1.

Unicorns and mermaids are not made of sugar and vibrant colored chemicals. In fact, these symbols are myths. Myth creation comes from one of two things: fear or hope.

You might believe your social media investigations prove my theory wrong because, in fact, you are drinking a drink named after one of these myths while twirling your freshly-dyed rainbow-colored locks; and also multitasking as you scroll through multiple pictures of unicorns and mermaids.

You did not invent unicorns. Starbucks did not key into your subconscious of rainbows with its introduction of a dazzling new drink. Instead, they cued into data, deriving from your social media scanning that you do, sometimes without looking at the screen, because now that scrolling has become part of what makes you work or relax or think.

2.

But you are not data, you are an individual. Some claim many of you are a generation of lazy people. You are not lazy. You are you.

Yet, as years pass, and your frontal lobes fully form, I suggest you understand that most types of social media can be canopied under a larger animal called Postmodernism at its Worst. I assure you this notion, unlike the unicorn, is true and real.

In the beginning, like your unicorn, postmodernism seemed new and fresh. You could find it in art, and literature and in philosophies as a way to perceive and dismantle claims that did not seem real.

Yet, as it aged, it became easily distracted, and its naughty sister, helped it become what you now call trolls. Before such quick distractions like Twitter and Snapchat, it danced through the years without the internet.

She uncovered the simple horrors of living. Yet now, sadly, skepticism ran back to a cave where most of us must look quite hard to spot her. Her ugliest sister then became a cynical picture of memes.

3.

Look into the forest for skepticism and her bright cousins, relativism, and truth. Know this too, myths derive from strong beliefs, yet in order for a myth to carry and evolve, it takes time.

Myths about hate find their way into your social escapes much more quickly than those of hope can. Hope, kindness and truth have a path much loopier than a straight-line rant.

Walk with hope. Walk with her. See faces. Smile back. Learn about a journey other than how to buy the latest fly kicks. Smell the air. Walk in the grass.

And once your frontal lobes have truly fused, please dig and toil to find the right places to create a solid idea of what you want to show our world.

4.

One cannot learn the history of a past president’s doings in brief posits written in short sentences that beg you to click on them because they have catchy and addicting titles.

You see, these quick articles penned themselves, almost. Their authors had to scale away most historically sound research because the Emperor with no Clothes made a fabricated claim about said president in history, and about a very serious and excruciatingly difficult thing called the civil war in America, which cannot be dissected in brief sentences on a site that you just found.

Instead, friends, seek the hidden dark corners, and look hard. Those bullet points beg readers to click them until the clicks become part of what one might consider independent thought.

Experts spend whole lives studying one topic. Please read. Please know who you are when you read. Please understand feeling odd and uncomfortable in life is an ongoing endeavor.

Show your pals, while you intern at that new start-up, that investigation is not knowledge. One must know where to study and how to proceed heavily like the most colossal giant might thrash through the sea.

5.

Read The Stranger by Camus. You will journey along with its protagonist, and once you finish the last page, you will wonder, but why?

You will not be able to locate a data driven-list of hyperbole to find the answer. In fact, there will be no clear answer to why at all, ever. That’s fine.

From the moment we’re born, we grow towards our death. How and why are questions you must ponder each time the sun rises. My friends, this is where the fun begins.

The best inventions never come from a fabrication or from hearsay. Instead, consider your heroes Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or the video game programmer of your most vivid and engaging dreams.

Each of them walked around and felt uncomfortable. They tried things that swamped their brains with tragedy and failure, and yet they plodded onward, with real legs and real feet.

A strong creation of any kind that lasts and exists to better our world, takes years of expert uncomfortableness and work. True innovators use the best tool anyone can ever access, their minds.

Your greatest present in the universe has been yours this whole time. Now, un-wrap your mind with fury. Unwrap the grit of your brains. Take a trip with thought. Risk thinking hard enough to fall from the sky. Thinking is your very own rocket.

6.

To summarize the famous essay “Famine, Affluence and Morality” written by the philosopher, Peter Singer, he states that happiness must include these three things for all people: a place to live, health care, and food.

In layman’s terms, Singer believes that utility is feasible for every individual person. He suggests that charity, in terms of morality, is not a choice.

He believes that wherever you are, if there are people nearby or a continent away, you are morally obligated to give enough to those lacking, without sacrificing your own shelter, health care or sustenance. A balance.

Now that your mind works at full-throttle, understand you are no longer children. Understand the saying “children are our future” is false. You are not anyone’s future but your own.

Now that you are wide open and soaring around, go back to histories, find the true horror of myths that structured terrible atrocities to humans just like you. Nobody chooses where they are born. Remember that. Nobody chooses where they are born.

7.

Learn stories from survivors in your community. Learn stories from survivors from war-torn countries. Learn them and try to grieve them too.

Once you know a bit about a lot, you are heading for your own supernova of invention. Once you care about the notion that hate and its futility cause grand gaps in the path of greatness, you can begin to invent a way for your very own rights.

You, the individual, can’t do this alone though. You will need large armies of analytical thinkers to help you create what your existence should be, and how your existence should be in relationship to equity.

The human adult body is said to be sixty percent water. Guess what? Each of you has the same guts. Use them.

Find those who research questions and still have little to offer in explanation. These are your journey-takers and innovators. These are your people.

They will be so very hard to find, though, because smart people never shout out to the world how terrific and great and huge their ideas are. Instead, they walk among the windy gullets, and down the dusty roads of smarts. They walk among us thinking all the while.

They study ideas from all scopes without making loud incantations on how easy life is to others. They sing the song of good. Innovators sing the freaking why out of life.

Make your minds an army of planets. Make the planets in your army discover a better universe. It will be yours. It will be hard.

8.

Nelson Mandela, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, Frida Kahlo, Jimmy Hendrix, David Bowie, Toni Morrison, The Wright Brothers, Misty Copeland, Haruki Murakami, your greatest mentor, your favorite muse, a teacher, an NBA player, the doctor who saved your brother’s life… all of these people… did not ever use a bullet point list to tell them how to think.

A life well pursued never draws anything from megalomania data-for-profit, or one sole trendy website. Life is not a straight line.

9.

Remember the sky. Look at the moon. The moon drives the tides. Ask why. Oh why. And then walk under these true enigmas in gratitude.

10.

Dear One, easy cannot be trusted. Instead trust the blasting blow of your furious quest of equity, and then blast hope into a million atoms of awesomeness in whatever you create. Sometimes toiling like this will cause you to suffer.

Know too, the only thing that cures grief is nothing. Blast on, then, Buddy. I think you’re ready.

Make contrails of smoke of this current society because when your future self does so, it will feel really great. So much better than a coffee full of colors. So much better than the second of satisfaction you get from a snide comment you make on social media.

Those fads are fads. Your life is not a fad or a myth. To truly live, then, walk into the woods. Trees live everywhere. Even in cities.

Better yet, head to a jungle you never knew existed. Fire onward like this, until all that you know and ever hoped for is the brightness of a dying star.