The role society plays in how we see ourselves and how we see the world is incredible. Many of us profess having this brick-wall exterior that renders us exempt from society’s claws. We don’t give a damn about how others perceive our haircuts or our frayed jeans. We are impervious to criticism or ...
Airports are human-crafted spaces that demand a special type of obedience resembling that of highly qualified military personnel. They require a certain uniform acquiescence inherent to forming long lines and waiting patiently. They test how easily you acquire the necessary knowledge of what goes under ...
Trigger warning: This column contains graphic descriptions of violence.This summer, I saw a woman get shot. Everyone said it was a man. I maintain it was a woman. I saw her and a man struggling, and I saw her collapse to the floor, followed by three motorcycles that piled on top of her minuscule body ...
It’s funny how we let others affect us. Our moods are surprisingly contagious. And if they are not contagious per se, then they are at least strong conductors of rather incendiary or equally intense changes in those of others. Moods travel through us and between us, kind of like electric tentacles ...
There seems to be a predetermined structure to life, and we’re just too stubborn to admit it. Even though we exhort "following your dreams" and "living life to the fullest," it seems we are set on doing otherwise. There’s a reason we say "follow" your dreams. It's ...
When I moved to the United States at the age of five, I remember that I marveled to a fellow classmate about her height, noting how big she was. She burst into tears and told the teacher I called her fat. My third language was French. My first day in Paris, I endeavored to ask a Carrefour clerk where ...
A predicament we face today is the menace that our wrinkle-count will one day supersede what we can count on two hands. Breaching the geriatric gates is now comparable to waltzing into one of Dante’s circles of Hell. "Waltzing" is too kind of a term. "Dragged by the undaunted claws ...
There will always be that one person that begins a conversation and lacks the social awareness of knowing when to end it. A friend of mine, Alexis, travelled this summer to Colombia. He endured a 10-hour flight in the company of a socially inept Colombian woman with a disproportionate fear of cold weather. ...
Ask me whether I find someone attractive, and I’ll try my best to revert to my first impression of said individual. I will do this because I know that once you’ve crossed the border of objective physical appraisal and thrown in the external variable of personality, apparent beauty changes completely.
The "Live in the Moment” mantra has been preached so profusely that it induces a gag-reflex where it would have usually received some thoughtful nods and complete mental 180’s. Of course we live in the moment. We’re breathing this polluted air while we digest the political upheaval in the ...
