This is an open letter which criticizes procrastination and intends to encourage the reader to make the most of their life, aimed at people who procrastinate.
To whom it will eventually concern,
Everybody is more than familiar with how the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare goes. In a simple competition, the two animals face off in a race to decide who is faster; a feat we all know the hare should win by a mile. But, at the fault of his own ego, the hare dares sleep in the middle of the racetrack! As a result, the tortoise wins the race, the story ends, and the reader learns a valuable lesson – don’t let your arrogance control you; get the job done.
Surely a lesson you would’ve learned by now, right? Seeing as you’re lying in bed, scrolling through TikTok videos and Instagram Reels, rotting away and keeping deadlines at bay. What’s that? “I’ll do it tomorrow? It’s not due yet. I’m not ready?” You really thought you could do your 5-day assignment in one. Then excuse after excuse, day after day, you finally put pen to paper on the day it’s due and then you REALISE; you can’t make it.
You see, procrastination is the BANE of productivity, a curse on the masses. That personal project you’ve been dreaming of doing all your life? Key word – DREAMING. That thought has been marinating in that brain cauldron of yours for longer than you can remember, and you still put it off for another day. Another year, because after all, you’ve got 78 full years to live. What’s a couple years wasted? …what’s a couple years wasted!?
William Shakespeare died at 52 and wrote 3 extended poems, 39 plays and 154 sonnets, regarded as the GREATEST writer in the WORLD. You’ve got 26 more years, and you can’t be bothered to scratch the surface!? Imagine if all the Greats lazed around like you did: Macbeth, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet? Made up, absent, defunct and non-existent! Think of what we’d lose.
From all the time I’ve spent alive so far, I’ve come to know two things about the human condition. One, humanity is forever changing. We are creatures of desire, designed to chase what we do not already have. Two, our lives are limited; each second that passes, we tread closer and closer to our demise. By the looks of you, I would’ve assumed you found unlimited riches and the Fountain of Youth. But you haven’t. There’s an itch, a scratch in the back of your mind poking and prodding, whispering into your ear, “If only… If only I did this, If only I did that… Yeah, if only!” If only you didn’t have to dream of what could have been.
Look, I know that putting it out there like this isn’t the kindest or nicest thing. But my disappointment isn’t from the fact you don’t – it’s from the fact you could’ve. You can walk, and you can most definitely run, but whilst I’m not saying you should never rest or take a break, a mindset of leaving things for tomorrow leaves nothing for today. It’s one thing to know you can do it, but it’s another thing to get it done. Words don’t equal actions, and as far as I can tell, people can’t see words. We are materialistic in nature, where we only put value into that which can be observed, and as much as I wish I could just say I can do something, I can’t, and neither can you.
If there was just one thing you should take away from this, know that you’re always racing against a tortoise, an invisible one. For every second you spend alive there’s either a deadline on your back or someone else who has the same idea as you. Every one step you don’t take, someone else, something else takes two. Every chance that’s no longer yours today is someone else’s tomorrow. Unless you put nose to the grindstone and just try, you’re only going to rot away until one day, you’ll meet your last deadline, when the Grim Reaper puts his scythe around your neck. This life is your first, and very much it is your last. When you’ve got more time than ever, don’t spend it all sleeping on the racetrack. Take hold of your dreams, put them on paper and give yourself a reason to keep going. Get the job done. In good time, Adam Vargas.
Adam Vargas
This open letter aims to raise awareness to the blatant dangers of pervasive maturity children find in social media. This letter highlights the importance of kids being kids without online pressures which is achieved through close dissection of online influencer culture and parallels the timeless cautionary tale of Adam and Eve.
Adam and Eve had it all: lush overgrowth, abundant food, and the gift of living carefree. Life in the Garden of Eden was blissful – until the alluring pursuit of knowledge stripped them from paradise. Their cautionary tale makes it imperatively clear: innocence and contentment are unique to their time – an exceptional tenderness that can only be experienced once per life. Something which no pursuit of knowledge can ever replace.
Social media does not allow innocence to manifest. It cultivates a culture where status, materialism, and hypersexuality are valued above all else. It fosters a perverted notion of maturity.
Tomorrow’s generation is prematurely aging because of social media by exposing them to content meant for those far beyond their years. Social media disrupts the natural balance between a child’s mental and physical growth, leaving no room for toys, playgrounds and imagination. The algorithm holds today’s youth in a death grip.
But somehow, it’s all okay because kids are learning to “shake arse” for a 15-second video, reducing themselves to a shallow performance for baseless fleeting validation.
Children are stripped of their innocence. The media renders all whimsy, joy, magic, and childlike wonder barren. All to expose a bare, discerning, self-conscious being. “Girls just want to have fun” and “boys will be boys” are but excuses you, the ignorant, the blind eye, you, the viewer, choose.
As the timeline progresses, more children are exposed to the endless streams of information: comically extreme beauty standards, poisonous expectations, idealistic and unrealistic ways of living. When everyone seems perfect, should it not be expected that they are too? Each 20-second beauty hack, each half-starved skinny Instagram model, each widely unattainable lifestyle, all of it sticks firm in impressionable, young minds. These so-called perfect lives leave no room for struggle, imperfection, and humanity. And when a child, with no reasonable expectations of the world, can choose between living a humdrum life or chasing a perfect one, they will almost certainly grasp the latter.
Quietly, slowly, like a predator slithering through the branches, these false truths sneak in and childhood slips away from more and more children.
Fewer have favourite dinosaurs, love playing dress-up, or scrape their knees riding a bike. They’ve become too mature for such, as hourglass figures and cakes of makeup have been deemed rightful for their age. And without a warning, no dramatic battle, no war horn blown, no hiss or rattle to warn us, the serpent strikes, poisoning the generations with a twisted sense of maturity.
When God, the Almighty, the creator, the one revered by all simple and abstract beings, watched temptation consume Adam and Eve, was He saddened? Did their banishment maybe stem from His sorrow at seeing His creation succumb to what is not theirs? Perhaps even the serpent was unaware of the consequences of its temptation. Can’t you see? Your skincare fads, your Shein booty shorts, your overpriced, overproduced, and sustainably fraudulent 40-ounce cups are deceptively easy yet utterly devastating.
In the wake of this digital age, we must be the guardians who are responsible for guiding our children through it. Never before has there been such widespread accessibility, and with it, such easily spread toxic expectations. As humans, we are constantly faced with temptation – whether for knowledge, acceptance, maturity, or appearance. At the end of the day, every child simply wants to be loved and appreciated. Through their crude imitations of surgically perfected models and influencers, one thing rings clear: “I want to be good like they are.”
It is time that, as a society, we teach our children not to crave such attention, not to want to be someone new, but to be who they are and nothing more. It is time we teach them that they are good enough. It is time for us to reclaim the innocence that has been lost. To remind our children that their worth is not measured by likes, follows, and reshares, but by the unique beings they are. We must challenge the narrative that maturity equates to conformity. In this era of connectivity, let us be the ones who reconnect our children with the joys of being young. Let us be the ones who remind them that there is no rush, that just as the persisting digital age will continue to evolve, so can their sense of self.
Let us be the generation that redefines what it means to grow up – not a race to be hurried through, but as a journey to be savoured.
Kristine Louise Guerrero
For the Entitled and the Unheard,
1848 was the year women started to fight for their rights, and you would think that a lot has changed in terms of equality, right? Wrong. The only thing that’s changed is the way people have been able to disguise their blatant misogyny. For years women have been undermined and underappreciated. They have fought tooth and nail for their chance to be heard and how do we respond? With name-calling and stereotypes. We are no longer children and it’s time we stopped acting like them.
The name ‘Karen’ is described by The New York Times as a “once popular [name] for girls born in the 1960s’ but has now developed to a ‘pseudonym for a middle-aged busybody with a blond choppy bob who asks to speak to the manager.” What was once a Danish name meaning ‘Pure’ has now been reduced to a white woman who demands attention and validation from everyone around her.
This isn’t to say that some people (not just women) can be overbearing at times. No one wants to hear a person, stranger or otherwise, whine in their ears. But doesn’t this feel childish? When someone acts dramatic, what do we call them? Drama queens. Doesn’t matter if they are male or not, they are drama queens. Women are seen as overly emotional and unreasonable, but a man is seen as empathetic and logical. Words linked to women always become insults in modern media. If you’re scared, then you get called a “sissy” or you “have no balls.” If you can’t work well with other people, you’re called a “Prima Donna.” If you complain about anything, you’re a “Karen.”
The word ‘witch’ creates an image of a crooked old lady who would curse and attempt to kill innocent people. But when people think of a ‘wizard,’ they think of a powerful man filled with both wisdom and knowledge. Even in fiction, women are once again seen as lower and/or evil beings compared to men. It’s not even limited to fiction. From June of 1692 to May of 1693, 14 innocent women were strung up and killed for being witches. The Salem Witch Trials were a devastating tragedy and yet we ‘joke’ about being burned at the stake. These women died for the sole purpose that they were different, they were wrongfully accused and suffered at the hands of spiteful men.
“Karen” is a woman’s name. It is a name that downplays her emotions and her vulnerability. A man isn’t called a Karen because it’s a “woman’s job” to complain and whine about everything. If a girl is too loud, if she’s too angry, if she’s too messy, she’s berated for not being ladylike. But, God forbid, a man does the same, he will be consoled and babied, because “He’s just being a boy.” Have these women- these little girls not earned their right to freely be who they are!? Have the women of our past not fought for their lives for just a chance of being heard? And what do we do? We take it from them, just to chew it all up and spit it right back in their faces.
Where does the line of light-hearted banter end and blatant misogyny begin? A name that once meant ‘Pure’ is now reduced to racism and white supremacy. A name that now means “a white middle-aged woman who is entitled.” The women who believe they are always right. The women who speak their minds. The women who have been forced into submission. The women of an unheard choir. The women who are forcibly silenced. The women who have only ever wanted to be loved and listened to. These women are all Karens. And the world will never, ever, let them think they could ever be more.
It is time to stand up for ourselves! For every angry woman whose voice was drowned out! We must fight for a chance to be heard! For every, Karen, Sissy, Drama Queen, Prima Donna! For the little girls in our hearts, we must scratch and claw our way out. For the girls of our future and the women of our past.
Maybe this letter was nothing more than a large complaint. A demand for a higher power to listen to me, to validate my opinions. Does that make me a Karen? If it does, then I will gladly embrace that title. I will be a Karen so that no woman or girl is embarrassed by her name. So, that they will no longer have to mould themselves to fit this stereotype of hatred.
Nick Realon
