Discovering Beauty in the Mundane

As a student, life tends to be very repetitive. 

Confined by a daily routine of dreary tasks, we often do the same things over and over again for days on end without realising it. Wake up, go to school, do activities, come home, do homework, go to sleep, rinse and repeat… Of course there are benefits to routine, after all, humans are pattern seeking creatures. Routines allow us to anticipate what comes next, lower our stress, let us feel a sense of control over situations, and help us find order in a stressful world - creating a sense of safety. However, having the same formula, the same schedule without end is painfully tedious. We are confined to our comfort zones, and can struggle to adapt to changes if our routines are particularly rigid. We lose ourselves to repetition, falling deeper and deeper into a life that revolves around absentmindedly completing tasks and checking off boxes, so preoccupied with our problems that we fail to appreciate the world around us in its beautiful, mundane glory. 

It is when we break through the grey, dull haze of life and let that obscuring fog part, that we discover an entire unnoticed world. It is these small, hidden details that allow us to break free from the shackles of monotony and embrace the beauty in mundane occurrences. When we become more aware and appreciative of these little moments, we can approach life with a sense of wonder. Take sitting in class as an example. Especially in the early morning, it’s indeed an excruciating experience. The hours go by so slowly and that dazed drowsiness from too many late nights and concerning concentrations of caffeine seeps into our bones like lead, weighing our poor eyelids down. It feels as though the world could never get interesting, that your life is limited to those terrible, tiresome flashes of the powerpoint on the board. This is where you seize the opportunity to snap your drifting mind into focus. Take a look around. Have you ever noticed the sunlight that drips onto the desks? How the yellow light seeps like honey through the curtains and warms the air around you? Have you ever stopped and soaked in the rustling of the trees by the window? The green leaves rippling in the wind? Our surroundings are rich in lustre, in dazzlement, in beauty. 

Teenagers are full of passion, fueled by our powerful desires for our future. Our brains store vast seas of knowledge: dreams that extend beyond the stars, opinions that we defend with the severity of a thunderstorm and wishes for a life that brims with excitement. We sparkle and shine with an intensity that burns ever so bright. But it’s through this fervour of adolescent zeal that we forget to cherish the simplicity of life. Life moves pretty fast. It’s an universal experience to blink and suddenly feel as though five years have passed. To watch your parents’ hair grow white and your friends mellow. It’s in these moments of realisation that appreciating and holding onto the mundane can stabilise the world around us. 

Treasure the golden glow of the ceiling light as it peeks onto the floor through the cracks of a door, the quietude of a Sunday morning where the whole world seems to sleep except you, the fat raindrops on a bus window, illuminated by the vibrant red of traffic. The cracked nail polish, the brown tea ring stains, the laughter, the smiles, the tears. 

One day, we’ll be twenty, then thirty, then forty and so on…Life can change suddenly, the puzzle of your whole world can break apart below your feet and reconstruct into a completely different picture. A childhood bedroom transforms into a small, empty apartment. Pocket money becomes a paycheck. School friends reshape into colleagues, and so on and so on. If we don’t stop and take it in as it happens, life could slip through our fingers before we even realise it.

What stays with us forever are our endless encounters with the mundane. No matter where we are, the sun will always filter through the trees, the seedlings will always peep through the fissures in the sidewalk. It's a wonderful constant that accompanies us for our whole lives. So hold onto these experiences - they can ground us in an ever-changing world and remind us that when things might seem bad, there is always something beautiful waiting for us to uncover it. 

Is Being Physically Attractive a Real Thing? How Does This Saying Hinder You?

The main objection to this statement is the ego of oneself. The way humans are conditioned throughout their lives by their environment is what builds their biases and opinions of the world. These biases and opinions are the cornerstone to your ego.

In the context of beauty and physical appearances, what you define as pretty and worthy of admiration is a direct result of your ego. You nitpick and criticise certain things - the way you look, how attractive others are and what fitting your criteria of being ‘physically attractive’ truly means. However, when you begin seeing all of these things from an objective point of view, some of us begin to realise that all these assumptions, all these traits we choose to be a determining factor of someone's beauty are really just a reaction to the environment you grew up in, that you are projecting outward.

When I say environment it is important to note that I don't mean the literal environment, such as where you live, but more so the environment that people and people's ideology around you create, an environment that influences your subconscious mind. It infiltrates your ego and infiltrates the way you think, paving the mentality through which you choose to see the world around you. 

“You don't see the world the way it is, you see it the way you are”.

Many of you who read this are in high school. High school is actually a perfect example of how the accumulating effects of the environment you grow up in shape your reality. There’s no doubt that standards on the way you should look are prominent in school. You can be teased for ‘having bad style’, ‘looking ugly’, ‘having bad hair’ etc. But what built these standards of what ‘having bad hair’, ‘having bad style’ or ‘looking ugly’ actually is? The answer, at least to me is: your environment. These judgments are truly subjective. You may think the word subjective refers to your own opinion - and yes it does, but these opinions are actually formulated from other people's ideas being implemented in your ego.

The issue with these made up standards is that they can become the root cause of your insecurities. These standards curated by others do nothing but harm you. We, as a society, have become so obsessed with this way of thinking that we can't help but notice it in everything we do. You are subconsciously being conditioned into this ‘normality’ and you accept it because it's become the standard amongst people around you. You begin to fall into the trap of constantly observing yourself and judging certain features on your face, body and clothes etc. All the while not even being aware that these judgements aren't your own innate opinions.

How can we even define what being “physically attractive” is? There isn't a certain way someone should look or shouldn't look, and we are the only species of animals that we know of (at least on Earth) who have created these expectations and spread them around, leading to us to being trapped in this loop of thoughts in a process known as ‘positive feedback’.

 We have become insecure as a society due to…society.

Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is something you’ve likely experienced, and it's actually the dumbest thing. It's the feeling of achieving something, but doubting yourself, thinking it was all just luck or you never deserved it in the first place. This mindset is just procrastination in disguise, it makes you think you're not good enough even though you are. Imposter syndrome just pushes you back from reaching your goals. For example, if you felt confident instead of doubting yourself, you wouldn’t mind trying new things - go start that project, join a competition, attend an event even if you don’t know a lot about it. You have nothing to lose, it’s better to be rejected a hundred times than not to try at least one time. If you ever doubt yourself because you think you only aced that test because of luck, that is just stupid, you are just being blind and you need to stand up with confidence and just do your thing!