Freestyle Academy proudly presents

The 3rd Path: A Junior Self-Portrait Diptych by Eric Bohrer (2011)

I Am. I am ashamed and doubtful. I wonder what difference anything actually makes. I hear the din of conflict. I see a way out. I want to escape. I am ashamed and doubtful. I pretend I can ignore it all. I feel it more than anyone realizes. I touch the ground, feet first. I worry that life is moving too fast. I cry that I may miss my chance. I am ashamed and doubtful. I understand that I may not matter. I say I don't care. I dream of somewhere else, but then I wake up. I try to ignore all that is wrong. I hope I can escape. I am ashamed and doubtful. I am ashamed of our past, I am doubtful of our future. The first line of my poem captures this sentiment, a feeling I direct towards humanity in general, perfectly. The rest of the first stanza describes this idea further. Basically, I am trying to show how I have always lived life feeling like everything could be better, but time and time again I see our species failing to make the world a better place. In fact, I've noticed more regression than progression. Everyone is categorized into groups and parties, as if there were a series of mysterious forks in the road of life, and your whole life is decided by which path you take. It seems that everyone who chooses one path has to unconditionally hate everyone who chooses the other path. It's a ridiculously strange way of life which only seems to result in disagreement. I've always wished that everyone would just ignore each other, ignore the forks in the road, and just walk. I believe that if we all stopped worrying about each other and focused on finding our own path, any and all conflict would be unnecessary. In the rest of the poem, I describe my more personal doubts, specifically, whether or not I will be able to look back on my life and think ''yeah man, that ruled''. I realize that it is impossible to know whether or not you could've lived a better life, and instead of dwelling on this and worrying whether or not I chose the right path, I just want to make it through without letting everyone else's problems get to me. ''NOPE'' is probably the only word of our language that can accurately sum up my mentality towards life. Politics? Nope. Pop culture? Nope. World Issues? Nope. I'll walk the other way. I'm just here for the experience.
Visitors 1050