Your spouse doesn’t belong to you. Your child doesn’t belong to you. Your best friend doesn’t belong to you. Your job doesn’t belong to you. Your business doesn’t belong to you. Your family doesn’t belong to you. Even the body that you live in doesn’t belong to you. The sooner we understand that nothing that we call our own belongs to us, the sooner whatever worries we may have will be eliminated. By taking a deeper look at the root of all the pain and struggles of humanity, one begins to realize that all of it is a direct result of our attempts to hold on to that which we feel we own. Our strong identification with and attachment to people, physical objects, ideas, and beliefs and seeing those external things as parts of us is the true cause of our misery. When we lose the possession of those external things, we feel as if parts of us were missing, leading to the feeling of extreme unhappiness, depression, and sometimes even the desire to end our life. But I have good news for you: From the time you were born, you have been whole. Even though you were born completely naked, with no clothes on your body, without friends, without a job, without money, sometimes even with no limbs, you were born completely whole. Wholeness is your original state that no external force can alter. When you lose a dear family member, you remain whole. When your long-term relationship or marriage falls apart, you remain whole. When you lose your best friend, you remain whole. When you lose a job that you worked in for many years, you remain whole. When you lose a business that you have built from scratch, you remain whole. When you lose a fortune that you worked so hard to earn, you remain whole. When you lose a status that you have worked so hard to build, you remain whole. When you lose an arm or leg, you remain whole. When you lose an argument, you remain whole. As soon as you come to a realization that nothing that you have claimed the ownership of was ever really yours, a great sense of peace will take over your entire being. You are truly whole regardless of whatever event takes place in your life. That doesn’t mean however that you should take for granted all of the beautiful things that are in your life: the loving and caring people that may surround you, the beautiful home that you may live in, the luxurious car that you may drive, the great material wealth that you may have accumulated, or the healthy body and mind that you may have been blessed with. On the contrary, appreciate them! Enjoy them! Be thankful for them! Give thanks! But do so without claiming ownership of any of the aforementioned and you shall not suffer when you can no longer enjoy them. Nothing in life is permanent. Nothing comes to stay. Everything, whether good or bad, comes to pass. It is a Universal Law. So, show plenty of gratitude and appreciation for all the blessings in your life but at the same time, don’t try to hold on to them during their departure. Once we accept the fact that nothing belongs to us, the whole of existence will belong to us. Once we stop chasing things, things naturally will come to us. To live life in such a way is to live in the state of constant happiness and eternal bliss.
BY AKIN OLOKUN
In preparation of the Yeezy Season 2 presentation tomorrow, the 38-year-old rapper/designer made sure to provide each of his models a non-disclosure form. Not a complete shocker considering how secretive he’s been about the show’s details; however, some of the models claim his conditions are insane.
According to the Mirror, the form bans all Yeezy Season 2 models from discussing him, his wife Kim, or any other member of the Kardashian family. If they do open their mouths, they could face a hefty lawsuit.
“Kanye’s hacked off some really high-profile models by asking them to sign the agreement, particularly because it stated that he could sue them for up to $10 million if they spoke out about him,” a source told the Mirror. “It’s a ridiculous amount and some models flat out refused […] He’s not considered a great talent—everyone knows his show is just a media frenzy, so some girls would rather not be associated with him.”
Julien Mauve
Greetings From Mars
2015
In 1492, Christopher Columbus discovered America. Less than 500 years later, it has become a common touristic destination for wealthy people from every part of the world. What remains of the Wild West has now been transformed into National Park where people can quietly enjoy breathtaking landscapes.
Unknown worlds are now located far from Earth and our most famous explorer is a robot. "Curiosity" is the Christopher Columbus of our century, crawling the surface of Mars, searching for clues and information about its past. As with the Wild West, we could imagine a point where Mars would become a touristic destination for people to visit and experience. NASA and SpaceX are already working on it and if no catastrophic event happen, in less than 50 years, humans will walk on Mars.
I have always wondered what it would be like to discover a totally different world, lifeless, full of wild landscapes and to photograph it for the first time as if I was Ansel Adams. So I came up with this project, which is about space exploration and discovery. But it's also about our behavior in front of landscapes and how we create pictures that will share our personal story with the world. In every spots I stopped, carefully chosen for their similarities with the red planet, I imitated stereotypical tourist poses. It's interesting to observe the way we act in front of the camera, how we include ourselves in the landscapes, how those landscapes trigger the desire to affirm our presence. And how the way we take pictures exposes the vanity involved in our endless pursuit of self-definition.
Some years ago, taking pictures of landscapes was enough. And we were not able to share them before we came back home. Today we have added ourselves on the pictures. Our faces are everywhere. We share everything instantly; we feel the need to do it. The connection is permanent and the experience becomes different. With Internet available everywhere, there is no "being-far-away" anymore. So we might ask ourselves, do we travel to discover new places, change of scene, new cultures, or do we travel to look for pictures of ourselves and to prove that we exist?
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