Who knew what a ballet skirt could do

After training at home one day I started playing with my wrap skirt, and quickly got a little obssessed with how many things I could do with it that I had never thought of before. Ballet classes usually have a uniform or at least some guidelines for how to dress, and even though my school doesn't have a uniform, most people still wear pretty much the same colours and styles every day. But at home, you can do whatever you like, right? So, I figured this might certainly spice up training alone at home!

Most of these styles I came up with, I could actually dance in and they would not fall off or get in the way. (All except the last off-shoulder.)

The pictures are crappy because I was just taking them for my own amusement, and so that I would remember these styles. I didn't think I would share them, so I didn't put any effort into it... But then I thought this would actually be pretty fun to share. I gave them cheesy names.

That's it! I hope you had a portion of how much fun I had while doing this. xD

A Corona Post

Maybe this will be interesting for me to read in later years.

The negatives:

• My ballet school closed a couple of weeks ago, which happened pretty fast in the end. Well, I guess everything has been happening fast, but I mean, we were talking with our teacher probably two days earlier that we wouldn't be closing in the foreseeable future. There were no confirmed cases of corona in our area yet at the time and I guess no one really understood how fast it spreads. But things changed in a couple of days and all schools closed their doors. Competitions and our spring show are also cancelled, obviously.
• I'm out of work for the time being. I only started working in a sushi restaurant a couple of months ago and now it's closed as well. It's a new restaurant, so I don't know if it will survive and whether I will have work at all anymore, so I suppose I have to start looking for a new one, which is a shame because I really liked that job but I can't just rely on it being there after this crisis is over. The problem, of course, is that if the job market around here was bad before...
• I had to move in the middle of this crisis, last weekend. Moving is stressful to begin with, so this move was definitely the hardest one for me yet. Me or my girlfriend don't drive and neither do most of our local friends, so we had a friend come over from quite a distance away to drive a van for us, and I was just waiting for the government to ban travelling altogether, but luckily it only started happening today, four days after our move. For now it's only in certain areas though. It was also the first time that I was physically the strongest person so I carried all the heavy stuff myself or with our friend. (Until now I've always had my dad for help!) The day after I was so tired I couldn't do anything but watch Gilmore Girls for almost the entire day.

These were probably the most significant things so far, but I'm sure the situation will get worse. Obviously, just like everyone, I've had to cancel all plans that involve getting outside of my house but right now things could still be a lot worse. In my area we can still go to the store and visit friends even if most places are closed, and there's a lot of space in my city to move in nature and it isn't heavily populated so avoiding people isn't very difficult.

The positives: (Yes, there are positives)

• Some people are awesome. A local law firm decided to buy tickets for cancelled events in the spring season from three local culture and sports organizations since they lost practically all ticket income because of corona. The three they chose were the city orchestra, Kataja Basket Club and our ballet school Relevé. My teacher, the owner, was besides herself. She thought it was a prank at first. The law firm challenged other organizations that aren't so affected by corona to support those who are.
• I have all the time I want in my hands right now and don't have to feel guilty about wanting to spend it home. A feeling shared by all introverts. Even if the loss of work means I'm poor again it is far easier to be poor when you've got nowhere expensive to go anyway. I'm going to enjoy getting my new home in order and I'll be working on my comics and writing.
• Since my new home is finally big enough for a ballet barre I figured I needed to get one right away since I would be training at home. The move was a perfect timing actually, because it would've been nearly impossible for me to do ballet in my old home but here it works out! I asked if my ballet teacher's husband could make a barre for me since he's quite handy and now he's making them for everyone, which is very cool of him!

I'm sure I'm yet to discover a lot of negative and positive things I'll face in the near future, but this is what I've been thinking about these days. I don't want to waste a good crisis, so we'll see what the future holds.

Aand this has nothing to do with corona but I'm besides myself because I finally have ground under my feet instead of a balcony when I step out of the living room door. It's tiny but I'm so happy!

30 Day Challenge: Best trip of your life (How I met my girlfriend)

In my second year of high school I got a chance to go to Japan for a short (three weeks) student exchange. The possibility to go to Japan was one of the two reasons for my high school choice. (The other reason was the music program.) Every year, two people were chosen for this short exchange in an all-girl high school in Osaka. I still kind of find it hard to believe I was picked. Luck was on my side, and the choice was mostly based on written applications. I tend to be much more convincing on paper than in person.

And that's how I met my girlfriend, Rita. It's been, what, almost ten years now.

It's kind of baffling to think that we probably never would've talked if we hadn't been the two people chosen for this trip. I knew of her, but I'm pretty bad at making friends spontaneously, and I wouldn't have had a reason to talk to her without this. According to me the first time we met was at the info for the Japan exchange, before we applied. We happened to sit close by and I started talking to her and we talked almost the entire half an hour about anime and Japanese culture. But it kind of doesn't count because afterwards she had no memory of talking to me. So, if we hadn't been chosen together we most likely never would've talked again.

She counts that the first time we met was after being chosen. I still remember that well too. I saw her friends circling her and congratulating her at school, in the lobby, just when I was getting a hot chocolate from the coffee machine. I knew those reactions couldn't be about anything else than the Japan exchange, since the e-mail about the choices was supposed to come that day. I hadn't had a chance to check my e-mail yet (Oh, the time before smartphones...), so I went to ask her who else was chosen. She tilted her head and looked at me with a ”Do I know you?” -look. Since then that expression has become all too familiar to me. Whenever she's caught off guard and doesn't get what's going on she has this same expression: Her whole face is a big frown and her mouth hangs open. But it seemed obvious even then that her brain was processing, so I waited. Then she concluded that the other name mentioned in the e-mail couldn't be anyone else's, and she pointed her finger at me.

I managed to find a picture from Japan where she has almost that exact expression except the frown is not as strong in this one.

She tells me I was funny, because I kind of tried to do a very slow pirouette to celebrate, without spilling my hot chocolate. And later she got kind of embarrassed about pointing at me, thinking it must have looked rude, but, excuse me, who cares, I'd just heard that we were going to Japan! One of my high school dreams was coming true!

I don't even know where to start with Japan, really. It may have been the best, but it was also the weirdest trip of my life. I had never been that far from home, so I guess the culture shock was to be expected. Everything about Japan made me feel like I had stepped into another world completely, even though the Japanese and the Finnish as a people are significantly similar in a lot of ways if you look past the initial culture shock.

Anyway, feeling out of place started the moment I got out of the plane.

The air. So. Humid. For a moment I thought it would bother me for the whole three weeks, it just felt so heavy to breathe. I had never felt like the air itself was difficult to breathe. But in the end I got used to it surprisingly fast.

But I suppose the most significant thing that made me feel so out of place there was that I'm used to blending in with the crowd. In Finland I've always been exactly medium height, medium blonde with medium length hair, not fashionable but not exactly quirky (maybe a little now that I'm older). I've never drawn much attention in Finland. But oh dear, Japan was a whole new ball game. I'm sure a lot of foreigners have had a similar experience in Japan, but, honestly it felt completely ridiculous. The same attributes that made me completely inconspicuous in Finland, made me the center of attention in Japan. And you would think that Japanese people are as reserved as Finns and understand personal space? As if... For some reason people there seemed to think it was completely fine to touch my blonde hair without asking, to stare into my blue eyes at almost a kissing distance and stare really obviously and without shame at my E-cups, just because they find these things exotic.

I think we could almost play another round of every anime fan's favourite game... "Spot the Main Character" with this picture. (I'm not even the only foreigner in it but I'm still the one to stick out first.)

And because it was an all-girl school, I essentially got to experience what it's like to be "the prince of the school". I'm not even kidding. Groups of girls would start screaming, actually truly screaming, when me and Rita walked past in the corridor. Sometimes someone wanted to give their e-mail to us or ask us to add them on Facebook or something and they would always blush so deeply and have a bunch of girls behind them cheering them on.

It was baffling to me. If this wasn't my fifteen minutes of fame, I don't know what is. And it was kind of a shock to me that Japanese girls actually did behave like the girls do in all the manga that I had read for a few years by then. I always assumed it was exaggerated, but really, it isn't, not significantly, anyway.

And some random guys on the streets were equally baffling. Once when I was just walking out of a train, minding my own business, a guy came behind me and almost jumped in front of me, like close, and yelled: "Konnichiwa!" at my face. And then he slowly walked away, looking at me the whole time with a manic smile on his face. He didn't even look where he was walking!

For some reason it was me who got the most attention out of the two of us, even though we're both blond and Rita is the loud one.

I didn't always appreciate how random strangers thought it was okay to be so rude (because I was an interesting foreigner?) but I really loved my host family and I'm pretty sure the feeling was mutual. They made sure I got to do everything I wanted to do there, they even took me out to eat sushi multiple times because they knew it was my favourite food, even though it's considered to be pretty festive food.

Don't I look happy. You won't find a sushi place in Finland where the sushi comes to your table on a conveyor. What.

I certainly had a lot of new experiences there and I have to admit a lot of the most memorable ones had to do with food, because I had been reading so much manga and seen so much Japanese food in them that I never had a chance to taste before. One of the coolest things was the school bakery. Me and Rita both fell in love with panda shaped buns that had chocolate inside them and some other chocolate bun too that was kind of like a cinnamon roll but bigger and just with a lot of chocolate instead of cinnamon. I'm still sad I can't get those anywhere. I loved everything I tasted in Japan from takoyaki to yakiniku.

We had a lot of time to bond with Rita because exchange students had their own hangout room in the school and for some of the time we were the only ones. We also didn't go to every class with our host sisters, just some, and then we had some cool ones separately, like tea ceremony and Ikebana. But we also had a lot of time to spend in the exchange student room alone, and I got to witness a lot of Rita's randomness during the first week that I knew her. She would do things like lie on a table on her stomach because she had eaten something that made her feel bloated. She would climb on a chair just to look at the room from a different perspective. From the start, she was a very entertaining person to observe. Once she completely shocked some poor truck driver who was looking at us curiously, and she just smiled widely and waved at him as if they were best friends.

I was initially a little sad that we weren't expected to participate in everything. Like when we had an overnight camp with our host sisters' class we were not expected to make food with everyone or attend all of the activities. But, I must admit it was nice that we were also scheduled to bathe separately, because we had so much room, though it seems a little unfair. We got the whole bathroom for just the two of us, and we got to bathe first too. Even though we weren't exactly treated like everyone else, which would've been nice in a way, it was also nice to have a lot of time to bond with my new friend. She was interesting to me from the start, because she was so free and easy in a way. I was used to people opening up to me, but she took it a step further, like asking me to massage her and braid her hair and lie beside her in her bed before we went to sleep, even though we had really known each other for just days. She was also kind of brutal. Like, when we took that bath she took a long good look at me and said: "Well, you're exactly like a hentai girl with your boobs and your mellow personality." Haha... But for some odd reason I didn't mind any of it at all. I just found her personality very curious.

I had some troubles in Japan too. Like the fact that it took 1,5 hours to get to school from my host family's house and it took three trains and two buses and some walking on top of all that. And it's not really the time or the long way but the fact that there are so many people everywhere. I am not used to such crowds and it drained me of energy completely. Sometimes I was so tired I fell asleep right after coming home from school.

Language was another issue, since I don't really speak Japanese. I took one course in high school but it's nothing really. I probably picked more up from anime than that course. And the level of English of Japanese high school kids it pretty much the level of my Swedish. (Bad, even though I studied it from seventh grade.) Our host sisters went to a special English class so they were better than average and communicating with them was fine, but I always needed my host sister to translate to her parents and some teachers too.

Certainly there were some cultural differences that were not easy to pick up on or understand. The thing we were the most bewildered by was that pretty much no one in our host sisters' class actually liked manga or anime, but instead they loved things like High School Musical, Hannah Montana and Justin Bieber completely unironically. In Finland no one older than maybe 13 would. (Or if they did most people wouldn't admit it.) And as the weeks went by it became clear that this might be a part of a bigger phenomenon. It seemed to us that the Japanese kids our age were treated in a way that seemed younger than they were, from our perspective. Maybe it's a part of the communal culture in Japan. Students were made to do things like walk in pairs during a field trip (something that would never happen in Finland after elementary school). Everything about their life in and outside of school seemed so scheduled to us. I think kids tend to have a much longer leash, so to speak, in Finland when they are much younger. It seemed to us like Japanese kids were mostly taught to obey and not ask questions. While in Finland I think that kids generally would assume they have a right to know why some things need to be done a certain way, and if they're given a good reason they're happy to do it, but they would feel a need to know why. I'm speaking very generally of course, but that's the feeling I got in Japan: Asking "why" didn't seem like a cool thing to do.

I think what I liked about the people there the most was that I was not expected to be outspoken or talkative. I realize that it probably comes from a place that has many problematic aspects as well, but, people tend to assume that Finland is a country of introverts, and while that may be true in large scale, any day in Finland is still always a draining experience for me socially. I feel like I have to use every last bit of my tiny storage of extroverted energy just to get by. I didn't feel like this in Japan very much. I had other issues, like crowds and attention that drained my energy too, but I didn't feel like I needed to pretend to be more extroverted than I was, very much. All I needed to do was half smile and nod and people loved me for it. Writing it out makes me feel a little icky about it now, because it makes me think of all the ways in which that is problematic, but back then I was just happy because it made my life easier.

Here's another thing that Japanese people can do unironically which is actually really cool. They had beauty contests at school where boys dressed as girls, and they were very convincing. Almost none of them were over the top, they just all looked really good in skirts and wigs and put serious effort into it. In my middle school some boys dressed as Spice Girls one time but they didn't even try to do it well, it was all a big joke. I appreciated that this kind of thing in a high school festival could be not-a-joke. The picture is from our host sisters' friend's school were we went to see the cultural festival.

My main take away from the whole trip was my new friend, though. Of course, we got to know a little of each other before the trip began but essentially we got to know each other in Japan. I guess someone could say our friendship began in a "misattribution of attraction" sort of way since people say it's common to find another person interesting if you go through an adventure with them. But I think the ten years of ever deepening bond that all happened after those three weeks speaks louder. And still, without Japan, we probably never would've gotten to know each other, because neither of us was the kind of person that the other would've instinctively wanted to make friends with at first glance. So this is one of those situations where one distinct detail actually has the power to change your life. There was no way we would've found each other if we weren't chosen together for this escape from our normal reality. Sometimes it's only in extreme circumstances that you can really see someone, and that's definitely what happened to us.

We look like such awkward nerds.

We thought it was because of the time we spent away from our usual circles together that made our relationship difficult for other people to grasp from the start. But it was probably more than that. People didn't seem to be sure how to categorize our relationship and neither did we, for a long time. Maybe it's because we grew into what we are now, so slowly but so steadily that most people started assuming were we a couple before we did.

Winning wasn't the point

I recently participated in a ballet competition in Helsinki with the rep groups of our ballet school. This time was quite an adventure for me, since I ended up injuring myself the morning of the competition by falling down the stairs and spraining my ankle. (Yeah, seriously, lol.) I danced anyway and my ankle got badly swollen, and I walked with sticks for a week afterwards, but a month later I'm fine and back to dancing. :)

We did really well in the competition and brought home three golds and three silvers. One of the silvers was from my solo, and we also got gold and silver for two small group dances I was in.

There's one little detail people like to take special note of, though. There weren't too many participants in the adult category, which a lot of our dances were in.

In the solo category there were only three adult participants, and even so they were divided into two categories: 20+ and 30+. I got silver in the 20+ category with only one other competitor who was also from my school and got gold. Naturally, the only participant in the 30+, also from our school, got gold as well.

In the small groups adult category, there were only three numbers as well. Two from us, and one from another school. We placed gold and silver.

When people hear this, they tend to be a lot less impressed with us, than they initially were. Suddenly, my solo isn't the one that was second best anymore. It's the one that placed last.

I get it. They see that our medals were a guarantee, so it's nothing impressive in their eyes.

However, there are a lot more layers to this whole thing than they understand. And I'd like to pay attention to something else, another detail that they seem to miss entirely:

All the adult competitors were from our school, except for one. All the three solos, and the majority of the small group numbers, came from our school. There are a lot of children and teens competing in this competition, but so few adults.

There are a lot of adults doing ballet as a hobby in Finland. But for some reason very few of them participate in competitions.

So, I don't think the important question is whether or not we won. The important thing is that we were there.

Three years ago when we first participated in the same competition, we were the only adult group in the entire competition, and our category was canceled. (We were put together with the teens, the most demanding category and we still got bronze, so that's actually nothing to scoff at.)

Since then, there have been a few adult groups or solos (we haven't been to every competition but the adult categories haven't been cancelled since then, that I've heard of.)

So, to me it's pretty obvious, that the most important part that we're doing is being there. Winning isn't the point. Being there, to represent adult amateur ballet dancers, and hopefully encouraging them to participate more in the future, is the most important thing, at least to me.

I don't know why adults are not participating. It might be that they don't feel confident enough, or it might be that their school doesn't even have a performing group for adults. Whatever the reason, I think it can change if enough people get inspired to take the opportunity to perform and compete, and stand for the fact that adult ballet is not useless or in vain, and even people who start ballet as adults can become confident performers with good technique. (I know a few living proofs of that.)

There definitely is a negative bias against adult ballet, and I think it's safe to say that adult dancers have also internalized some of it themselves. Professional ballet is so much about the right technique and perfection in every aspect of the performance and your body as well, it's a harsh world, everyone knows that. But when you do ballet for fun and for yourself, it shouldn't be about that. It should be about the joy. And I wish that adults would claim their space, and their right to express themselves exactly the way they are. As well as anyone.

So, when someone scoffs at our medals, I could get annoyed and tell them that if you look at our written feedback and the points we got from the judges, you'll see that we still could've placed well even if there were other competitors.

But I would rather point out that winning wasn't the point. Because your right to participate is NOT dependent on who you are, how good you are, or what you look like.

So, if any adult ballet dancer happens to read this, my message to them is: When there is an opportunity for adult dancers to participate, please take it. The more we take them, the more opportunities there will be in the future.

And don't worry about not being able to do something, or not looking right. Be happy and proud about everything you can do. In my eyes, that's the true victory.

Yes, I have a girlfriend, yes, I'm still aromantic!

I got this shirt with aromantic colours after me and my girlfriend started dating. She got one with bisexual colours.

And sometimes I'm surprised at how much people make me feel like I should be wearing this every day. (Not sure if it would help but anyway.)

I've lost count with how many times I've had to explain my orientation or my relationship to people just during the past week. And this is not counting people who just assume I'm a lesbian. It's people who know I'm an aromantic asexual. Sometimes it's just baffling to me how difficult it seems for some to wrap their head around the idea that people's orientation isn't determined by their actions.

Having a girlfriend doesn't suddenly change my identity, but so many people still seem to be under the impression that an aromantic couldn't date anyone. Even though that may be true for some, it's not always the case. People can still enjoy aspects of romantic relationships even though they don't feel romantic attraction. Just like aces can have sex for other reasons besides sexual attraction. (One of my friends even assumed that I was bisexual now that I have a girlfriend. Why bi??)

To be fair though, the people whom I've discussed my feelings in more detail with, have more reason to question the label I use. Because I've grown into the idea of romance between me and my girlfriend so slowly and gradually that I feel like I can no longer say I don't feel romantic feelings for her. So, I suppose with those people it's reasonable to ask why I keep calling myself aromantic if I can feel romantic feelings.

Well, here's why:

1) I've never felt romantic feelings for anyone before in my life and don't expect to feel them again if I ever break up with my girlfriend. 2) It took me 7-8 years of knowing her and being her best friend, and four years of living together in very close proximity to develop those feelings.

So, yeah, I suppose I could technically call myself demiromantic, but it wouldn't make any sense, because if I called myself that, people would assume, that after some time of knowing me and getting close to me, they would be included among the people who I might possibly develop romantic feelings for. And this would be untrue. There is no such group of people for me.

Because how often does it normally happen that you just naturally know someone for a very long time and move in together and live together for years without even having the slightest idea of the possibility that you might fall in love? For me to fall in love again, I'm sure it could only be possible under very similar circumstances. And those circumstances are really very, very rare. So, maybe I could technically be demiromantic, but in that case, I would be very very very very very demiromantic. So demiromantic, that it wouldn't even matter in practice.

I guess I could also call myself grey-aromantic, which would imply that I only feel romantic attraction under very specific circumstances or very rarely. I guess that's technically true as well, but it's not any more practical, because people would take it to mean that there's some "wiggle room" with my aromanticism. And there isn't. When it comes to everyone else but my girlfriend there is none. Calling myself aromantic will give people a lot more accurate sense of the reality.

Also, one of the definitions of aromanticism, and probably the most popular one, is that you don't feel romantic attraction AND/OR romantic desire. Attraction means that you want to have a romantic relationship with a specific person, and even if I feel that towards my girlfriend, I still don't feel romantic desire: the need to have a romantic relationship in general. I've never felt that, and I have no reason to believe I would suddenly start craving for romantic relationships if I broke up with my girlfriend.

Finally, there are a lot of stories online, if one wants to look for them, about people who had experiences outside of what one would expect according to their orientation. Like a straight guy who fell in love with another guy, his best friend, but he also didn't feel like this made him bisexual. Because he felt that it was a once in a life time experience, it didn't suddenly make him think other guys were hot too, and because he expected to only ever pay attention to girls again, if he ever broke up with his boyfriend. There are also stories about a gay man similarly falling in love with a woman, or a straight girl falling in love with a girl or a gay girl with a guy, just once in their life. And these people don't have to start calling themselves bisexual, because it wouldn't make any sense for them or be of any use in their life.

By the same logic, I'm still an aromantic asexual.

Life Changes

I've noticed a sort of weird thing in the recent years: Whenever something that seems like a major change in my life has happened, I haven't felt like anything has changed at all. I immediately get used to it and it feels like it's always been the way it is now.

I think I've been wondering about that ever since I moved away from home and started university. That should've been a big life change, but it wasn't. Literally the most significant thing about it was "Yay, I can eat as much frozen pizza as I want."

The same year I found the word "asexual" and a whole community of people with experiences similar to mine, but to be honest I wasn't even surprised. It was cool to talk to others like me, but it was like the word immediately became a part of my identity and I didn't really need to digest it.

I think I've been thinking this again, because I just moved to a new apartment a couple of weeks ago after living in the same place for five years, and I already feel as if I've always been living here. Like every corner is as familiar as the back of my hand. Sure, I still get excited about how much more space I have now, but essentially I feel just as much at home as I've always felt.

However, I think the most hilarious example is, when I started dating my roommate and best friend last year, because our situation is anything but ordinary. I honestly believed I would never date anyone because I had no desire to, and wasn't attracted to anyone. She on the other hand was a Mormon and convinced that she was straight. And now it feels like we've always been dating.

It's funny how you can prevent yourself from seeing the obvious when you believe something. Apparently, being best friends and even living together for years without realizing you're in love with each other is not just movie stuff. It can really happen. It happened to us. (We were also one of those couples who everyone else thought was together long before it happened.)

Having romantic feelings for someone for the first time in my life should've been big. Seeing my best friend, now girlfriend, leave the religion she'd believed in for 25 years, partly because of me, should've been big. And sure, when I think about it, I can say it was, but in the end not really. Because it still feels like nothing has changed.

And I think I've come to realize why that is. If a change is natural, if it's good for you, and if it's actually already a part of who you are, it's not going to feel mindblowing. It's going to feel like the most natural thing, because, it is.

Different types of selflessness

I guess this was triggered by a conversation I had online recently.

There are different ways to be selfless and there are different ways to be selfish. Sounds pretty obvious, I know. But, as people generally like to do with other things too, sometimes some of them get really caught up in whose way is the right way.

Particularly, right now I'm thinking about people who think the only true way of serving the world around you is to be an activist of some sort. To help the people who are the most in need, to go to the places where things are the hardest.

People generally agree that being helpful or selfless is a good thing. But there are also people who think that the only true way, or at least, the highest level of doing that, is what I described above.

And sometimes people can be really quick to judge other people's lives by this standard, without having ever met them, or knowing much about them at all.

A character who would agree with me. Her name is Venna.

Often this starts with someone either describing their "cause" to me, or asking what mine is when they assume I have one. And then I will describe the way I live my life and some of the philosophies behind it. How I don't have a singular "cause" that my life is centered around. How I care about many humanitarian and environmental issues, and do my best to live my day to day life in alignment with that. How my sister describes me to be "thinking globally and acting locally". How I'm more concerned with what is happening in my immediate surroundings, and being of help to the people who are the closest to me, or reach out to me. How I have no drive to go somewhere else or lead a campaign, and how my personality wouldn't be suited for it. How I think that I personally feel I've accomplished the most, when I've touched an individual life, when someone tells me that the way I live my life has inspired them.

This is usually when they start "disagreeing" with me, though I'm only describing my personal ways. They don't want to see us as equals with different life styles. They see me as "going in the right direction but not being quite there yet". As if my life style is merely a stepping stone to their life style, which is the ultimate goal.

I really don't like this kind of condescending attitude, but I will go on to explain to them how I don't think there's only one way to help the world around you. How some people are more suited to take on leadership roles, how some are more suited to be an activist, and how some are more suited to take care of what's right in front of them. It all comes down to personality and motivation. How I also don't think that helping the one most in need is what everyone should always be focused on. Of course it has to work that way in things like health care, you have to prioritize patients to keep everyone alive if possible. But I don't think that my neighbour's heartbreak is irrelevant because of "the children in Africa". (Quotations because the people who use that phrase usually don't even consider what it really means, they just like to say it for argument's sake.)

Of course I agree that wealth and resources are divided anything but evenly in the world and respect the people who are trying to do something about it in larger scale. However, I also don't agree that everyone should be focused on that, because if I was helping the "children in Africa" then who would be listening to my neighbour's heartbreak? Just because she isn't dying at the moment, doesn't mean that I can't be concerned about her, or that helping her is lesser.

At this point it's usually evident that these people think I'm childish or small minded. They are so adamant that their way is the only right way.

But how did they come to the conclusion that their "cause" is the most urgent one, anyway? The one that the world needs the most? Usually they don't have a clear reasoning for it. Because it's way more complex than that. They aren't doing what they do because it's "right", like they seem to think. They're doing it, because they have a personal motivation, and a drive for it.

And if I don't have a drive for it, then what good would I be for them?

Yeah, I know, they think they can awaken this drive in me, because they think it's the only way to go about life. For some reason it seems like they have to believe that what they're doing is the ultimate good, and no one else is good enough unless they're doing the same thing with their lives.

But it's not like that. Because no one knows what's the ultimate best thing for the world, and everyone has different drives and motivations. These people are not, for example, trying to make the world vegan because it's a higher calling. They're doing it, because they have the drive and the personality for it. And they shouldn't think that anyone who simply is vegan is below them, or ultimately going to become like them someday.

Trying to make big changes in the world isn't the only way to make change, and the big changes will only last if individual people will live it true in their daily lives. And this isn't a one-way process, it's more of a circle. There are different ways to help people and that should be good! I'm glad that some people are fit to lead campaigns. Just like I'm glad that some people are fit to help their neighbours and friends in their day to day problems and sorrows, like me.

And though these ways seem opposite, neither is more selfish or selfless than the other. The one that is sacrificing all their time to a cause, can be extremely selfish in the eyes of that neighbour, who only asked for a little bit of their time, for a few kind words, but they only ever have time for "the world". Just like from the eyes of the activist, the person going around helping neighbours is selfish because "they could be doing so much more with their time".

But the world just wouldn't work if everyone was the same, right? Like, there has to be people who are able to ignore people's immediate feelings around them, and focus on practical things instead. Just like there has to be people who are willing to "waste" time, and listen to personal problems. Because even if there is enough food and water for everyone, it won't matter if people are so lonely and depressed, that they're not going to want to live. The same is true the other way around too of course. Words of kindness and a listening ear alone isn't going to pay the rent.

All I'm really saying is that people have a lot of different needs, and the environment has a lot of different needs too. And I wish that people would be happy that there are different kinds of people to cater to all those different needs! It shouldn't be about who is more selfless or who is doing the most good in the world. This shouldn't be an ego issue.

And what people should realize is an ego issue, is which things in the world you're determined to make better. Just because you have a personal instead of an "absolute, unquestionable, divine" reason to do what you do, doesn't make it insignificant. Instead, after realizing that, you can help people better, because you understand what it is you're getting from it.

Sometimes I just want to tell people "Relax, you're fine, you don't have to be perfect" but I know it wouldn't help them, it would just rub them in SUCH a wrong way.

If I don't stop now this is going to get out of hand, so I'll just conclude this with a rose I drew with my left hand, and another that I drew with my right foot. Because why not.