I am now a final year student, a senior of sociology. That has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? This week marks the beginning of many things for many others, but for me it marks the beginning of the end. I have played out my undergrad life as I saw fit and I have no regrets, all the friends I did not make, ,the subjects I did not Ace and the reputation I have created for myself. If I had another try, I would do it no differently.
Looking around me, i sense the anxiety of my peers, a gaping unknown which lies before them. Am I more certain than them concerning my days to come? No, I am no more certain but yet I am infinitely surer than them. Why? Because I am honest, because I do not engage in acts spawned of ill intention, because I help all who ask for help to the limits of my strength without expecting reciprocity and my sole motivation is the fact that I can hence I should. What I ask of others, I demand from myself; this is one of my few guiding principles.
I was inspired to craft an entry today because a close friend of mine told me yesterday, that I only think that I am above many things, and that she doesn’t believe that I am in reality I am just like everyone else. In many ways, she was right, I do think that I am above many things and along that very same thread I feel that many things are beneath me. But she said it as if it was a bad thing, a negative thing to be above the petty and the cruel, a frivolous and childish. But she was also monstrously wrong; I am not like everyone else. I don’t like it when people deal with me by using absolutes, can’t they see that being absolute is limiting? Being absolute is to lose texture, colour and the spectrum of scent. If she only could listen what I am saying instead of simply hearing my words she would have understood. I told her that I make no apologies for the standards I expect from others and myself, her face hardens and I smile. I read her mind, she knows she does not meet my expectation her reactions towards me are merely attempts to tear me down to her level so that she will feel better about herself. She failed, like so many before her and the many more to come. Denial is the greatest enemy of reality.
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I received a gift last night from a friend who spent the summer in East Africa, Kenya. It was an African Tribal Dagger, and it was sharp and quite real. I make a note to myself to keep it away from my parents least they stab each other when arguing. The scabbard was coated in a sheer of grey black fur of some sort, its thin blade reflects a nation in poverty and its sharp tip its desperation.
I admire her for the courage to spend a summer alone in Africa; she was not ignorant, she was fearful, courage in my book is the act of overcoming fear. Courage is so rare in girls… almost as rare as honesty in men.
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