Does Marriage Still Have Meaning?

Why get married? In this day and age it's not something that is mandatory for long term couples.
Previous generations were married for decades as marriage was something that was taken very seriously and divorce was almost unheard of (whether they were happy or not).

Now, since divorce has become, for want of a better word, common, divorce rates have sky-rocketed to 42% with marriages lasting only 8 years. In the 2009 US census it was found that 11.6% of men married twice, 3.1% three or more times and 12.1% of women marrying twice and 3.2% marrying three or more times. Almost half of all children in the UK and US with married parents will experience divorce and live between homes. The family unit is now made up of step-parents, step-children/siblings and half siblings. If this is the norm that the next generation are growing up with, it would be fair to assume that this kind of pattern will carry on now we have what seems to be a very relaxed attitude towards marriage.

The split of a marriage is something that is consistently reported on in gossip magazines and on websites about our current obsession as a society: celebrities. As soon as a couple makes themselves public the question of tying the knot comes up and as soon as they are married its reported that the couple are already on the rocks and divorce is being spoken about with infidelity being the main cause for a split. True or not. With this kind of influence it appears that marriage is now something that you can get out of as soon as you don't like it.

From a birds eye view it looks as though people are now only preparing for the wedding rather than the marriage.

With most people meeting others online it has been reported that around 72% of couples are now meeting online. Social apps like Tinder and Grinder are now more popular than ever. This begs the question: what affect has this had on people? Even before getting into a relationship never mind marriage.

With social apps and the popularity of the selfie people are now picking people based on what they look like immediately. Look at their picture, swipe one way if you like them, swipe the other if you don't. You don't even have to speak to them. There is something very impersonal about the whole thing.

Feminism is now becoming an ever increasing issue all over the world, women are calling for equal treatment as people rather than being treated based on how they look. If this is the case then shouldn't participation on dating apps like Tinder go down? Or at least have profiles without a picture? Statistically women take far more selfies than men which makes me wonder whether or not they know they are playing into the objectification of themselves willingly (especially when its proven that the more skin you show the more attention, likes and comments you'd get, from both sexes). Women are saying one thing but their actions say the complete opposite when looking for some kind of romantic attention.

As a result, the young men of my generation now look at women even more as sex objects because it looks like that is all what young women want as well. Relationships are now shorter and people ask for nude selfies even before they meet the other person.

Dating is now a very daunting aspect for people as going online is the number one means for getting a date and is completely based on what you look like.

Only 10 years ago people were asked out on dates by people coming up to the other and introducing themselves first. A personal connection would be made first before anything else.

Where are we going if we treat each other like a novelty item? Will marriages that actually end with 'death till we part' be a thing of the past in the future?

A Secret

You have a secret
Hibernating in your mind
Crawling through your bones
Inside it sends you wild
Bending, twisting, contorting
Soon you will break
Soon you will shatter

You can't stop it
It's been too long
You've left it there to grow
The whispers twirl in between your thoughts
Louder and louder
Turning and swirling beneath the surface

Like cigarette smoke
It suffocates your guts
Gliding up to your heart
The beats are now erratic
You start to sway
Sweating, shaking
Now your knees are buckling
In the mud your skin is cracking

You have a secret
It dances in your day dreams
It keeps you from sleeping
Your heavy eyes are blind

Eaten from the inside out
You now belong to it
A possession bound alive
In it's world of tarnished chaos
And endless filth

Lying in the shallows
Weeds bleed out of your fingers
To knot through your hair
Intertwining with the roots below
So very still
So very small
A voiceless carcass

Sinking slowly
To break
To shatter
To crumble into dust

Now deep in the dark
Down in the depths
This secret has you

Why Can't There Be Introverts?

The world is a loud place. It's something that everyone knows and over the past few years, in the advancement of technology, it feels like it's gotten even louder.

We are now more connected than ever which, like everything, carries along with it a big list of pros and cons. We can now tell anyone anywhere what we think about anything and everything (this blog included) which can be viewed as both a pro and a con in itself.

We live in a place where it feels like opinions and thoughts must be given and shared whether it's on something important or not. We live in a place where we say things, anything, to get instant gratification in order to not be left behind and forgotten. This teaches people to say more and to talk around the clock.

This kind of mentality has moved from the internet into our daily lives. We all knew that one kid in class who spoke for the sake of speaking, the talker, the extrovert who had no problem at all saying what they thought, loved being around people and didn't like it when it was quiet. The world now favours the extrovert and is now becoming an increasingly harder place for introverts to exist.

The planet needs both introverts and extroverts but there now is an imbalance. Not in numbers but in the balance of who is listened to and heard. As we now live, we have to make noise, we have to say something in order for others to notice us and listen. As someone who is naturally very introverted, trying these kinds of behaviours out were ones that were extremely torturous and short lived.

From personal experience, speaking for the sake of speaking leads to very long and tedious small talk where your inner monologue begins a very long list of things that you would rather be doing or repeating various swear words at the person who is talking at increasing volumes.

This need to say something leads to an interesting question: are we now afraid of being quiet?

The first possible explanation is that we don't want to be alone. Of course we don't want to be alone. Humans are social creatures and we need social interaction. Talking allows others to know we're there, they then give us their attention and we are no longer by ourselves. Even if we are by ourselves, we will most likely be on social media connecting with others in some capacity. But this doesn't need to be constant. If we are alone, not talking in any kind of way then we must be lonely and lonely people are sad people. The line between lonely and alone is not as thin as people would think.

Introverts like being on their own. Usually for hours or even days at a time. This time alone lets quiet people enjoy the quiet and are often able to focus and concentrate on one thing for a long space of time. However, it seems that popular opinion tells us that there is something wrong with these people who stay in one space for extended lengths on their own and say very little or even nothing at all. There is now pressure on these people to change making it harder for introverts to live how they want. Especially for those who are desperate to fit in.

Introverted people can find some social occasions very difficult as they don't like saying something unless they feel they absolutely need to and don't like having meaningless chatter squawked at them. Having met lots of quiet and introverted people like myself I've found that introverts who have trained themselves to have extroverted behaviours are often very unhappy, they don't believe in what they're talking about and don't feel good in themselves. They feel like frauds and are unable to be who they really are as society won't allow them.

People love to encourage others to be themselves but this now looks very hypocritical if those who want to be quiet around others or not around others at all don't feel like they can. As writer Susan Cain said in her book 'Quiet: The Power of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking', "We can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point."

The media does seem to play a part in this as, in films and TV, it is often the quiet characters who rarely speak and are often alone who end up doing something catastrophic. From my point of view, people feel uneasy if they don't know what you're thinking.

I had a very eye-opening experience recently where I was sharing an elevator with a cleaner at my work. Apart from the obligatory hello when I first got on, I was quite happy to stand at the side and wait until I reached my floor. The cleaner, however, asked me if I was sad because I hadn't said anything. Up until this point we had been in the lift together for a grand total of 20 seconds. I was really taken aback by this question.

From then on I started watching people more carefully.

Working in a retail environment perhaps isn't the best suited job I could have as I've had many challenges having small talk with people (who you only talk to for 5 minutes, if that), but for now it is the only job I have. What is fascinating about it though is that I get to view a huge variety of people shopping. A very big social occasion in most cultures. Very rarely do I see people on their own and if they are they are either talking or typing on their phones or they are listening to music. What do people think will happen if they just had a quiet moment around lots of other people? Have they ever even thought about it?

When was the last time you did something in silence. Most of the time we're listening to something, playing something, watching something while doing something else. A good example is surfing the internet on your phone while watching TV. Chances are you're not really watching TV, it's more there for background noise.

My introverted friends and I love it when it's quiet and being quiet around each other. A lot of people would find a situation like that weird, antisocial or funny but usually it's not about communication, it's just about having company which is why many introverts love spending time alone with their pets.

As the masses are trying to say the most in the loudest voice over top of each other, quiet and introverted people are often looked past or forgotten. During my life I have been forgotten or overlooked on several occasions but, as it's easier and more fun for me to sit back and watch, these times have often suited me just fine.

As a result of being alone in a crowd, introverts usually become very interested in observing others and become very interesting people themselves. They notice things that are usually ignored, are very good listeners, quite imaginative and, as they don't talk just for the sake of talking, when they do talk what they say is usually very well thought through and well spoken.

Some of the most successful and influential people are those who have harnessed their introverted natures and used it to their advantage. People such as J.K Rowling, Bill Gates, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Michael Jordan, Harrison Ford, Charles Darwin, Rosa Parks, Audrey Hepburn, Alan Turing, Dr. Seuss, Steven Spielberg, Meryl Streep and Mark Zuckerberg to name a few.

“In the nation’s earlier years it was easier for introverts to earn respect,” Cain said in a Q&A with Amazon.com. “America once embodied what the cultural historian Warren Susman called a ‘Culture of Character,’ which valued inner strength, integrity, and the good deeds you performed when no one was looking. You could cut an impressive figure by being quiet, reserved, and dignified."

When asked about how her introverted nature influenced her writing, Rowling said " I had been writing almost continuously since the age of six but I had never been so excited about an idea before. To my immense frustration, I didn’t have a pen that worked, and I was too shy to ask anybody if I could borrow one…I did not have a functioning pen with me, but I do think that this was probably a good thing. I simply sat and thought, for four (delayed train) hours, while all the details bubbled up in my brain, and this scrawny, black-haired, bespectacled boy who didn’t know he was a wizard became more and more real to me.”

It's good to be quiet, it's good to be alone, it's good to be silent around others. It always has been. It wasn't ever broken, but we are trying to fix it.

(If you would like to know more from Susan Cain, click here http://bit.ly/1WKEY7N)

I Wasn't Taught How To Fail Well

I have always had a very strong love-hate relationship with failure. It is something that is strongly linked to my self-esteem and my self-image. It is something that I have always done my best to avoid and has kept me from taking risks.

Looking back over the past few years I have realized that the times I have failed have been the times where I learnt my most important lessons so far. They were grueling, horrible and necessary points in my life where I had to learn to look after myself and become an adult.

I know for a fact that I need to fail in order to move forward, that's the love part. However it doesn't make it any less daunting. I still hate it.

I've tried many times to pinpoint the moment where I became afraid of failure and failing and I came to realize something significant: we are not taught to fail well at school.

In terms of being a part of sports teams in school, we learn that we either win, lose or draw but the word failure is never used. Perhaps it's hard to tell a group of people all together that they failed to win?

However academically, on your own, failure is something that happens everyday but is never acknowledged. Those who succeed were always praised and rewarded with some kind of award. But if you didn't your work was given an 'F', or in New Zealand a 'Not Achieved' (NA). Sometimes you go lucky and were given a second chance to take the test over again but if you failed again that was it. There's no helping you.

There was always that underlying message that everything you chose to do in school determined your future as a success or a failure. As if something you can't understand is something you've chosen not to understand. Looking back school was a place where you were told that everyone is 'different', 'unique' and an 'individual' but it seems it all stood for nothing if you could not pass the exams made for you and everyone else in the academic subjects that were offered. But what if you weren't good at anything that was offered? Failure was something not to learn from, it was something to be ashamed of.

I count myself as lucky as school was something that came easy to me. I liked what I studied and I love learning so when something came back (that I was good at and therefore should always be good at) with an' NA' stamped at the top it came as a big shock and often rocked my confidence.

The only times that you were encouraged to think on your own was during creative writing in English but then that was also judged to be given a pass or a fail. Even in art, the most creative and imaginative subject that a school can offer, you were taught how to do the same things as years' previous and ended up making something identical to the rest of the class.

In the end, I was never taught how to use failure to my advantage. You either fall in line and do as you're told or you won't conform to the ideals of society and be 'successful' (whatever that means). Now I have carried the fear of failure into my adult life where it has continued to stop me from taking opportunities.

It has taken a long time for me to experience life properly, out on my own, and to spectacularly fail at things. Important things. But I have learned to use those mistakes and lessons and use them in other parts of my life. I now wonder why I hadn't learned this years ago.

I have slowly been teaching myself to think more creatively by using things like Photoshop. I discovered that making irreversible changes to one image may ruin it completely but applying those changes to another could be what makes it distinctive and stand out. Accident is the mother of invention.

It has been those who pursue the creative careers (photographers, designers, filmmakers, actors, musicians, painters) that have gone against the grain, been un-apologetically themselves, who have not gone with the conventions to gain success and have shaken up the world and made you think differently about something. They are the ones who are remembered because of their unique successes but we have never seen the long train wrecks that have been their failures. They often found their place in the world because they weren't good at what we are all 'expected' or 'supposed' to be good at.

With time and my acknowledgement of inevitable failure, I can now admit that I'd like to be an actor. I've always thought I could be reasonably good at it but it's not something I've ever had the confidence to say aloud because I feared failure. What could be worse than failing in front of a countless number of people who can taunt and mock you? Especially with the digital age everything you do has the high possibility of ending up online for everyone everywhere to mock and taunt. I try to keep a level head and listen to my heroes. As Andy Warhol said, "Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."

I am currently in pre-production for a very small project that I will be acting in. I'm very excited but more daunted and overwhelmed than anything. I want it to be the best that it can be and to hopefully help me move onto bigger and better things within in the film industry, not just in acting. However, should it fall flat on its face, it would break my heart but it would also be an important failure to learn from. The worst thing I could do is let my fear of failing again stop me from pursuing this career.

"Ever tried? Ever failed? No matter. Try again, Fail again. Fail better." Samuel Beckett.

One day I will openly and happily welcome failure and look forward to failing. Until then, I still don't like it.