I love Colorado.
Pardon the nationalism, but is it not common to be proud of your home? Granted, not every person is fond of their environment, and not every environment is fond in general. But would you just take a look around here...towering mountains, vibrant skies, fresh air, nature in abundance...I'm incredibly lucky to say that I feel comfortable here. The people are more than often very friendly and hospitable, there is always something to do in every corner of the state, local traditions make up a majority of the rich culture that Colorado is known for, simultaneously too many and not enough great things to say about how entirely beautiful this state is. Over the years I have lived here, I can safely say that I possess a sense of belonging. I feel like I'm in good company there, too.
So why do people still want to leave?
The very same pleasures I find to boast about are another person's gripes about why they just can't stand living here, even coming from natives that have lived here their entire lives. Recently, it seems as if the point of blame is on the influx of foreigners from other states. Several Colorado cities consistently rank in the top 20 of many different national quality of living lists (Louisville seems to rank top 5 often, where Fort Collins and Colorado Springs have been named best city to live in for previous years). Obviously, there is something about Colorado that has families across the country making the trek. I must admit, I myself am technically a foreigner to the great state of Colorado. I moved away from California when I was about 10, and for nearly 10 years I have stayed. Reflecting upon this, it brought up a curious thought. I've lived almost as long in Colorado as I have in California. Although I can never change my nativity to California, if I have lived longer elsewhere, can I really call California my home? The dissonance is pretty strong there.
But what do you classify as home?
Well, why not start with the obvious? The first definition in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary for the word 'home' is, "the place (such as a house or apartment) where a person lives". A pretty literal definition by most people's standards, but a very valid response to the question at hand. But let's think more idiomatically. I've always preferred to clearly differentiate between the concepts of a home and the concepts of a house, as I feel the ideas involved with both divide into the literal and figurative meanings I mentioned before. So what would be the next definition? "The social unit formed by a family living together." We're getting a little closer to the core of classification: a unit that forms through interaction. A sense of belonging, safety, and security. 'Family' is a pretty broad term as it is, so we'll try to keep it that way to avoid rambling any further. As an alternative, the dictionary also lists home as, "a familiar or usual setting, congenial environment; also: the focus of one's domestic attention." This definition strays away a bit from the feeling of unity, choosing to define home in the physical setting rather than by the people in the setting. Home is where the heart is, as they say. We have a couple contrasting viewpoints here, both of which are very good answers to the question of how to classify someone's home.
But how can we say for certain which is the more fitting definition?
Therein lies the point I want to make. Where do I feel more at home at? I mean, I have worked so hard to make a new life for myself through every move, so it's easy to say I am most at home where I am right now. I'm comfortable where I am, living life in a beautiful place experiencing infinite new possibilities. That's what I feel home should be classified as: an experience, apart from a noun. Home is felt from the soul, the deepest parts of our being where we feel most at ease. This doesn't quite finish my point, however. Although this is my feeling of home, you may not agree with it. You may absolutely spite my definition of home. Perhaps you agree with it completely. Maybe you're somewhere in between. That's the beauty of human emotion! Every single experience is completely customized for our own pleasure and nobody else's. It's not often I commend human emotion for something positive. Home challenges us to ask ourselves, "is this where I belong?". A tad existential, but when we open our eyes and see the surroundings bring us joy, that is when we are home. To make a long story short, I can't tell you where your home is.
You'll just have to go and find it.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Friday, September 11, 2015
Never Forget
9/11 was 14 years ago.
To some, it feels as if it was ages ago. Others, it feels like it was yesterday. It's definitely a landmark event in 21st century American history, probably one of the earliest landmarks to occur. An event that puts a lot of things about our lives into perspective. If you are like the majority of Americans who were witnesses to the most destructive act of domestic terrorism since another infamous date, you probably were not personally affected by it. I should qualify that word, personally, not in the sense that it did not evoke an emotional response out of you, but rather having been affected by the loss of a family member, someone close to you. There's definitely a large amount of people who were affected in this way, and that should be acknowledged and respected, but the fact of the matter is most if not all American's experiences with 9/11 were what I mentioned before, an emotional reaction. Anger, frustration, confusion, fear, sorrow, insecurity...and everything in between. 14 years later, the emotions have died down considerably since the day of, and instead I feel have mostly been replaced with the idea of unification, thankfulness, awareness of how precious our loved ones are. Even after so long, as they say, we still have not forgotten.
But will we?
It's almost a sacrilege thing to question, will we ever forget one of the most tragic events in our country's history? I should clarify first that it's not that we, as generations go by, want to forget about it. In fact, the images we can recall from that distant day show quite the opposite, we actually can't forget about it. What about those who can't recall? Last blog post, I talked a little bit about the classifications of generations as years progress. If you're born between 1980 and 1999, you're a part of Generation Y. In our current time frame, we are in Generation Z, those born at the turn of the millennium. But as this generation of early Zs (perhaps that's a bad classification...) starts to grow up, they have not developed with the same memories and feelings that we have experienced. This is a link to one of my favorite XKCD articles, detailing what year a majority of Americans will be too young to remember a particular event; landmark; or person in history, based on census population projections. If you're a younger reader, maybe younger than myself, the first several entries may hold zero significance to you. If you happen to be an older reader, you just got really sad. Sorry about that. If this doesn't put enough perspective on the issue, allow me to say that next year, the majority of high school freshman will have been born in a post-9/11 world.
They won't know anything about 9/11 apart from documentation.
I wouldn't say that it is our own forgetfulness having recollections of 9/11 that will cause us to forget. Really there's nothing we can do about the actual problem: generational replacement. I'm sure as a younger reader seeing the XKCD article, some of the future dates definitely grounded you back to Earth about the relative shortness of this concept of generational replacement. People knowing a world without Facebook will have been outnumbered by 2038. That's in 23 years. Seems like an unfathomably long time, but the scary reality is that it is much, much closer than we may think it is. Generational replacement is really interesting to contemplate, because it showcases an evolution in human mentality. Will not living with the memory of 9/11 perhaps cause future generations to be less spiteful? No one can say for sure. It's a waiting game at this point. But what I find even more interesting is the fate of the memories that we do forget. Memories that, at one point, had incredible emotional value to you, but for the life of you it just can't come back to you. These memories more often than not are much more personable than a historical event, pertaining specifically to our lives and how the course of those lives are changed in conjunction.
Yet we still forget.
I had a sudden rush of emotion yesterday from memories past. A one statement bomb that exploded my head into a mushroom cloud of different emotions and experiences. Nostalgia is the best way that I could put it. A longing for a better time. What could have been. Was it good? That's strangely a yes and no answer. It brought back memories that I knew I could never forget, but after thinking over all of these memories, I realized how much there was that I just simply didn't remember. Moments I said I would never forget. Things so close to me. Just...gone. Will they reappear? Maybe. But it's disheartening at the least to think about all of the times in our lives that were so incredible, so meaningful, and yet were erased by time. I feel guilty but there isn't a lot for me to be guilty of.
So what does any of this mean?
As we've learned in the case of both historical and life events, time gradually begins to wear away what we once thought was permanent. Unchanging. I think it's a surprise to us when those events actually do change in our perception, because we've told ourselves for so long that these memories are important; but when the wind of change blows in our direction and the sands of time are washed away by the waves of our conscious thought, the aftermath reveals that possibly these events weren't as important or impressionable as we once thought. And that's sad, involuntarily dumping memories to make room for new ones. But the silver lining is that the memories that do last a lifetime, the all encompassing experiences that perhaps you never thought would ever turn out to be so significant...they never go away; however, it's near impossible to distinguish what will be important to us in the future. So how do we handle that? Well, cherish what you've got. I feel like humanity is always so forward thinking, and with a relatively short life span it isn't hard to see the reasoning behind that. We're always moving on to what's next while we take for granted what we have now. Treat everything, every day, as a gift. It won't be there forever. The memories might not, either. I still wish I held it closer with me. But it's not a person's past that defines them. It's how they recover from their past. 14 years later, I'd say all of us have recovered in some way. Together.
Don't forget that.
To some, it feels as if it was ages ago. Others, it feels like it was yesterday. It's definitely a landmark event in 21st century American history, probably one of the earliest landmarks to occur. An event that puts a lot of things about our lives into perspective. If you are like the majority of Americans who were witnesses to the most destructive act of domestic terrorism since another infamous date, you probably were not personally affected by it. I should qualify that word, personally, not in the sense that it did not evoke an emotional response out of you, but rather having been affected by the loss of a family member, someone close to you. There's definitely a large amount of people who were affected in this way, and that should be acknowledged and respected, but the fact of the matter is most if not all American's experiences with 9/11 were what I mentioned before, an emotional reaction. Anger, frustration, confusion, fear, sorrow, insecurity...and everything in between. 14 years later, the emotions have died down considerably since the day of, and instead I feel have mostly been replaced with the idea of unification, thankfulness, awareness of how precious our loved ones are. Even after so long, as they say, we still have not forgotten.
But will we?
It's almost a sacrilege thing to question, will we ever forget one of the most tragic events in our country's history? I should clarify first that it's not that we, as generations go by, want to forget about it. In fact, the images we can recall from that distant day show quite the opposite, we actually can't forget about it. What about those who can't recall? Last blog post, I talked a little bit about the classifications of generations as years progress. If you're born between 1980 and 1999, you're a part of Generation Y. In our current time frame, we are in Generation Z, those born at the turn of the millennium. But as this generation of early Zs (perhaps that's a bad classification...) starts to grow up, they have not developed with the same memories and feelings that we have experienced. This is a link to one of my favorite XKCD articles, detailing what year a majority of Americans will be too young to remember a particular event; landmark; or person in history, based on census population projections. If you're a younger reader, maybe younger than myself, the first several entries may hold zero significance to you. If you happen to be an older reader, you just got really sad. Sorry about that. If this doesn't put enough perspective on the issue, allow me to say that next year, the majority of high school freshman will have been born in a post-9/11 world.
They won't know anything about 9/11 apart from documentation.
I wouldn't say that it is our own forgetfulness having recollections of 9/11 that will cause us to forget. Really there's nothing we can do about the actual problem: generational replacement. I'm sure as a younger reader seeing the XKCD article, some of the future dates definitely grounded you back to Earth about the relative shortness of this concept of generational replacement. People knowing a world without Facebook will have been outnumbered by 2038. That's in 23 years. Seems like an unfathomably long time, but the scary reality is that it is much, much closer than we may think it is. Generational replacement is really interesting to contemplate, because it showcases an evolution in human mentality. Will not living with the memory of 9/11 perhaps cause future generations to be less spiteful? No one can say for sure. It's a waiting game at this point. But what I find even more interesting is the fate of the memories that we do forget. Memories that, at one point, had incredible emotional value to you, but for the life of you it just can't come back to you. These memories more often than not are much more personable than a historical event, pertaining specifically to our lives and how the course of those lives are changed in conjunction.
Yet we still forget.
I had a sudden rush of emotion yesterday from memories past. A one statement bomb that exploded my head into a mushroom cloud of different emotions and experiences. Nostalgia is the best way that I could put it. A longing for a better time. What could have been. Was it good? That's strangely a yes and no answer. It brought back memories that I knew I could never forget, but after thinking over all of these memories, I realized how much there was that I just simply didn't remember. Moments I said I would never forget. Things so close to me. Just...gone. Will they reappear? Maybe. But it's disheartening at the least to think about all of the times in our lives that were so incredible, so meaningful, and yet were erased by time. I feel guilty but there isn't a lot for me to be guilty of.
So what does any of this mean?
As we've learned in the case of both historical and life events, time gradually begins to wear away what we once thought was permanent. Unchanging. I think it's a surprise to us when those events actually do change in our perception, because we've told ourselves for so long that these memories are important; but when the wind of change blows in our direction and the sands of time are washed away by the waves of our conscious thought, the aftermath reveals that possibly these events weren't as important or impressionable as we once thought. And that's sad, involuntarily dumping memories to make room for new ones. But the silver lining is that the memories that do last a lifetime, the all encompassing experiences that perhaps you never thought would ever turn out to be so significant...they never go away; however, it's near impossible to distinguish what will be important to us in the future. So how do we handle that? Well, cherish what you've got. I feel like humanity is always so forward thinking, and with a relatively short life span it isn't hard to see the reasoning behind that. We're always moving on to what's next while we take for granted what we have now. Treat everything, every day, as a gift. It won't be there forever. The memories might not, either. I still wish I held it closer with me. But it's not a person's past that defines them. It's how they recover from their past. 14 years later, I'd say all of us have recovered in some way. Together.
Don't forget that.
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