and no matter how poor or rich they were or if they could give any money for her services. Mother Teresa is definitely a trustworthy person, as we can tell by her countless actions and deeds for the good of others.

George Washington was a well-known, dependable, and trustworthy man. He was one of the most powerful men in the 1700s. He led the whole army for the thirteen revolting colonies. He could have been the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world. Instead he decided to turn the power down and let the people decide who they wanted to be the president. He was voted to be president, but after his second term, he decided to drop out of leadership and become a citizen because he had no want to be in power for long. He thought a dictatorship was what they had escaped from, so why go right back into one. He helped write the Constitution and he was the president of the Constitutional Convention where the Constitution was written. When he was faced with the decision to be all-powerful and lead a nation until he died, Washington did what almost no man on earth would do. He gave up endless power and let others take it while in certain limitations. This shows he was trustworthy because even though he had endless power under his finger, he chose to limit his and other’s power. This showed he was trustworthy because he led people for their good when others would have led for their own good, not of the people. He chose to make the power of him and others limited so evil would not reign over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Being untrustworthy can affect you in negative ways. At home when your parents don’t trust you, they might restrict the freedom you have. They may take your phone or computer away, or they may not let you go places. Maybe they won’t let you do sports and other extracurricular things after school or they may not let you hang out with friends. This could also happen when you are hanging out with friends who don’t trust you. They may not want to tell you about things happening, they may not want to help you out when you need it, or they may just not even want to be near you. When you are at school and a teacher doesn’t trust you, he may make you have detention if he even thinks you are doing something wrong, he may assign you extra homework, or he might make you sit at the dreaded front of the class. All these things are ones you can avoid by just staying trustworthy and trying to always do the right thing.

One way you can become untrustworthy is when you exaggerate. When you do, people don’t believe you and they start not being able to trust you. When we exaggerate, we are trying to get people to believe something or someone is better or worse than it actually is. The same goes for when we have to correct ourselves when we are talking. When we correct ourselves repeatedly, even if the change is accurate, people think you again are just trying to make yourself sound better than you actually are. They think, “well why did he say the wrong thing in the first place? Did they just forget, or were they actually trying to make themselves sound better?” People find it hard to trust you because they cannot differentiate between the truth and what is false and made up. We need to make sure our words are precise and easily understandable, or we may find ourselves not trusted by others, even if we have neither said nor done anything wrong.

Being trustworthy earlier in life can be influential in getting a job and other big things later in life. If you are not a trusted person at a job as a younger kid and you are trying to get a job, you may not get a good reference from your previous employer. A poor report from a former employer doesn’t really help when you trying to get a job. It can also affect what happens in a job. When you are in a job and your employer has a shift they need picked up or they have a big project for somebody, if you are not seen as a good employee, you may not get the shift or project. When an employer has seen you as trustworthy, they will be more likely to offer you a promotion or give a good report to your next employer than if you were untrustworthy.

There are a few ways you can tell if you are trustworthy. One way to tell is to see if you seem committed to whatever you are doing. If you are not committed, then you may not be trustworthy to the people who are watching you work. If you have previously held a job and your employer has told you he or she was impressed with your work, then they may think you are trustworthy and capable of doing other jobs. If you are reliable with the little decisions and things asked of you, that will help you be seen as more trustworthy for the bigger things in life. When your actions speak louder than your words, and your actions speak loudly in a good manner, you will be seen as trustworthy, therefore be seen as someone who can take on big responsibilities. One other way is by just asking other people you trust to give you a straight answer about you being trustworthy or not.

There are many reasons someone might choose to be less than honest. Some reasons you may try and get by without telling the truth are because you want to look cool in front of your friends, you may want to escape punishment, you might want to get out of doing something, or you may want to get benefits you only get if you aren’t honest about something. You may think it helps in the short term, and maybe it does, but in the long term, it will only hurt you. I know some people are more trustworthy only around parents or only around friends. I personally think I am one of the people who are more honest around parents than friends. I think this is because I feel if my friends really knew about why I can’t do everything, they may not respect me or want to hang out with me at all. I feel like I can be more open with my parents because they can help me through anything that is happening, even if they are not happy with why it is happening.

This all leads back to what Jesus says and how He wants you to live. You should be trustworthy and not be lying or doing wrong things just to feel more accepted and to look cooler. Even if you don’t think anyone will see and it won’t be bad, little things turn into big things and God sees everything. You need to know we are being watched and judged by God even when nobody else is.

Bibliography

Campbell, Denis. “Trust in Politicians Hits an All-time Low.” Guardian News and Media, 26 Sept. 2009. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2009/sep/27/trust-politicians-alltime-low. 17 Sep. 2016.

Reemer, Geoffrey. “Who Is the Most Selfless Person in History and Why?” Quora, 20 Sept. 2014. https://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-most-selfless-person-in-history-and-why. 17 Sep. 2016.

What Differences Do Childhoods Really Make?

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Katie Kenney

What happens in your childhood sticks with you when you are an adult. Variations of that statement are spread far and wide, so practically everyone understands it. When you grow up believing one thing you tend to keep those beliefs when you are older because it is all you have known or been exposed to. All sorts of things influence kids, whether it be their environment or their openness with their parents. Kids take things in and keep it with them. Now, practically everyone knows that, but not everyone knows the extent of things that make a difference in a child’s life.

In school, it is quite typical to know the questions that come first on your study guide better than the ones at the end. When you have a longer time to study a certain concept than a different concept, you should be able to recall facts about the first topic a little bit easier than the second topic depending on how much you have studied. This is like what happens when you are a child: when you are a child you are given a certain sphere with a specific amount of knowledge within it. Over time, they are given more information, but what they were first given stays with them. The impact the first nugget of knowledge had on them is bigger than the impact from later knowledge added on top of it.

Many things influence a child and that can make the kid grow up to be a great person or an awful person. It is unfortunately common many serial killers had some sort of trauma in childhood, whether it be abuse from an adult, an accident that brought death upon a loved one, or being close to a type of crime, which led to a mental break and brought them to murder. What happened to them when they were kids started the building blocks of a criminal to be stacked on top of one another. The bad stands out more vividly than the good things that happened. This is still the case for most people. It is easier to remember the bad things that happened during the day, is it not? People try to forget the bad things that happen because no one wants to remember sadness or embarrassment, but it sticks out against the good things that happen. It is like seeing one single blue paper laid out amongst a sea of yellow papers: your eyes quickly go to the blue paper that stands out. It is also hard to forget something when you are trying to forget it because you keep thinking about getting it out of your mind, therefore you still have it in your mind.

Your environment is a big part of what happens. It is an important part of the setting in a story. It can help or hinder a person’s journey and it can decide how far they get until they need to stop. Daycares and preschools try to be aware with how clean they are and how they can prevent the spread of germs. At home, however, if a kid isn’t in the richest family on the block then that is not entirely true. If a kid lives in a mobile home where their parents can’t afford all of the cleaning supplies a house should have, then they won’t always be in a clean environment. And when germs are spread around freely, they can get people sick. Children are more susceptible to illness and, depending on where they are, can be sick quite often. People aren’t happy when they’re sick. If you feel nauseous or have just the general cold then you won’t want to get up, go outside, and play with friends; you’ll want to stay inside and sleep off the pain. Kids are known for being rowdy and jumpy, always wanting to play with someone somewhere. A big part of being a kid is having the time and the leisure to play, but when that is taken away what kind of childhood is that? If a child is always sick, then when can they play? They can’t go out and run around when they feel like their stomach is going to implode on itself. They can’t push their friend on the swing when their head hurts so badly that their vision is blurred. How can a child who loves to play, play when they are always in pain? When someone grows up not being able to do the one thing they want to, then when they are all grown up they will most likely have an underlying belief they can’t do what they want to.

Mental illnesses are underdiagnosed in children. It is less common for parents to bring their kid in to a psychologist because they act like two completely different people, than for a teenager to be brought in. Kids emotions are often seen as over-exaggerated and played up. People who are taking care of them use the “I am acting like I believe you, but in reality I think that you are just speaking lies” voice and do not take them seriously. This can seriously hurt a kid when no one listens to them talking about what they feel. No one likes their words to be trampled over by others, but when whatever you try to say is always dismissed, you get used to it. When kids are told they are lying when they are actually telling the truth, it either makes them want to stay silent or makes them not want to tell the truth anymore. If you grow up keeping quiet because you are scared people will ridicule you and say you’re lying, then that mindset will stick with you until you have a reason to change it. Not saying things you want to can keep people from hearing.

Everyone has responsibilities they need to be aware of. New ones can pop up and old ones can no longer be your responsibility. People always need to take care of things. It is harder for some people to see the importance of their responsibilities than others, causing them to just not want to do them. If you grow up with things you have to do or others things won’t work, it allows you to be more prepared for the big responsibilities in adulthood, like bills and taxes. If you grow up without having to do anything for yourself, it will be incredibly hard to know how to do things you need to when you are on your own. The only time you won’t need to know how to do stuff is if you’re rich and have every type of servant there is serve you. Now seeing as that is highly unlikely for most of us, it is beneficial to know how to keep up with all of the responsibilities you have and if you have been taught how to prior to being in the actual situation, you can save yourself quite a bit of stress.

It is well-known military families tend to move a lot. They are stationed different places in the United States or in different countries across the world. Some people who don’t have anyone in the military move around just as much as those who are a part of the military community. When you move, you have to leave friends behind along with everything familiar to you. You lose many connections you had with people, and the ones you do keep are hard to keep strong because of the distance. Many military kids, who have lived in multiple places, stop making connections other kids their age make because they know it is just a matter of time before they move again. This causes them to never have a true feeling of trust. This doesn’t just pertain to military families, it could be people who have some other job responsibility or just like to move around often. Trust is hard to build and takes time, but when you are unable to obtain the time to work on trust, you never build trust. When kids grow up lacking the ability to trust others, they are found to be disconnected and isolated. They might think they don’t need trust, that trust isn’t worth the time, or they will never be able to trust others. They block people off and disable deep connections that could be formed in fear of those bonds being broken later on, because it is what they have known for the longest time.

It is a regular occurrence in many homes for parents to ask their kid(s) how school went today and how they’re feeling. I know a lot of kids lie and say school was good that day and they’re tired because of this and that, when they actually had a bad day because they failed this and was called that. They don’t tell their parents everything that happened because they feel like they would overreact and say something that wouldn’t help their case, not understand in the slightest, or ignore what they say they are feeling and call it “just a phase” or “teenager problems.” Now, I’m not saying everyone does this, I actually have a friend who tells her mom practically everything, but it is a common thing that takes place. Saying someone is lying about their struggles doesn’t make you want to speak about them; it makes you want to stay quiet and act like nothing happened. It isn’t beneficial to keep all of your emotions inside, but when someone misinterprets what you are saying or dismisses it, you might think it is better to hold everything. This kind of mentality is hard to break. Once someone starts to think like that, it is hard to switch that viewpoint.

It is common for babies and toddlers to have separation anxiety. They don’t like it when their parent leaves them and so they end up crying and throwing a tantrum type of thing. Children just don’t like being away from the people who are most familiar to them: their parents. Most of the time, parents just walk away and don’t look back when a crying session occurs, which is beneficial to whomever is watching the child because the baby no longer sees the parent and eventually “forgets” about them. However, there is always that one parent that won’t leave or they will look through a window. This doesn’t help the baby because they can still see their parent and they don’t understand why they can’t just go to them and definitely doesn’t help the person who is watching the child because the baby continues to freak out. Over time, the parents learn to just walk away and out of sight. There are some parents that don’t stop looking through the window, though, and it causes the anxiety to continue on as they grow up.

Everyone gets mad at or at least annoyed with someone at some point in their life. There is always going to be that one person who just gets on your nerves. Now, to be completely honest, kids can be annoying, from toddlers to teenagers and those kids who are about ten. They just seem to get on everyone’s nerves. Some kids can make you mad, whether because they disobeyed you and did something stupid or they made a bad decision. It’s okay to be mad at kids, but while you’re mad you still need to show them love. It is almost universal for kids to think if someone is angry with them then they aren’t loved by that person anymore. Kids need to be shown unconditional love through the mistakes they make. You can’t let them get away with making bad decisions over and over again, but you need to love them through their problems and help them not make the same mistake twice. Kids aren’t the only people in the world who need unconditional love; adults do as well. To have a good family structure, you need to be able to love each other through the problems another person may make. If a kids grows up thinking they will stop being loved when they make a mistake, it is likely for them to have the underlying thought that when they mess up people will leave them because they made a mistake, whether it be simple or catastrophic.

Children’s opinions can be seen as meaningless to those who are older than them. People say kids don’t understand what is coming out of their mouths and dismiss what they have to say. Therefore, to fill up the empty space, they talk about their opinions and what they think is right. Some adults can be quite forceful and get mad if the child doesn’t agree with what they are saying. They just want the kids to believe what they have to say is the only option, when in reality, there are so many different thoughts and expressions they could have that are completely unique compared to other ways of thinking. Having your own opinion can give you confidence in yourself and your abilities. It can make you more passionate about the things you love and more willing to share your point of view with others. But if you are never given the opportunity to form your own special views, then it will be incredibly hard for you to think for yourself. Taking someone else’s opinions and using them as your own never allows you to express what you think and what you want. You can’t express the changes you want to make or the passion you have. And if you grow up being an impassionate slate who takes everything in but doesn’t give anything out, you won’t really want to share what you think when you’re older. You won’t necessarily know how to, seeing as you were used to adults always giving you way to think. That would make it hard to create things that are special to you. You won’t be able to have your own thoughts, and that is not a good way to go through life.

It is common knowledge children collect all sorts of information and keep it with them as they grow up; however, I don’t think people understand how much of it they actually keep. I mean children, as a whole, are curious and want to know all sorts of things about every object, topic, or even person they can get their hands, or mind, on. It has been said children are like sponges: they soak up an abundance of knowledge as a sponge collects a large amount of some type of liquid. Children take in the things they see, hear, and experience then bring them with them as they grow out of childhood. We need to be gentle and loving to kids, because they matter. Just because they aren’t adults doesn’t mean what they say is invalid. They have importance and value in God’s eyes, so they should have importance and value in ours. We should do everything in our power to help them get through the struggles imminent to them.