Creativity thrives on taking the ordinary to a new level by attempting to bring to life something that is even more brilliant or stimulating than that found in the simplicity of real life. It takes a person willing to go beyond the constructs of the ordinary to use their mind as a tool to build something that is profound, even if it is only profound in their own mind. I would imagine there is an element of danger in creating such an idea of beauty that can only be appreciated from within. Setting up the ideal in one’s mind can be devastating without at least the solid knowledge of the boundaries that not only the idea has, but also the mind. To have a beautiful thought remain dormant in a locked away mind and to never be able to see it come to fruition, it would be such a disappointment to have to settle for the lesser, but more realistic opposition.

This is the trouble that most cynics face in their daily lives, or at least the trouble I face. It is the need for more than can be offered by my surroundings. I believe I demand more from everything and everyone else around me—and perhaps more than what is believed to be humanly possible, because I expect the same from myself. I fail to simply accept what is available and easy because I have let my creativity rule me for years now and to settle is something I have yet to come to terms with. I have gone along believing that no matter how cynical I became, I would always have a small piece of hope with me, albeit false. But as I have gotten older, I’ve come to understand that I haven’t carried with me this false hope that one day I would see my dreams come true, but rather I’ve never lost the desire to create new impossible ideals. I don’t ever expect anyone or anything to end up the way I envision it, but I always envision it, in the big picture, nonetheless. That desire is always present somewhere in my mind. And even though I know those beautiful thoughts will never come to fruition, I always hang on to the desire to keep creating, no matter the cost or the disappointment.

Life was never meant to be a game of programming the world as each being or individual sees fit. We are born with the gift of individuality, but only the strong are blessed with the courage to embrace it. I like to think the world is made up of small pieces of canvas waiting for someone to make their mark. Maybe once or twice, someone will take part in designing your canvas, but only your hand has the ability to create.

I have learned to love the ability to envision without ever being able to know it as real. Mind of a surrealist or mind of a crazy person, it is up to the artist to illustrate the path. At some point, we all have lived the life of a struggling artist; we bleed for our art in different ways. Some artists bleed to create tangible pieces, whereas others use their minds as their medium. But it is up to the artist to use their hands and create the nearly perfect physical object exactly as it was imagined in the intangible hive of theoretical perfection. The result is hardly ever perfect.

Maybe the broken minds were just given the torn piece of canvas, maybe the survivors were given an extraordinary breadth of skill to repair it, but no soul can ever take part in creating outside of their canvas. It is the confinement that makes us crazy; the confinement that obstructs the idealistic perfection. Our minds can see the big picture, but our hands are confined to our own piece of the canvas. It is only in the struggle to find the balance between perfection for the one and harmony of the many, that we can come to terms with the only viable outcome, imperfection.

Surface level thinking is so much simpler. Whoever said ignorance is bliss had the right idea. Nothing substantial can possibly stem from surface level thinking because ingenuity requires so much more reflection and evolutionary thought. It isn’t easy feeling the pull of deep thought. Knowing, and more importantly, understanding the truth in the lies, reality from fantasy, and the most basic of concepts, right from wrong, takes a great toll on the psyche. A wounded psyche, a spirit crushed by understanding, is it really better to live with eyes wide open? This lifestyle is irreversible, once innocent minds become exposed to injustice and inequality, that mind has reached the point of no return. When this understanding combines with a feeling of hopelessness, as it often does, it really creates a false hope complex.

I go through my share of ups and downs with my false hope complex. I say it is false because somewhere in that often suppressed part of my mind that provides me with the ability to think abstractly and to form rational opinions, I am constantly reminded of the fact that my positivity is going to be short lived and will likely dissolve rather quickly. I haven’t always thought this way; I really wasn’t the cynical seven year old calling the Barbie-loving girls conformist, superficial, eating-disorder promoting disgraces to woman-kind. I just thought that privately and smiled at them at lunch.

The year before I became Homeschooled—Go Bookworms!—I was a navy blue uniform clad silent thinker. When my first grade Catholic school teacher read us the Harry Potter books, I was the student who was a book ahead of her, narrating the character’s British accents in my head. I gave the popularity contest a try too. I pretended to like the things they liked, I tried to start the trends as they often did, but it only resulted in more ridicule and less social status. But the minute those six year old bitches came to school wearing my damn Powerpuff Girl shoes, I remember thinking to myself, these conformist bitches can kiss my ass. Or whatever the G rated equivalent of that may have been.

What I find fascinating now in retrospect, is that my walk-to-a-different-beat personality really didn’t begin forming in my colorful homeschooling years; my deep thought embracing mind began developing during my creatively suffocating Catholic school years, however short they may have been. And maybe everybody begins their lives embracing their unique and developing minds, but perhaps are just subject to the oppressing forces at work in the Catholic school system in which I began, or, for many, in the public school system. Social influences, scary though they may be, serve as a guiding force in the formation of these kids lives. I was lucky enough to have been given the freedom early on in my life to expand and explore my creative interests and to escape the tight grasp of public, or rather catholic school, but many are not as fortunate as I was. Their growth may have been stunted early on and their freedoms of individuality may have gone under the scrutiny of those same six year old girls too, only for years and years to come.

These untouched, malleable minds are bravely relinquished into the hands of certified educators by parents who blindly have faith in the capabilities of these educational figures. Those educators are then faced with the challenge of—putting it bluntly—not fucking up so badly that the kids face irreparable damage. That is quite a bit of responsibility for these underpaid hard-working teachers. But I don’t want to make this book about the failures of the school systems, though I do have plenty of things to say about their inadequacies. I merely want to give a glimpse into my early formative years, because I feel that my early experiences are so important in understanding my views and perspectives on my experiences as an adult.