Move to Live Life
People evolve as they move around. Moving around can be expressed in many ways, but travelling is one way that we could move to evolve. Through travelling, we can evolve intellectually, emotionally, and eventually grow as a person. In my opinion, travelling is: the butterfly excitement on my chest whenever I land a foot in an airport; the knowledge that I capture whenever I meet someone new; the self-reflection that I do while  travelling and finally the happiness that overpowers all my emotions.

Living in a homogenous country where everyone has the same ethnicity, culture, color, and religion, expanding your understanding of the world isn’t easy. And basically, my world was my country. I didn’t know how it felt like to meet someone from Asia, Europe or any other country whatsoever. It wasn’t that long ago that I thought that everyone with small eyes was from China. The first time that my world started to expand was the first time that I landed my feet on an airport. One of the airports that blew my mind away was Dubai International Airport, and I remember meeting people from Japan, South Africa, and from all over the world. Those few hours in the airport widen my grasp of my knowledge on the world, and it was those hours that I had my first epiphany on travelling. The epiphany that travelling is far more educational than textbooks, and that practical presence expands your knowledge in a deeper level than any textbook does.

     Travelling allows me to meet with different people from different ethnicities, backgrounds, and cultures. This maybe that most exciting fact about travelling because how we interact with people around us reflects who we are.Travelling also sanctions me to discover my true identity, the identity that embodies me. More importantly, it also teaches me the many identities that people personify, and ultimately educates me about their flaws and strengths. Through these lenses, I encounter many versions of myself. It’s our decision which version we identify with and which version we like people to see it. At the end, it’s these experiences that bring out our different versions, and it’s not every day that we experience something extravagant in our mundane day routine. It’s through these experiences of meeting people that we develop and grow as a person. Why do you think adults receive more responsibilities than adolescent? It’s because adults have more experiences, and they lived longer. Unfortunately, experiences don’t come without movements. For example, if you raise someone in an isolated house without any interactions with humans and nowhere to go, that person would turn out more like an animal than human. No one desires to become an animal, and I for sure don’t want to miss the fun and the excitement that life has to offer as human. To  not turn out like animals, the humane thing to do is to move to seize all the experiences that would eventually make-up who we are. Henry David says, “Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down” in his essay, “Walking”, to express his inspiration to walk and move.

Travelling has a way of making us think and reflect on ourselves. Most of us live in structured day-to-day schedules whether we are working or studying, and we don’t usually ponder on ourselves. We get stressed from deadlines, exams, and work that we don’t take a second to relax and enjoy the moment. One of the only times that I really self-reflect is when my head is leaning against a window of a car or plane. I usually listen to music and stare down the window to see the clouds and trees reasoning through actions that I have taken and setting goals for myself. These moments allow me to ease up my stresses, and freshen-up every time I do it.

Most importantly, travelling gives me the happiness that overpowers all of my emotions. It doesn’t matter if I’m stressed, angry, or sad, all these emotions trample down when this sudden, and beautiful feeling of happiness emerge. Doing something for the first time or seeing cool stuff for the first time could trigger this happiness.  For example, I travelled to Jordan last term, and there were a lot moments where I just felt happiness. These moments were the times Jordan that I was trying new things like snorkelling, riding a camel, horse, and a boat for the first time. During these moments, I feel free and I feel like I can do anything. It is that sense of feeling freedom that brings out the best version of me.

Travelling makes me alive, free, and empowered. I hope to do more travelling to find my true identity and find the best version of myself before my time in this precious world end.

Walking on ice

Walking on ice

To become a “walker” one must free themselves from all external obligations and focus on maximizing the happiness of oneself and others. The journey of walking is that of a spiritual and emotional adventure that is guided by oneself and God. One can not be forced to walk; the pursuit of walking is a mutual existence in which the journey and person become intertwined. My personal “walking” is when I play pond hockey. When I am on the ice, nothing else matters. For a couple of hours I can free myself from all other obligations and capture the pleasure, liberty, and peacefulness that pond hockey has to offer. Thoreau describes, “You must be born into a family of walkers” (Thoreau 111). Although I was not born into a family of skaters, in fact I was the first person in my family to skate, my upbringing fostered my love for the game of hockey.

Ever since I was a young child, my frozen local pond has been my favorite source of pastime. Thoreau describes walking as, “nothing in it akin to taking exercise” (Thoreau 112). Similarly, I do not consider pond hockey as exercise; I can get lost in the enjoyment of pond hockey for hours. I simply enjoy hockey in its most natural and free flowing form; no referees, heckling fans, cutthroat coaches, college scouts, or player agents- just me and my boys. No rules to slow the pace, no systems to constrict the flow, and no hitting to foster hostility. No memory of my mistakes in the last game, last shift, or last play. Although sometimes directionless and sauntering, playing pond hockey is soothing to the soul and the manner in which I find my true inner peace. Pond hockey can provide many people with a similar sense fulfilment because of the ease of accessibility and brotherly unity that is developed within minutes of playing with someone. Likewise, Thoreau states, “No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and independence which are the capital in this profession” (Thoreau 112). No monetary value can provide one with the utopian state that is achieved when walking.

Much of the beauty of pond hockey is connected to the allure of nature. Thoreau describes walking as a quest, “to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels" (Thoreau 110). In this sense, infidels are non believers that tarnish the beauty of the Holy Land, while the local pond is my Holy Land of hockey. Similarly, the infidels of hockey are the grinders; the agitators that contribute to the team by attempting to injure the skill players on the other team. Grinders have a misguided role that has no place in the Holy Land of pond hockey. Thoreau furthers his description of the Holy Land when he states, “So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn” (Thoreau 135). Comparably, pond hockey provides me with an emotional and psychological outlet that temporarily relieves my frustrations and elicits joy and affection. Thoreau continues his description of nature by portraying his neighbourhood and its surrounding area as a location to escape reality and enter a state of temporary euphoria and tranquility. Similarly, my favorite place to place pond hockey is at my local pond. I learned how skate on this pond and have grown up playing there with many of the same players for fourteen years. It is easy to lose track of time; my mother would often call me well past midnight wondering when I would be home. Thoreau acknowledges that the environment affects one’s walk when he states, “For I believe that climate does thus react on man--as there is something in the mountain air that feeds the spirit and inspires” (Thoreau 119). Equivalently, skating outside with the crisp air, falling snow, and clear night sky, rather than a monotone, fluorescent lit rink with the stale smell of fast food is the difference between walking and playing hockey.

Although Walking was written nearly 150 years ago, Thoreau's comments on difficulties that many young people faced in that era are applicable to youth today. Thoreau foresees, “When we should still be growing children, we are already little men” (Thoreau 129). I would consider myself, and many of my pond hockey counterparts to be little men, although most of us are still teenagers. Pond hockey provides us with an escape from the pressures of college, recruitment, and the constant pressure to improve our resumes. Fittingly, Thoreau also notes, “Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance” (Thoreau 129). This image parallels my life that is spent worrying about grades, SAT scores’, college applications and winning the next hockey game. I would benefit from untroubled relaxation. Thoreau remarks, “In short, all good things are wild and free” (Thoreau 126). I hope that after I mature and surpass my intense adolescent years that I can shed the burden of expectations, free my soul, and find more time to appreciate life.

Whitman's Poems Create Fire

Walt Whitman's poetry style flouted traditional meter and rhyme and gained him the label, "the father of free verse

Whitman’s Poems Create Fire

Walt Whitman has been the Jesus of poetry. With innovative poems, Whitman revolutionized poetry and spread enriching verses to everyone. His vivid and inspiring writings touched many people’s hearts and gave energy to hopeless souls, and his free verses, which did not obey the conservative rules of poetry, initiated a completely new era of poetry with a looser form and a direct personal voice. Whitman’s poetry has a wide scope: in embracing all of nature, he sometimes expresses his veneration of God, but also portrays the most infinitesimal part of nature. In thinking creatively about Whitman as both an energetic poet and nineteenth century individual, one can imagine similarities between him and a fire hydrant. Just as publishing makes poems easily accessible, fire hydrants make water accessible everywhere in the city. Invented during the nineteenth century, this red-colored fire hydrant is always there to save civilians in emergencies. In brief, Whitman and a fire hydrant share similarities in that they both have saved people, symbolize sexuality, and have endless reservoirs tapped with great spewing force.

Whitman’s poems and fire hydrants imply sexuality. In Whitman’s poems, readers can easily identify themes of sex and sexuality. In Song of Myself, using erotic phrases and tones, Whitman connects bodies with souls and redefines sexual intercourses as a spiritual experience. For instance, Whitman argues that sexuality is a way to directly connect with the world as he writes, “I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked/I am mad for it to be in contact with me." Moreover, in one of his anonymous reviews of his own work, Whitman states: “body, he teaches, is beautiful. Sex is also beautiful. He works the muscles of a male and the teeming fibre of the female throughout his writings, as wholesome realities, impure only by deliberate intention and effort.” In some rare places, some of Whitman’s works explicitly describe sex. In the nineteenth century, lines like these might have been scandalously vivid: “sex contains all, / bodies, souls, meanings, proofs, purities, delicacies, results, promulgations... / Without shame the man I like knows and avows the deliciousness of sex." Furthermore, most readers can easily detect Whitman’s affection towards men because Whitman used his poems as the only way to express his struggles and suffering from the taboos of homosexual love during his oppressively conservative era (Aspiz 10). At a time when many homosexuals gave up on expressing their love toward men, Whitman wrote lines like “You friendly boatmen and mechanics! you roughs! / You twain! and processions moving along the streets! / I wish to infuse myself among you till I see it common for you to walk hand in hand” (A Leaf for Hand in Hand 5-8). Similarly, and in an obvious way, a fire hydrant suggests sexuality in that its shape resembles a masculine phallic symbol and it sprays water with force.  

Whitman and a fire hydrant share another similarity: life-saving qualities. The fire hydrant was invented to save lives in conflagrations, and Whitman, though not a professional doctor, volunteered extensively to help thousands of wounded soldiers during the Civil War. In 1862, the second year of the Civil War, Whitman saw his brother’s name, George Washington Whitman, in a New York Herald list of wounded soldiers from the war. After learning about his brother’s severe injury during the Battle of Fredericksburg, Whitman strenuously searched for his brother at numerous make-shift hospitals in Virginia. Despite failing to find his brother for several days, Whitman finally reunited with his brother in an Union Army camp at Falmouth, Virginia. After the two weeks that Whitman spent with his brother, Whitman started to shepherd many wounded soldiers from battlefields to the hospitals. He did so throughout most of the Civil War period. Through observing the hospital and listening to soldiers’ stories and emotions, Whitman could gain inspiration and sources for his poems. He told Ralph Waldo Emerson that “I desire and intend to write a little book out of this phase of America, her masculine young manhood, its conduct under most trying of and highest of all exigency, which she, as by lifting a corner in a curtain, has vouchsafed me to see America, already brought to Hospital in her fair youth—brought and deposited here in this great, whited sepulcher of Washington itself." Moreover, readers, through reading his poems, could infer how considerate and humane Whitman was during the violent and unstable period in America. In his wartime poems, by using phrases like “the tearful parting—the mother kisses her son—the son kisses his mother” (Drum-Taps 37) and “the blood of the city up—arm’d! arm’d! the cry everywhere” (Drum-Taps 34), Whitman sought to inform the readers how tragic and inhumane the Civil War has been, and he urged the public to finish the seemingly endless warfare in this country. Similar to how Whitman cared for the wounded soldiers and tried to disseminate the brutality of the Civil War, fire hydrants have functions of not only saving innocent civilians from large fires, but also of safeguarding the community in times of droughts. Reports have emphasized the importance of having a well-functioning fire hydrant in the community, such as when houses in Montgomery, Alabama, burnt down when the fire hydrant could not supply enough water to extinguish the fire in town. In addition, the community of Spicewood, Texas is trying to install more fire hydrants because people have been fully aware that fire hydrants have saved thousands of lives and properties from burning in wildfires. As a result, fire hydrants and Whitman are comparable to one another because of their life-saving records.

Whitman’s poetry and a fire hydrant share similarities in that they both have endless reservoirs tapped with powerful spewing force. While his contemporaries used traditional poetic rules and banal subjects, including patriotism and slavery during the Civil War, Whitman devised a more flexible style of writing that allowed ordinary individuals to enjoy reading poems without feeling bored and facing difficulties. In addition, Whitman also used diverse themes, varying from religion to politics and sex. Since poems often contained profound and complex message in shorter length than proses, many who were barely literate without receiving proper education avoided reading poems and were not capable of understanding them. However, Whitman’s revolutionary free verses that consist of both impressive expressions and easy format.

Watch Walt Whitman's Biography here: