Courage to never settle, courage to expand

As of late, I have been haunted by the thought that I have squandered my better years of education, wasting precious time in the classroom daydreaming about temporary gratification rather than the privilege of learning. Maybe I am plagued by this guilt because it is a rite of passage of being in your 20s, or maybe I really did lavish my time away doing fuck all, but the more delicate part of my ego refuses to believe the latter half because what a terrible pill to swallow. It is a contagious disease, the regret of your past actions catching up to you, but only once you’ve fully grown a conscience, as if the former version of yourself knew exactly how to behave poorly to burden your current self with the heaviest amount of anguish. 

I have never been a woman of science. Now, this is not to say that I don’t hold it in high regard because, trust and believe, there is no greater power we need to rely on right now than that of science, but I am not a woman of science in the way that my brain is not, and has never been, fully wired to enjoy solving equations and logic. And what a shame that is, truly, because I used to often dream about how much more powerful I would be if I could handle the gravitas that is complex math, and so on. Since I was a little girl, my brain and heart have always favored the arts; it sought out creativity, and it found passion and drive in the more malleable, the abstract, the grey in between the black and white. My theory on this is because with writing, with art and creating something out of nothing or deriving your own meaning and masterpiece out of something else pre-existing, there is no right answer. When the final product of your hard work solely relies on pathos and not solving for a missing number, how could you ever extract objectivity from it? 

As I have grown older, however, I have begun to realize the error of my ways, or more so, the fallacies in what I deemed to be true, that because I did not understand scientific inquiry, I was less powerful, and thus my preference of the arts meant I was and am less intelligent. How bizarre! And how unfair and erroneous of a statement this is! We live in a world where technological innovation, engineering design and mathematical problem-solving are held in the utmost regard among all the degrees we can choose to study. Job security, financial abundance, gold-standard reputations for those who choose to learn how to code, but god forbid a child decides to stray from this track and wants to pursue philosophy or history or English or linguistics. All of a sudden, they’re making the “wrong” decision, they’re told to think about their future, think about how much more they would struggle by choosing this life path because all there is to life is stability and child support and how big the number is in your bank account, right? Your writing, your art, your love for different ideologies and the study of psychology can be a side hobby, it can be a passion project on your own time, but do not dedicate the rest of your educated life pursuing these lessons because you are just wasting your time, right? 

I have never been able to wrap my head around the conclusion that art is menial, that the humanities are subservient to a computer science degree, because in my mind, what a herculean feat it is to understand and fully grasp the human condition, our behaviors, the way our communication and actions have evolved. How can anyone view the study of the human mind and its functions, how it affects those, how we use our experiences and emotions to produce different media, with a downturned nose? Are you not curious about your own being? Are you not curious about why you are the way you are? At all? 

I refuse to believe and listen, anymore, to anyone who argues that there is a greater career path, that there is a “better” option when it comes to what you choose to focus your education on. Just because I am not more technically inclined than the boy down the hall in my dorm who holes up for hours on end sitting in front of his computer coding, does not mean I am less than, less brilliant, less of a student than he is. In the same vein, he may not be as creative, as emotionally driven as I am, but that does not mean he does not have the capacity to become an artist. As I reach my mid-20s (slowly, though, very very slowly), I find myself indulging in more creative and artistic practices, but I also am discovering a newfound interest in math, in the science behind it all, in equations and logic and the rigidness these subjects have. Maybe with all the fluidity I have championed my whole life, the subconscious part of my brain is craving the antithesis of it all, a more structured, rule-based, definite way of thinking. 

This does not mean I will abandon my crafts because who would I be without my pen and paper, but I want to live in a world where we can have both, where artists and mathematicians can be the same person. I want to eliminate the divide that has been imposed on us since we were sitting in tiny chairs at the age of five, and I can only begin with the wall I’ve built up in my head. And that’s the beautiful part of life; we never stop learning. We never have to stop pursuing knowledge and new ideals. As long as we keep our minds open, there will always be things we don’t understand, opinions and facets of history that we will continue to uncover outside of the classroom. The world is at our fingertips, in the most literal sense it has ever been in the timeline of human existence. We can not sit back on our heels and wait for the sanctity of education to approach us; it does not work that way. If you find the curiosity within yourself to learn, if you’re suddenly overcome with the urge to delve into something new, then, my dear, do not let that feeling go to waste. Take action, be proactive, and follow that instinct. It will open a door of brilliance for you.