Great Moments in Life

1. The moment I realized I no longer have body issues.  It was an amazing moment.  I was taking a shower and looked down at myself and realized that I love my body.  It is truly the only thing in the world that I have, that I can or can't count on.  It is my home.  And as a female in the US, this is something that doesn't always even happen.  In the media, such as What the Bleep Do We Know? and in Eat Pray Love (one is awesome, the other is a piece... you make the call), women don't have a chance to experience this until they are older: late 30's or 40's, and only after they have had important life experiences.  The fact that this happened when I was 19 is something of an anomaly, and if I am to understand the conversations with other women and the media at face value, body-acceptance is something that should be, but is yet unattainable for all women (and all men, for that matter).  It is too often that I see and meet amazing, beautiful people who have these detrimental mindsets, and I think it is the responsibility of all people to attempt to quell this.  No, I am not perfect, nor do I think I am, and neither is anyone else.  But this isn't the point.  The point is that we are all human and that requires love toward each other and toward ourselves.  Anyway, I'm really into Dead Prez right now, so enjoy, and keep doing you, Baby.

"Beauty exists not just on the surface."

2. Concerts and music festivals.  There's always at least one moment during a festival or concert where it becomes clear how beautiful the energy of a crowd of people all celebrating the same thing, all experiencing joy, really is.  I experienced this most intensely when I saw MGMT at Austin City Limits in 2008, when they started to play Kids.  The crowd of hundreds, maybe thousands of people lost it and everyone was singing and dancing.  It was very much a spiritual experience.  But maybe this feeling is why humans have religion, if we want to think about it in that way.  If anyone has experienced this at a concert, they know the feeling I mean.  How could humans back in the day having the same feeling or similar experience not take some spiritual opinion out of that?  And since it is based on mutual experience with other humans, a group is formed.  The feeling is attributed to something outside of themselves.  Rituals are created in order to continue to have the experience.  Stories are thought of, visions are had, to explain it.  It goes from there, and eventually it becomes stale and gay people aren't allowed to get married and women are closer to evil than god.  Unfortunately, I have not studied this at all, but it seems to make sense, so, I think it's the case.

3. When someone notices something about you that you think is special, without prompt.  For example, I have a freckle/mole on my forehead that I've always thought was unique.   My high school boyfriend and I were making avatars on the Wii, I made his and he made mine, and he made a point to put that freckle on it.  It was small, and something stupid, but it meant a lot that someone saw something that I loved about myself that they also thought was important, or to be presumptuous, special.

4. Anytime a deep and pure emotion is experienced.  It can be for any reason, positive or negative.  Pure sadness is just as positive as a feeling of pure joy, as ironic as that may sound.  But think about it.  To feel is to be alive, and pure emotions are beautiful.

5.  The first time I felt like a woman (or I guess, a man, if that's how you swing).  When I shaved my head, the first time I looked in the mirror afterward, I felt more like a woman than any other time in my entire life.  A woman's hair is one of her most important expressions of femininity, and frequently, women shave their heads in times of mourning, or their heads are shaved as a form of torture.  Mine was sort of in mourning, it was a strange time in my life, but when my hair was gone, it was very therapeutic.  This must be due to the social import of looking and being feminine for a female, and having the ovaries to break through that, and to be strong for myself.  And to be strong is to be woman.  You go, Grrl.

Everything here rocks, right?  And why do we experience these?  Why do we experience all the awesome things not listed here, like watching a really beautiful sunset, or chilling with really close friends, etc?  Because of the god in each of us, as the Dead Prez would probably agree...

I realize it's probably tacky to have two music videos 

by the same band 

in a post that isn't about the band...  

Fuck it.