The Great Dictator

So a while back I came across a clip from the movie The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplain!). It's a pretty old movie, as in old black and white movie and I've never actually seen all of it but this clip always stood out to me. 

Long story short the movie revolves around a barber who looks exactly like the Great Dictator (his  name isn't hitler, but lets be honest, he's supposed to be hitler). At some point in the movie the two characters get mixed up and this barber ends up being mistaken for the great dictator and having to lead.    Near the end of the film (I think) the Great Dictator has to give a speech. Since everyone is kind of scared shitless of him they're all thinking he's gonna be really scary and talk about how he hates everyone and how the soldiers should kill everyone (or something along those lines).

However Charlie Chaplain, the barber, delivers this amazing speech to the people. Oh and whoever put this clip together used the inception soundtrack so that's definitely a bonus.

 

In the 17th Chapter of St Luke it is written: “the Kingdom of God is within man” - not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Times like these i just love people. Humans are great sometimes they really are. 

-Kate

J.K "greatest lady in the world" Rowling

Ok, let's talk about JK Rowling. I mean not only did she come up with one the greatest stories ever told (not to be confused with the bible, she actually wrote harry potter) but she is just incredible.

Now I could easily go into a never-ending ramble about the 4087452 reason why I love her. But I think  they can be summed up by either reading one (or all 7) of her fantastic hp books, or by watching the video below.

In 2008, JK Rowling delivered the Harvard Commencement speech (no pressure). After listening to this I can honestly say she is perfection.

So just briefly I want to draw on two things she has said. If you haven't watched the video (or really don't want to) then these would definitely be the two points to take away.

Firstly; 

"You may never fail on the scale I did, but some failure is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all -  in which case, you fail by default."

My Lord, I cannot emphasise enough how true I believe this to be. Never be afraid of failure for it is in our moments of greatest weakness that we find our greatest strength.

And Lastly; 

"We need not magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better."

Yes, yes, yes and yes. She nailed it. Never underestimate the absolute incredibleness (probably not a word) of human beings. We really can change the world.

In conclusion, safe to say I have a lot of love for this girl (should I say woman? she is a mother I guess)

She is quite incredible.

- Kate

The Whole is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

For quite some time, i've loved this quote by Aristotle. I cannot even begin to talk about how much i agree with his thoughts, so instead I thought I'd share some more from my favourite book, Looking for Alaska by the one and only John Green.

This short passage is about how the main character, Pudge, tries to cope with the death of his friend Alaska (SPOILERS!). Green interweaves Aristotle's quote and seems to explain it perfectly. 

I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something's meal. What was her—green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs—would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe "the afterlife" is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled.

But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska's genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.

Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself—those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.

Now there's some wisdom for you. 

-Kate

Emotional Times

So recently in my studies, I was posed the question "To what extent do our emotions reside in the realm of private knowledge, in the sense verified by others" To be honest, I was rather unsure how to tackle this massive unknown. I've been looking a lot at both emotion and reason as of late and pondering which of the two govern my life (OVER EMOTIONALS ANONYMOUS!). But this question really had me stumped.

I mean first of all how the hell do we know what we are feeling. How do I know that I'm happy? Is it because I'm smiling? Or because I just kinda get that good feeling, I just know? This was starting to really bug me.

However after a long chat with a friend, i realised that often the problem is not that we need our emotions to be verified by others to be real, but rather we need them to be verified so we can admit them to ourselves. I think so often we are afraid of feeling things. So afraid to admit we might be in love with someone, or afraid to actually tell someone that we're really not feeling that great recently, and are really struggling with all the crap life can throw our way. I think it takes a true friend to help us realise how we feel. And not how we want to feel. I think this is the only way to cope with our emotions, by acknowledging them. In John Green's novel Looking for Alaska the main character Pudge states that "It always shocked me when I realised I wasn't the only person in the world that felt such strange and awful things" I think what made this resonate with me was that I really do believe one of our biggest flaw as humans is thinking that we are the only ones who suffer, thinking "No one else understands me". The truth is, as humans we all feel emotions from time to time. So my answer to the impossible question?

It is our own minds, that tell us how we want to feel, but it takes true courage to reveal the truth within our hearts.  In this way, and to some extent, others can help to verify our emotions.

Over and out.

Kate

Hello?

I wanna say something, I'm gonna put it out there; if you like it, you can take it, if you don't, send it right back.

Yes, this is my first time blogging. Yes, i opened with a quote from Ron Burgundy. Yes, this will probably be the most atrocious attempt at blogging you will ever lay eyes on. But hey, Que sera sera, right?

First, Hello. (Is it me you're looking for?) My name's Kate. I basically have a passion for anything and everything. This blog is simply an outlet for my many ramblings in regards to just about every aspect of life from human rights to food, maybe we'll chuck in some religion somewhere there, even a few humorous happenings from my life every now and then. And of course a healthy level of good music.

So here's to new beginnings!