Stories

There are 6,885,500,000 souls on this planet. Each soul different from the other. Each writing a unique story. Can you imagine the gratitude of six billion stories being formed? This has been happening since the earliest of times, since the existence of man. Each one of us has a different story to tell and a different way to orate it. A painter composes his thoughts in colors. An athlete in his endurance. A teacher in his understanding. A president in his leadership. And yet we all write. No I don't mean scratching a bunch of symbols on a piece of paper by writing. Writing is creating. Be it emotions on your heart or memories in your mind or punching keys on a keyboard: you're creating something. And that creating is writing because it becomes something that you can always refer back to.

You remember when you were five and your mom used to read you the bedtime stories? And that was the only thing you looked forward to when you were asked to go to bed? That magical feeling of believing that everything ends well? Every story is a ravel of that world. Dragons and fairies and magic doors and animated animals were not just fabrications of your imagination-they were real. As real as it could get and you believed in it. You believed in the goodness of people and the power of fortitude. Ever wondered why kids are so much more happier than adults? Not only because they are unaware of the negative aura of this world but also because they live on the fact that dragons can be defeated. Stories give you hope and we could all use some hope at times.

A few days ago I was walking to my government class, alone for once. It was really cold and pretty and I thought I should take the long route from outside the buildings which is about a good six minute walk. Instead of trailing in my own thoughts, I looked around at the people for the first time in years. And I felt I understood everyone. Every face with a different expression. Every soul with a different emotion and yet among all this ambivalence I found something ubiquitous-a story. There's a story behind every little crush and every gossip exchanged. There's a story about every friendship and every joke. I felt alive not because of the weather but because of a fire kindling inside me. I want to write stories: of old and new, of fire and ice, of tress and animals, of everything. I want to write and write and write until I get tired of writing. I want to write for the people who deserve a voice. I want to write for people who already get too much publicity yet no one really knows them. My English teacher yesterday asked me to think about joining the newspaper staff. I had been planning on doing so but after that bit of 'appreciation' I realized this is something I love. I don't care if people think Pakistani's are terrible at English, I am going to write for it is my haven and I love it.

Facebook

The clock strikes 2:30 PM marking the end of our school day. Alas, it is the end of a tiring day and our brain has lost all its acuity by this time. Normally a person would be expected to go home and rest; maybe take a nap or watch some T.V. to relax. But we, the high school students, or teenagers in general run to our laptops/computers and log on to the depraved yet reputed website-Facebook. Oh no homework can definitely wait but updating our status to “Had a terrible day at school” must be done immediately in vain attempts to gain some sympathy from our esoteric fellow classmates. And so the process of procrastination begins. The debate over who has the most amount of homework, who has tougher classes and who had a worse day starts off and soon you realize its 6 pm already. Oh no we still have to reply to all those comments about how ‘pretty’ our supposedly artistic profile picture is. And so we begin our series of ‘thank yous’ and ‘no I am nots’. And by the time we’re done replying to our inbox messages and our wall posts and the rest of our fan mail, its 7 pm already. By now we have sumptuously wasted about three hours on Facebook and finally force ourselves to begin homework. But wait, “OH LOOK! A notification” and we go back to wasting some more time. Now it’s about 9 pm and we have done nothing fecund so far. So we garner ourselves to get off the computer and open our textbooks. When we go through our homework we realize we need to print a million pages of notes from our teacher’s website and so while waiting for the website to load our mind fiats us to wander off to Facebook, again. The idiosyncrasy of not seeing the little red highlight on the left side of our screen disappoints us a bit and therefore we start delineating gossips on Instant Messaging or “IM’ with our friends. The conversation goes something like this: “did you know [insert name] is in a relationship with [insert name]?” “But how did you find out?” “Obviously it’s on her profile.” “Ooh! let me stalk!” And so by the time we start homework its 10 pm already and consequently we’re up till 2 am working on our homework. This leads to our sophistry the next day about how we barely slept last night ‘doing our homework’. Facebook is not just a distraction from homework; it enervates one’s mind and acts as a dissocializing agent. Some people have hallowed logging on to Facebook and so they start living in the figments created by cyber-world and loose their touch with reality. It’s an ignominy that they are aware of what’s going on, on a friend’s Facebook profile but are impervious to the everyday mundane concerns which will actually affect us on a greater scale. Facebook also makes a person less social when it comes to real life because when one is talking to someone in real life and the conversation gets awkward one can’t always excuse oneself by saying ‘brb’(be right back) and log off on them. For once we actually have to make an effort and talk to the overweening people upfront. Sadly, I too am a culprit of this penchant towards Facebook and probably seem like a hypocrite speaking ill about it but my opinion still holds. And come on you have to admit such ubiquitous addicts are the reason you ever actually got a Facebook account and now even a nuance from your everyday routine of ‘socializing’ seems like a calamity.

The hardest things in life are the most rewarding things. Why you may ask people like to take thousand AP[Advanced Placement, basically university level courses in High School] classes when all they do is complain about the amount of homework they have? It's because when you get an A on a test in an AP class, you feel real happiness. It's like all your hardwork pays off and so you're willing to do thousand more tons of homework as long as you get to experience that few moments of happiness in shape of a reward. It's not that you have to do good anymore, it's more that you want to because that feeling is so addicting and mesmerizing. I was debating on taking Med terms instead of Econ next semester and I dropped the idea, not because I want to look nerdy[well sort of that too] but also because I want to challenge myself. Next semester is going to be hell but that's the fun part of school you get to experience hell in a heaven at the same time. Like a paradox. haha oh English Lang & Comp -_- So next time when you're thinking of giving up you should think about the feeling of content and happiness you get when you achieve something impossible or really hard. Be it finishing all your hwk for once ;) It's definitely amazing.