I Find It Liberating.
Hello Humans! Here is one of my favorite segments from my favorite book: Jurassic Park.
“But don’t you find it boring to wear only two colors?”
“Not at all. I find if liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don’t want to waste it thinking about clothing,” Malcom said. “I don’t want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays more to applaud. But on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports.”
“Dr. Malcom,” Hammond explained, “is a man of strong opinions.”
“And mad as a hatter,” Malcom said cheerfully. “But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn’t it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.”
I always, like Ian Malcom, the Mathematician from Jurassic Park who was the only one that expected the park to fail, have never been huge fashion or make-up or worrying about how I look. I find it tedious and money and time consuming. I mean, I like to feel good about myself, and in high school, that evolved from my personality to my looks, due to my social situation. But now, I am confident in my intelligence, personalty, and myself that I don't need those things to feel good about myself. I also find it liberating to not care about how I look. I always liked Ian Malcom. His humor, wits, and smarts intrigued me. The first time reading the novel, Jurassic Park, I paid attention to the actual science, rather than the story and characters. But the second time through, this quote on page 80 hit me hard. I’ve never loved being a “girly-girl.” I never loved make-up, I thought of it to be a hassle, something else that I had to do to conform to society, and something else that I had to spend money on. Now, Ian brings up the issue of clothing. But seriously, how much money do we spend on designer brands, or brain cells lost looking for knock-off versions of the original, or time wasted deciding which shirt to wear with which pants. For me, the money has been quite a bit in the past, the brain cells lost has been kept to a minimum, and a lot of time wasted has been quite a lot. Living in Hawaii has changed my perspective on quite a few of these things. People around here don’t wear make-up, because it is twice as much here as it is on the Mainland, and you have to drive an hour, one way, into town to buy it. People also don’t care what you wear. As long as you have modest clothing on, it’s just fine. T-shirts, Basketball shorts, skinny jeans, blouses, dresses, and skirts are all accepted as just clothing. Why is this? Well, one, money around here is everything, because stuff here is very expensive, so wear whatever you can find. The other reason is because everyone belongs to one big happy Ohana. Ohana, as most of you know from Lilo and Stitch means family. But it means more than family. It’s hard to explain, but imagine meeting a stranger for the very first time, and they offer you right away to come eat dinner, give you rides into town, and help you with your studies. That is how it is over here with nearly everyone. Everyone is just so full of love and charity. And they don’t care what you look like on the outside. They care what you look like on the inside.
But the point of this isn’t to say not to wear make-up or care about what you wear, except it kind of is. That and how we limit our screen-time. As Ian also pointed out, the screens we use help us to conform and worry more. Instead of what they were intended to be used for, sharing intelligence across long-distances, they are now used to check what the Jones’s newest car is, or where the James’s are going on vacation this week, or who we can be jealous of next. I mean, why else would Donald Trump have become president? For sure, it’s not because of his amazing policies and plans to “make America great again.” Who would want to build a wall between America and Mexico and stop refugees from crossing our boarders? It’s because of two main things. First, Trump was a republican, and because of this, all of the republicans decided that because he was a republican that he had good policies. They weren’t thinking about the givens. They were thinking how they were programmed. Me, I voted for Ringo Starr, because he believes in Peace and Love. He would have totally created World Peace. Secondly, it started out as an internet joke, which then moved into an internet trend, which then led to people actually voting for him because it was “cool.” Again, these people haven’t thought about the givens. Another thing that I’ve learned about the HI Life, is that people are too busy having fun in real nature, and learning about the world around them, and loving other people, that screen time is limited. This makes people on the island less susceptible to givens.
The other thing I have in common with Ian Malcom, is that I am a woman of strong opinions. Actually, I am a wahman of strong opinions. Those closest to me know this all too well. But my opinions have to be strong, because they are not conforming to the givens. I think outside of the box, outside of the normal, outside of the givens. It's how scientists work and make discoveries. It's how the world evolves into a better one.
Back to the statement about not wearing make-up or not caring about what we wear, and now, limiting screen time. Think about how much more we could accomplish if we didn’t care about those things? Would we have cured cancer by now? What about traveling and colonizing Mars? Alien contact? How about solving world hunger, or creating world peace? Slowing or stopping or even reversing Global Climate Change? Stay wild, flower child.