What is Love?

"Baby, don't hurt me, don't hurt me no more!" 

That wasn't exactly what I was going for, but it's a good song nonetheless.

"Then what are you referring to?" *Hums tune to What is Love* 

For English we were assigned to read "A Man in a Case" and we were asked if we thought Byelinkov and Varinka's marriage would be successful and I really think it will be. Marriage is just as much a contractual commitment as it is a testament of love. Over the years, the divorce rate in the United States has shot up to around 50% of every new marriage. Why? People don't think before they act. Everything in our society is quick and instant; there's rarely ever any waiting and planning anymore. Either two people in "love" rush into marriage or they're forced into marriage because of unforeseen circumstances (i.e. 16 & Pregnant).

"So what about Bylinkov and Varinka?" 

Well, the two of them are different.  Varinka is very passionate and loving while Byelinkov is calculating and straightforward; the two are basically polar opposites. That's exactly why it will work. Science states that opposites attract, so why not for them? Byelinkov and Varinka represent two ends of a spectrum, like yin and yang. The two will focus their attention on different aspects of the relationship so there's really no reason for them to get into conflicts. Byelinkov will follow Varinka when she wants to show her love and compassion and Varinka will listen to Byelinkov when he wants to think rationally.

Too much fire will burn the relationship, but not enough won't create a spark. Byelinkov and Varinka have the best of both worlds.

"So in order to balance the two in a perfect relationship you need to... play with fire?"

La Vita E Bella

Life is beautiful. Translated from Italian to English, la vita e bella translates to life is beautiful. The saying always holds true and it happens to be one of my favorite movies. When one of the presentations brought up the horrid prison conditions in Persepolis, I couldn't help but remember this classic Italian movie about Nazi occupation in Italy during WWII. If you have time, I highly recommend you watch the Italian version with English subtitles.

I Didn't Raise an Atheist

"That's a very aggressive title. What's up?" 

Those were my father's exact words to me one day. I'm not mad about it; I'm not even complaining that he said it, but it always stood out to me. Unlike most of my friends,  I felt alienated by the church. I don't know if it was the hypocritical teen "leaders" who refused to practice what they preached or the priest's inability to instill the word of God into me; I wouldn't be able to tell you if I tried. The church even had us go to Catechism classes to ensure that our faith in God waas strong at a young age. Obviously that didn't work for me. Confirmation was supposed to be where teenagers, like me, would come to learn about God and confirm our Catholicism and our faith in God, but how did they expect me to listen to the "leaders" that would preach the word of God on Thursday and sin so much on Friday that Saturday was used to remember what happened on Friday? 

Everyone always told me, "God has a plan; you just need to be patient." I guess I just got sick of being patient and helpless. Why him? Why her? Why me? Every time something happened I was hit with, "Everything is all part of God's plan." I'm not saying God's plan sucks, sometimes I just wonder why some things have to be the way they are and how it could have been different. I guess you could say I'm a skeptic. Following the death of her Uncle Anoosh, Marjane lashed out at the first thing she could: God. How could a merciful God allow such turmoil to take over her home and her family? 

She went from wanting to be a prophet to dismissing God. One of the presenters today said, "people can only believe in something if it is their choice." Religion can only work if you want to believe what you are being told; the more it is forced upon you, the less it will work. Sometimes we go through things in our life that leave us needing something to believe in leading us right into the welcoming arms of the Lord. Other times, we go through obstacles that make us question everything around us, even the beliefs we hold most dear. We may go through things that push us to religion or we may go through things that push us away from religion, but, no matter who you are, it can happen to the best of us. 

War on Terror

To be clear, I'm not talking about the type of terrorism that swept over Americans after 9/11; I'm talking about a type of terrorism that is more associated with bullying. In Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi details the horrific events of "Black Friday" followed by massacre after massacre. As hard as the image is to swallow, that's just how war is, plain and simple.

April 9, 1942 marked the beginning of the Bataan Death March. Bataan, coincidentally, is my family is from so, naturally, my relatives had fought to defend their home during the Japanese invasion. Following the surrender by the American and Filipino troops, Lieutenant General Masaharu Homma of the Japanese Imperial Army ordered the evacuation of all POWs to Camp O'Donnell, but even he could not have predicted what his soldiers would do. Over the course of the next month or so, American and Filipinos alike were abused, murdered, and tortured just like the Iranian revolutionaries in Persepolis. They endured random shootings, strikes by rifles and bayonets, little to no food or water, and "the sun treatment" where prisoners were forced to sit out in the hot sun with no shade for hours at a time. Luckily, my great-grandfather who had been a schoolteacher that fought in the war was able to escape by women and children who would walk up next to the march and pull away friends or relatives to hide the prisoners until the Japanese Army was gone.


I'm not saying one event was worse than the other because they're not; they're both highly atrocious events in history. Abuse still takes place in different parts of the world today such as Somalia, Mexico, and Syria. The world needs to change and we need to be the people to change it. Our generation is the next to take the reigns from our parents and as Jon Stewart said, in his commencement speech to the graduating class of 2004 at The College of William and Mary, " We broke it... I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So sorry."


I realize that my Avatar is a cartoon, ironically from a show called Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it may be silly to compare the Death March with the plot of the show, but they're eerily similar.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

"Well considering my dad is an imperialistic, genocidal ass I'm going to say yes I do."

How so?

"Well, he massacred a whole race of people just so that nobody could get in his way. Basically, in this situation, my family would be the Japanese."

...

"Yeah, I realize that would make me look like a bad person, and I have done unspeakable things in the past, but there's no reason that I can't start doing good. I can't change what happened in the past, but I can make sure that it nothing similar ever happens again."