I find that cleaning brings order to my thoughts and helps me relax. Having some kind of organized and familiar thing to do with my hands helps my brain somehow manage to weave its way through the labyrinth of mental questions that plague me on a daily basis. I know that this is a bit off the wall, but I guess everyone has something that floats his or her boat, right?
 

So this week, I armed myself with the task of organizing the library in my house. I had to go through some old things, in order to bring new order to a somewhat orderly room. The task was as much physical as it was mental, as I had to go through books and papers that were ages old.
 

I had thought that this would be a simple matter of throwing away what was not needed and putting what was needed where it belonged; the first rule that I live by, ‘everything has its place and everyplace has its thing’.
 

The thing was, most of the things in that room already has their place, so part of my task was defeated from the get go. But of course I trudged on thinking that perhaps I could keep what was functional and get rid of the things that were not. As I was going through papers, books, diaries, pictures and notebooks that belong to my parents and myself, I found that this was more of a room to house memories than anything else.
 

If a stranger were to go through the written things, particularly when they are in order, they would be more than able to get a look into not only our lives, but also our daily struggles and thoughts. How wonderful, right? So I went off track and began reading some of my father’s dairies that were written before I was born. I was seduced by them, and amused by the fact that our writing voices were very similar.
 

And then I moved on to some of my old stuff. The things that I found from elementary school and art classes brought a warm feeling. But then, I got to the stuff that I had when I was a teenager. The education materials were great, I was impressed with the things that we learned given what country we are in. I mean there was poetry, West African Literary Analysis, and Japanese Playwrights, and never forget every possible aspect of Shakespeare that you can think of, and that was just English class! But that was about all that I enjoyed going through those high school and teenage years.
 

As I got further and further into my things and found my more personal papers and diaries, I was aghast at the sort of person I was. I mean I always mention that I am a handful and a pretty big personality, but this is me, late 20s nice and calm. I always tell my best friend that if I had known me at 16, at the age that I am now, I probably would slap myself and tell me to calm the hell down.
 

I mean I have spoken to the teenagers of today and how they are being westernized and spoiled by the world around them, their access to television and radio, and their parents need to make them ‘better people’. Well let me tell you that I should have begun by scolding myself. In this day and age, you can at least attribute a spoiled kid to globalization, TV and any one of the zillion western things that have saturated our daily existence. You can say that the kids are more exposed and in order for them to be a part of the world they have to begin to act and talk like it.

But how do you excuse teens like me back in the day? The thing is you cannot. The basic truth is that I was a spoiled rotten child who had no idea of the value of money, who did not understand that we lived in an unreality in a time when getting ones daily bread was a struggle, and worst of all, who was not grateful for the advantages that were given to me at a time when less than one per cent of the population could actually have a lifestyle like that.

It sucks having to admit to having been a brat for most of my life, but hey that little thing called life has come in once again and shown me that fairy tales never last forever, and once are gone, guess what? You never end up liking the character that you played in that particular play in this theatre called life.