I wrote this in response to a classmates blog post about how he had recently bought a set of legos because he missed playing with them. He asked if we thought the child in us will ever leave and which toys we liked when we were younger. I replied:

I love this post! I hope the child in all of us never leaves. The child in me definitely has not left me and it does not plan on leaving. Being a kid was awesome and I love how we were amused by the littlest things. High-fives, hide-and-seek, cartoons and cereal, Legos, Barbies, nap time, color inside the line time, drawing with chalk, listening to N’Sync and Britney Spears, making up dance routines, building bedsheet tents, tying our sweatshirts around our waists, and eating fruit snacks and Lunchables…boss livin’!

When I was a kid I was a big fan of Barbies and Hot Wheels. When I was 6 I used to have this pink Barbie jeep I could sit inside and drive around and I was obsessed! My sister and I would drive around the backyard but I seldom let my sister drive; she was 4 and the worst driver ever. She backed us straight into a tree at full speed (3 mph) one day and scraped the Barbie logo off my plastic bumper. I wasn’t pleased. But since that jeep, I couldn’t wait to get my license. In the meantime, I used to get Hot Wheels and practice driving them around those carpets that had roads and houses. I would stop at every stop sign, run errands around “town”, and park my blue 97′ Corvette precisely. It was important to me haha.

And I’m not gonna lie but I stopped playing with Barbie dolls when I was 13 years old. My cousin always played the nice Barbie who was dating Ken and I would always play the bitchy Barbie who would steal Ken from her and drive off to my house on the other side of the room in my pink convertible. But she always got him back in the end. And for some reason it was the same scenario every time we played.

And no I don’t think it’s a waste of money if you’re going to play with them or use them to display in your room. It’s not a waste if it once made you happy or brings back good memories when you look at them. I want to start collecting vintage Barbies for display. And as weird as this sounds, I think it’s important to be silly and to play! As we continue to grow older the amount of responsibilities drastically increase but we should still save time for ourselves to just enjoy playtime and let go of our seriousness for a while :)

Meow (^..^)

(Source: riaskoz)

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon this picture while I was browsing Tumblr and I immediately fell in love with it. I’m really into design and different styles of typography so it definitely caught my eye, but as I actually read it I realized what a great quote it was.

“The Universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”

Eden Phillpots

Writer,  1862-1960

I sat there and thought about how true this is. When we are younger we just live, we go to school, play with the other kids, take naps, follow our parents around, learn the basics of every subject, make our toys talk to each other, and cuddle up with our stuffed animals as we fall asleep at night. We did not really think about what was going on around us because we were still too young to understand.

I know when I was younger I accepted things as they were, I never really wondered why they were there or really found that much value for what was around me. For example, since grade school we have taken a science class almost every year and we learned about various forms of life on Earth, why the tide is high and low, what the speed of light is, the Periodic Table, how the mountains formed, and many others explaining to us how the world worked. If you look back at elementary, middle, and high school we learned about a lot of cool stuff but we were too young to really care. I know I was more focused on memorizing the vocabulary terms and reviewing the study guides until I was sure I was ready for the exams but we get so caught up in getting the best grade that we don’t really stop to think about what we are even learning about.

As I grew older I started slowly connecting the dots and realizing so many things about life, Earth, and the Universe itself. I began to wonder about so many things and began to appreciate the smallest things in life. Ever since I began college I had matured a lot more than I ever have and I have became more aware of what was going on around me. I realized I had taken so many things for granted about the world.

As I look around me I realize how amazing everything truly is. Look around you and think about it. Everything around us is made up of a specific combination of atoms. I think its crazy how something can be a molecule away from being something completely different. As we all rush to class, there is a beautiful blue sky sitting above us and a sun that shines on us. And at night the sky turns into a deep navy blue and the white moon shines on us. Have you ever stopped to think about the concept of a moon? It is literally a perfectly round rock that floats in the sky that we see almost every night and we can even see its craters and mountains from here. How cool is that?! Then there are these tiny bright dots scattered all over the sky which we know as stars- which are spheres of gas that are held together by gravity. And then we have the solar system where another seven planets in addition to Earth orbit around the Sun at various speeds and always in their same paths. Or have you thought about the concept of gravity? Or the fact that we live in one galaxy among millions of other galaxies. We revolve around the biggest star of all- the sun- which we can not live without. We can not even see the moon without the Sun. Have you watched how beautiful the Sun looks as it sets on the horizon of the Pacific ocean and how when the sun sets here it is rising somewhere else. Or have you thought about why a rose, a tulip, a sunflower all look so pretty the way they do? Or how many different kinds of species of animals exist on land and how they are all unique from one another? Have you thought about the concept of clouds and how they look so perfectly white and fluffy? Have you thought about how trees live longer than we do? Have you thought about how long humans have been around? Or about how all the continents were all once connected to each other and slowly drifted apart over millions of years. Have you thought about how mountains were formed and how all land was once under water? Or how crazy it is that dinosaurs even existed?! Everyone says it is important to drink a lot of water everyday but have you thought about how important water is in general? Water is truly life because nothing can live without water. 70% of the Earth’s surface is water and only 10% of it has been explored by humans. Imagine what kind of crazy creatures are living deep down in the unexplored ocean when we find sharks, dolphins, sea urchins, crabs, seahorse, eels, blow fish, swordfish, oysters, sea anemone, coral reef in the shallowest of waters. Have you ever thought about the possibility of mermaids in the deep sea or extra terrestrials in outer space? Or have you thought of the fact that we as humans are one of the only land animals that are almost completely hairless, have the ability to speak in different languages, and have a consciousness?

In conclusion, the universe is full of mystery which makes it truly magical. What caused the universe to exist in the first place? And how does everything in the universe work so perfectly with one another? Take a look at all the mind boggling things humans have discovered about the world so far and imagine what is yet to be discovered as creativity, science, and technology advances.

My questions for you guys is (besides the millions of questions I already asked in all of the above)- 

Do you think we get too caught up in attaining material things and living our busy lives that we forget about the world around us? Do the things I mentioned above amaze you or does its existence not really phase you much? Do you think we get too caught up in getting the best grade that we do not really actually pay attention to what we are learning about and its significance?

Do you feel that now as you progress through college and new life experiences that your “wits are growing sharper” and you are quickly starting to learn about the way the world works not only naturally, but socially (ex: human behaviors, cycles, politics, media, social movements, war, communication, love, your interests, technology)

I originally wrote this for my English class blog…

(Source: riaskoz)