The Cherry Tree: Chapter 2

People judge people. People notice people. No matter what they say, people are always watching, caring. And no matter what we say, we know it and we care. Everyone has a mask. They may have out it on themselves, or others may have put it on them. We all have one, and it takes a great deal of courage to be able to take it off. We are like superheros in this. We are scared to take off our masks. Who we really are is a secret that we only let a few people know. We are sensitive creatures inside, and we are scared that if we trust others to let them see whats under our mask, they will criticize us. And so we keep our masks on, whether we like our mask or not.

Our society is harsh and judging. If you do not fit in, than we ridicule you and cast you out. For example, take women in our society. Our image of women is taken from the magazines and t.v. shows that we see. It is given to us from models pictured in stores, and the celebrities who we see as the ideal people of our society. Yet these people are not average. No, they are the few, yet ever woman strives to be like them, to have their perfect body, their perfect hair. Yet few are able to achieve these looks. So what happens to the rest of those women, who by some turn of fate or another were not given the material beauty these few women have? We cast them out, for we deem them unfit to be part of our accepted society. We place so much emphasis on our material looks, that we often forget the rest of what makes us beautiful. We forget the beauty of our minds and our hearts. The will wither and grow old with time, much like the blossoms of a cherry tree, and we focus so much on this one part, that we forget the fruit that grows sweet and lushes long after the flower has shriveled and decayed.

Our society seems as if it is based of that flower, and while its sweet sent and beauty do give comfort to our senses, we cannot survive on merely the flower. If you pick the flower to save it in your scrapbook, then it will never pollinate and produce the cherries to sate our hunger, nor will those cherries fall to earth to have their pits be reborn into yet more trees.

Those are the masks that we wear, those flowers, and as long as we wear them, we will never move on, never mature and ripen into the fruit, nor continue on after to be reborn again into a whole new organism. No, we forget the potential we have inside ourselves and wear our masks for fear that we, like those flowers, will shrivel and die. We forget that material beauty is fleeting, while the beauty of the heart and the soul will endure forever.

Me and My Story: Chapter One

As I have told you, My name is Trin, or Trinavor. I am currently a sophomore in college. All my life, I have had questions, seen things, had Ideas, but I have never been able to find answers, hear explanations, or share my ideas to the extent I would like to. I was born in Oakland, California, in one of the Poorer areas. Though we did live in a poor area, my parents were not necessarily poor. They were simply on the younger side, both in their twenties. This was their first house they had bought . So as such, I grew up in the midst of poverty. Not the greatest poverty in the world, but still significant, yet I never felt it's effects myself. My best friend their lived across the street from me. His family was significantly poorer than mine, so I would always be wondering why we had certain things that he didn't, such as our cars, or the trips we would go on when I was older. I would always go up to my parents and ask why we had these things, but they didn't. They were never able to say why we had these aspects of luxury that my friends didn't. Not to my satisfaction anyways.

Later on, when I was about 7, my parents, my little brother, and I moved to Boulder, Colorado. The rest of Elementary School and Middle school was pretty uneventful here, except for the fact that financially, me and all my friends were on the same level. I pretty much forgot my questions of California, and the rest of my time here went the same way, in the abstracts and forgetfulness of normality.

My life didn't truly start to change until I spent 3 weeks in India. I had traveled many times before, gone to many different countries, including Africa, Japan, Mexico, Indonesia, Singapore, but I had never experienced anything like this before. I was in love. At first, we spent time in the large cities, with the rest of the tourists. The only thing that was different from the states that I could really tell was the pollution and the food. The people all acted the same, they had the same class system, with the wealthy in their limousines and fancy cars, while the poor either begged or worked at the hardest jobs, many times risking their lives in their work.

The change didn't come until we started visiting the smaller villages, mostly in Kerala. Though most of the material aspects stayed the same, the food, the pollution, I noticed a drastic change in the people. Everyone was nicer, happier. They really had no worries, no cares, aside from the normal bread winning , making sure that they had what they needed to survive. Though these people were as poor as any I had seen, they had a happiness I had not seen anywhere else in the world, Least of all back in the states. I wondered, these people were lacking so much in the world of material possessions, how could they be so happy?This led me to thinking, is life really all we make it out to be, is there more to it then our endless gathering of wealth. Is it possible to happy without being rich, without leading the life of wealth and comfort our societies deems the greatest life to live? Our society says no, but these people I met seem to contradict every value we have been taught.

This experience started me down my current path, questioning the values we hold at our hearts, wondering if they are truly for the best, or simply restrictions set upon us by our society to keep us in the system. Most importantly, I wonder, if all we know of our material needs is a lie, can we break out from the cast society set upon us? Can we take of the Mask we have been forced to wear and truly lift up our faces to find the true answer? Or must we constrict and hide ourselves in the uniformity and conformity of the world we know?

If I have succeeded in arousing your curiosity, then I am glad that we both share the same need to know the truth, and encourage you to continue with me to find the answers we both seek. If you would rather not question these values we hold dear, or perhaps are not yet ready, then I bid you good luck with your quest, your life, and hopefully I will see you back here one day, if you decide you do wish to follow my quest for what is true. But until then, whether we follow the same path, or split our ways, I hope that we will all one day be able to find our own "Face behind The Mask."

Reasons and Explanations: The Prologue

As with every good book, every story, there is always a beginning, a start, which sets the location, introduces the characters, begins the plot. So let me introduce myself. Though I will not give my true name out, for the purposes of this blog, you can call me Trin, or Trinavor. I will be your host, your narrator, and your guide, for the tales I shall spin in the future to come. This blog will not be like others you have read, for I do not intend to simply state my problems, ask my questions. I will instead put each question or problem that I see or feel needs to be answered in the form of a story. Now I know what your going to ask now, "Does that mean you will write a novel for every post you create?" No, I will not create an endless series of novels for you to read. I will simply create characters, and give them the setbacks I see in my life, and show you where they end up, or perhaps simply set the stage and let you find the questions and create the answers.

Now more about me. I have already given you the name you can use for me, but I have not told you why I have started down this path. So here is where my story starts.