Life Collage-school projec

Mar 11, 2008


Collage Project is something I did for my Adult Development and Aging class, that might be interesting for someone whowants to find out what kind of person I am.
Collage Project

This collage is on red paper because I think that this color is very vital and that is something I’m trying to bring in my life-more energy and initiative.

Social Life

The center of the collage is covered by this world map that is my way to say that I believe to be a cosmopolitan. I would love more people to be that way. I don’t believe in chauvinism. I think that especially now a day we all should and can be more open-minded and open to the world without loosing our identity. My social set has never been limited to my family, classmates, and coworkers. Unfortunately that is valid for a lot of people. My life has been enhanced so much from all the people I have met so far, that I can not imagine what I would be like if I haven’t met them. That is not true for all people unfortunately. Not everyone is so social and open-minded; otherwise there would be no wars.
The picture with the hands on the top is also something that represents my social life. I’ve never had one best friend. I always had favorites among my friends, but never really got so close with someone that I would still call them at least once a month. I never liked talking on the phone, and especially calling, so I don’t stay in touch with people all the time. I think that when a friendship is being established there is no need for people to call each other all the time. I have so many responsibilities, and the number is constantly going up, that I physically can’t call everyone all the time. If I feel like talking to someone, or spending time with the person I will call and try to spend time with him/her. Otherwise I feel bad wasting mine and someone else’s time. That is my idea of friendship-having a lot of friends without feeling obligated to be too close all the time.
I was not sure where exactly I should put my family, but I feel like they are an important part of my life, so I put this Simpson’s family picture, and I’ll talk about them under the “social life” part. From all I have learned in my life so far, I know that parents and siblings play a big role in forming of our personalities. I’ve always been very close to my parents and my brother. I even have problem with detaching my mother from me. She has put all her energy, life, everything in raising us and providing everything we need, so now, she can’t get used with the fact that we have to live our own lives and to pursued our own dreams, which most of the times exclude being at home with her. I wish everything can be as simple as it was when I was ten, but it is not. And I have to deal not only with that, but also with my mom’s denial, and the guilt of my lack of empathy with my mom’s pain. But I have already got over that, I can’t spend more time on that issue. I have new and bigger problems now.

Emotions

This is something I have little self-awareness on, and I’ve try to compensate it with a lot and big pictures.
I am optimistic. That is the Sun on the pictures. Unless I’m angry you can crash my car and I’ll be still calm and find easy way to fix things, without bothering both of us about material things. My evil twin, however, gets mad for nothing. Once been irritated, you better not talk to me, or look at me, or be around me at all. I can get mad for nothing. That is the picture of clouds and lightening. I’m trying to meet the beautiful balance, or the rainbow on my collage, but it is very hard. I’m not proud of my irritability at all because it makes me unstable for hours, and sometimes leads to taking stupid decisions. I’m trying to get over it, but most of the times what happens is that I look like this clown. I might full the people around me, but I remain unstable.

Romantic Life

For this part I have four pictures- the couple on the beach, the couple holding hands, the couple in the bed, and the couple of ducks. My only comment here will be a line from my favorite show: “I just want to have a relationship. I want to have sex on a regular basis, get kissed in the morning, and do ridiculous, boring stuff together. Is that to much to ask?”
The picture “Guide of My Emotions” is what I am for men. I’m not sure if I’m subconsciously hiding my real emotions or they are just unable to understand women in general.

Mind

This is area where I feel more comfortable talking about, compared to the previous one. It is so much easier for me to use my brain rather than my emotions. Without underestimating it, the thinking process is easier than feeling. At least, it is for me. My brain is the one that takes me out of the complicated situations, so I have a lot respect for it. I see it like on this picture with the sculpture-slick, and shiny, and pretty. My teacher told me that he used to trust his logic a lot, but with the years, he realized that the instinct is nothing more than previous experience sending unconscious signals to him, and he started trusting his instinct more. I liked that statement, so I took a long time to think about it. My conclusion is that if that is true, then the intuition is nothing more than another function of the brain. That is another proof of how little we know about our brains.
The picture with the person with a head in a cloud is something that has a lot of meaning for me. Is there anyone out there besides me that sometimes wishes he/she is some of those guys that have their “heads in the clouds” and rarely worry about anything, but somehow manage to get by anyway? How does that work for them? Is it possible that it would work for me, too? Why am I so scared even to think about trying it? Is it part of our morals, or is it a fear, that has been inserted in our minds by those who want to control us. It is hard to control people who don’t believe in control.
Another concern I have about myself and my mind is represented by the picture of the toilet paper. It is amazing! How much creativity it takes to do that? How many even more genius people are out there? What about the artists? Isn’t it amazing what kind of things a person’s mind can create? My question is why I can not think of anything as amazing and as that? I know that we can not be all artists and inventors, but my question is why?
I strongly believe that that has to do with the way we’ve been raised. It is a known fact that the right part of the brain, which controls the creativity, develops during the first seven years. It takes a lot of games and other activities that provoke the imagination in order to develop it. I think that that is a part that everyone misses and ignores during the child developing. I wish parents were more educated when raising kids. That is what the picture with the baby stands for. You would have never guessed that, have you?

Spiritual Life

What is spirituality? This is a question I think I have found the answer for or at least the answer for myself. Spirituality for me is the feeling of being connected to the whole- called world. It has nothing to do with the religions, which I have nothing against, I just don’t want to be involved in one. I was very religious before, and I think that I owe part of who I am today to the religion, but I think my religion played the role it was supposed to play and I just don’t need it anymore. It is the idea of getting sense that there is something more powerful than me and I have to play with the rules. I don’t know if there is another way of getting that sense, but it is important to get it and to know that there are rules and if you don’t play fear you’ll be punished. It is important because otherwise we are going to have a chaos and because there is actually something bigger and more powerful. I think that religions are created like recipes for good life but unfortunately have never been used in their pure version, so that perfect life never existed. What is disturbing for me is that they have been used for getting money and power. That makes all the religions very unattractive for me. This is of course my side of the coin and I don’t want to say that there is no other side, and that it doesn’t work for a lot of people. This part I presented in my collage with the picture of a little wolf and a lake. That is what I believe in-nature. I think we are all part of it and the perfect synchrony comes from a natural power that controls and balances everything. I think that the power is part of the nature and part of us, so we have to try to keep the balance also. I think we have more power over our lives than we realize.
The picture of that white spirit flying in the sky is stating a question we are all wandering about-is there a life after death and if it is, what form does it take? I certainly don’t have the answer for this one.

Biological Life

In controversy to what I said about my endless optimism I’ll finish my summary with prediction of what is going to kill me one day. There are two very possible things that can happen to me since they have happened couple times in my family now. The first illness that I’m most likely to get is arthritis. There is a small picture of hands of a person that has arthritis, and those look exactly like the hands of my grandmother that died of complication five years ago, at age of 63. My hands already hurt, so I don’t have a doubt that I’ll get it. I just hope that they will invent something to cure the disease.
Another ugly picture of lungs shows that I might die of cancer because my other grandmother died of cancer. There were also cases of cysts in my family, so I ma predisposed to the disease. I also helped a little bit with my five years of smoking. Now I’m trying to compensate with a healthy diet and exercising, but there is a lot more that can and should be done. I’ll try to take care of my body before it is too late.

In spite of the dark final, my life is pretty exiting, with a lot of questions before me, that I’m eager to find answers for. One thing I know for sure is that life is as good as you can make it good.