People

Human beings are so incredibly amazing.
We take ourselves for granted, I think, because we don't realize who we are or what we have.
In this post... I kind of want to focus specifically on a single person and communication between us all, which is something I continue to be surprised by daily.

I'll start all this off with a basic, plain question.
What is a person?

There are probably over a billion answers to that question.. it all depends on how you approach and interpret the question.
Here are a few different responses to the question:
Google - 'A human being regarded as an individual'
Bing - 'An individual human being'
Yahoo - 'A living human'
Wikipedia - '...a being, such as a human, that has certain capacities or attributes constituting personhood, which in turn is defined differently by different authors in different disciplines, and by different cultures in different times and places.'

Those are fairly logical standpoints.. which, to be honest, I'm not really going for in this post, but I figured I should probably provide examples.
I like to think that a person is someone who is individual and, although there's similarities between he/she and others, they are, at their base, unique.

So pretty much every human being on the planet.
But.. the thing is.. people amaze me. I can't even comprehend how absolutely incredible we are.

You, reader, are unlike anybody else. You were born under different circumstances, you grew up unlike any other human being on the planet, you have your own individual strengths and weakness and you are absolutely, incredibly unique with your own memories and past and future ahead of you and you cannot be duplicated.
Just consider that for a minute.
Nobody else experiences food or feels things quite like you do. Nobody will react in the exact way that you do to every situation because you're a unique individual. You're a person.
Not only is that mind-boggling and incredible..
But there's billions of people.

There's countless amounts of us and we are each different with our own stories to tell.
We communicate with each other and we merge and separate and that is beautiful and unbelievable and a miracle.

-Rylie

Totally applicable John Green quotes:
"It's easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined."
“And I wanted to tell her that the pleasure for me wasn't planning or doing or leaving; the pleasure was in seeing our strings cross and separate and then come back together.”  

Sad thoughts on pain

To be honest, I don't really know what I'm doing, sitting down at my computer and just... typing away on this blog.
I guess it's because a friend once recommended that I sit down and try to piece together my feelings into words. (Thank you ever so much Ethan. It helps :) )

Normally, I'd have some incredible topic and subject and inspirational story in mind, but today, I don't. It's absolutely non-existent.
Today, I'd like to talk a little about pain.

There's a lot of different types of pain. Emotional, Physical, Mental, Spiritual.. But then there's even more subgroups. There's different types of physical pain (Muscle pain, back pain, tooth pain..) but I want to talk a little about emotional pain.
I can pretty much sum it up. It sucks.
It can feel like it's endless and like it's eating you alive.
It can tear you apart and make you feel utterly worthless.
It sucks.

But it goes away.
That's absolutely horrible advice, I know.. but the pain will go away eventually.

You might go to others and try to fill the void or try to heal the gashes in your heart but it probably won't work.
The sad truth of it all is..
The best cure for it all is time.

Everything is beautiful

I really realized the beauty of things today.

Right now, I'm sitting in a semi-dark basement, typing away on my computer as soft music plays in the background. I'm surrounded by dark, dead machines and I'm sitting on a soft, plush beanbag that I barely notice beneath me. Instead of immediately writing something completely different, I leaned back and looked out the windows of my basement, just watching with the music continuing to play quietly.
Suddenly, I realized something I haven't in a long time.
I realized just how much I take things for granted.

I go through my routines each day, ignoring the beauty and magic of everything around me.
Before now, I listened to conversation, thinking nothing of it. I would sit by myself in silence and feel absolutely, completely alone. When it rained, it rained and when the sun shone, it meant that it was going to be a nice, warm day. But things aren't that simple.

Let me start with conversation.
It's absolutely amazing that we can make a certain, specific series of sounds which means something - whether it's a greeting or an expression of our feelings or a plea for help. It's incredible that these sounds.. they are be taught and learned and understood by others. It's an absolute blessing and miracle that we can speak. That we can be understood. That we can express ourselves through words and know that we can and will be heard.

Silence.
I'll admit, because of how I've been raised, I'm a little afraid of silence. I've always been surrounded by noise - whether it's the voices of people around me or the hum of technology or even the sounds of nature. Being surrounded by quiet and sitting alone was always a bad thing - something foreign and something that terrified me. I've always had an overactive imagination and my most terrifying thoughts came when I was completely alone. But today, I leaned back and turned off my music and stared outside for a few minutes, letting my mind wander and swoop, avoiding the terrifying things and waking up to what was going on around me.
Silence is nothing to be terrified of and neither is being alone.
It's a gift to be able to isolate yourself and to leave everything behind. To escape into the natural world.
That's the only way we can truly know ourselves and if we're never alone.. if we never separate from everyone and everything and the endless distractions around us then we don't realize just how fortunate and lucky we are. We don't receive an appreciation of being surrounded by other people.

Weather's a topic that can be debated.. but it's absolutely amazing. It's easy to complain when we don't get the weather we want (for example, I don't enjoy snow and I always find myself groaning when I get caught in a blizzard) but we need to look at the big picture when we find ourselves getting negative about it. Without rain, we'd live in a world without life. Without the sunshine, we wouldn't know the warmth of our sun. Without the snow, we wouldn't know variety. Each type of weather brings its own gifts and positive aspects.. we just need to look at it with an open mind.

As I've been sitting in my basement, my sister joined us and so did the loud music and hum of the mechanical machines that surround me. All the lights have flickered on and people I know surround me once more. But there's a new kind of peace that's come over me. Realizing that although sound and technology and noise is amazing... there's a special kind of beauty and appreciation in being by yourself.

So look around you right now, wherever you are. Consider what I've said and really try to see the beauty in everything around you.
-Rylie

Introduction

Hey there.
For a while now, I've been trying to start up a blog but I've never really gotten to it before now. Thanks to multiple friends and family, I've decided it'd be nice to start writing about my life and what's going on in it.

Anyway.
My name is Rylie and I'm a sophomore. To be honest, I'm just another girl making her way through each day, loving the good moments and trudging through the bad ones. I want to make a difference in the world by helping others get through their rough times however I can and doing all I can to be the best person I can be. I want to be an inspiration to others and I want to help change the world for the better.

I hope that maybe I can do a little more good by writing on this blog.