A Collection of My Mind

Who We Are

When I was five, they asked me what I wanted to be. It was such a difficult question for a kid who only knew what her imagination created. Boys would usually come up with answers like astronaut or police officer. Girls would say ballerina or princess. But did out answers even matter? Because even when we told them who we wanted to be, they'd only tell us who we are. Bullies would give us a list of names and we let that define us. We, for a long time, let others define who we were and who we were going to be. As a kid, we were told anything was possible, but the older we got, they'd begin to tell us we had limits to our imaginations. Those words shattered the innocence of every child who dreamed. It shot an arrow through the lungs of adolescence and recalculated the way we defined ourselves. By the time we were thirteen, our dreams were withering fragments in the mix of grammar rules. We stood along a line of childish dreams that were shut down so quickly it was as if the sky had fallen.

When I told them who I wanted to be, they laughed and said to pick something reasonable. I began to go over the millions of stanzas I wrote and tried to find the error that they saw. I was at if for days, but the only flaw they saw was the fact that they couldn't dream anymore. They couldn't turn back the hands and rearrange everyone's twisted words that told them "They could not". Our generation is so delusional by the media and people who think they know best, that they limit their imaginations so only a small portion of their dreams are acceptable. But why can't we dream like the way we did on the playground? Why can't we define ourselves the way the mirror defines us? We were all born in a world where we all make history. Maybe not as the man who found a "new world", but to show kids that their dreams do matter. That who they wanted to be is possible. That whatever they do can change history.

For a long time, we tried to be who we were in a society that sees us as a virus in a computer code, trying to send security bugs to fix us. But how can technology fix something that has never been broken? How can it fix brains that have been around longer than its existence? Slowly, we are beginning to define ourselves the way the media is ashamed to do: Imperfection. Slowly, we realize children are more right than the laws the government has layed out for us to follow. So we break the rules as a silent protest, rebel against who they want us to be, and be who we are: the definition of perfection.