Generation Education: Little Interviews for Big Thoughts With My Sibling, Tutor, and All Those in Between
There is nothing I love more than a late night conversation over a Saturday night campfire. The garden fairy lights are on, our wine glasses empty, and my dad and I are fighting over who gets to choose the next song from our “faves” playlist. As we sit comfortably poised on beanbags on the grass and stare at the stars, we delve into deep conversation.
I love a fuzzy minded discussion about family in the early hours of boxing day morning. You know, when your grandad has fallen asleep during Trivial Pursuit and your mum is on her fifth Baileys. I love staying up with my friends at a sleepover, even at nineteen years old, talking about love and life, dreams and ambitions. At 2 am, we all get our second wind of energy and decide to tell each other secrets and memories, even ones we’ve heard a million times before. We listen intently, as though hearing them for the first time, because we love that feeling of intimacy.
Some mornings I see Georgia in her favourite chair in the kitchen (the one by the window because she is nosey like me and watches people up and down the path) starting her day with a journal entry. The curiosity in me wants to know where her mind takes her when it is free to delve into the secrecy of those journal pages. I would love to climb into the mind of my loved ones and see their true, vulnerable thoughts: what they think about themselves and how they see the world.
I believe that the meaning of life is to embrace new experiences, meet people, share stories and learn from each other. Inspired by this, I asked a group of people the questions I would normally only ever detail my answers to in the confines of my journal. The group consisted of a parent, a flat mate, a mature student in one of my classes, and a PILOT writer. A group of boys, girls, teens, and adults from a range of cultures and backgrounds. A group which holds a myriad of different stories. What they chose to share could be as vague or personal as they liked. This experiment allowed me to pay homage to the people around me and my influences, and allows you, as the reader, to peek inside some diaristic thoughts from real people.
When are you your most authentic self?
When doing yoga, settling down to sleep, or with my family.
Alone.
When I’m singing along to music that I really love and makes me feel good, just dancing freely and enjoying myself.
When I’m with the closest people to me and don’t have to try too hard to think about something to talk about; something just comes to my mind and I can say that thought without fear of judgement or ridicule.
When I am with my best friend. I can be myself around him. With some other friends, I feel like I put on a front without even knowing it half the time. Around my family, I feel like I need to be reserved and more respectful.
I'm the most authentic version of myself when I'm working on something I love. When I'm designing or writing is when I feel most at one with myself.
Whenever I’m with the people I love and feel comfortable with.
What do you love about the everyday?
I love waking up early, when the sun is shining in through my window. I love having tea or coffee while I am reading, writing or doing something academic. I love that feeling of accomplishment after a workout. I love watching a good series or film before bed.
Waking up.
Possibilities.
Thinking back on my day and finding something that I can appreciate that day for, or something that made me smile. I love my own personal routines and looking out an open window watching the sky and the world go by, something that is always there every day.
I love being lucky enough to wake up for another day on the earth.
I love that you can learn new things and find new hobbies. I also love the different sunrises and sunsets; they are beautiful.
What advice would you tell your younger or older self?
You do not need to be good at art to create art.
Don’t worry about things you cannot change.
Be present in the moment. This sun will rise and fall tomorrow regardless. Don’t let the head story become the whole story. Learn to release emotions appropriately -- it’s good to feel deeply.
I’d tell my younger self to stop ignoring what you love, which is to learn.
To my younger self, please, please just be yourself. There is nothing wrong with who you are or what you like. Join in more, speak up on your likes more, get into better routines. To my older self, I hope we’ve learnt to be less nostalgic and to be less focused on how things now will look in the future, and to just live in the moment. Stop feeling guilty about things.
Take one day at a time. Not everything is personal. Romanticise everything in life, because the time you have to be naive and make silly mistakes comes to an end way quicker than you think.
What is your pipe dream (a dream that you have but feels unrealistic)?
To host a music festival.
To live eternal life.
To have no bills and loads of time to explore the world.
That everyone everywhere can live in peace, love, and harmony, with each other and with nature.
Everything is realistic so I can't answer that, I believe you can honestly do anything. To be an established artist would be nice.
My dream ultimately, is to make a difference and change the world. I know it’s cliché and what everyone says, but I've always felt that I have a higher purpose, in the least hippy dippy, self-centred way possible.
To have a big house with a lot of books and novels.
What other dreams, desires or goals do you have?
Be happy and healthy.
I am looking forward to big family holidays with my kids, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. Big family get-togethers: roast dinners, BBQ’s and Christmas.
To live a happy, kind life. To be satisfied with the life I am living.
To read and obtain as much knowledge as I physically can before I die.
To be a published author. I would like to write for a living.
My biggest dream is to be a mum. I want to have children and raise them in a happy, loving environment where they’re nurtured and can grow into the people they want to be. My biggest goal is to have a lifestyle where I can raise children and have a happy family and life.
To be happy. Happiness to me would mean being in a job that I enjoy, being surrounded by people I love and who radiate positivity, being financially stable and as cheesy as it sounds, being just as in love with my boyfriend as I am now, if not more
I just want to create -- to create beautiful things that can make people think and relate to, and to give people an escape through my design work or writing.
Other dreams that I have are to travel the world and to be successful in life so I can help out whenever my parents need help.
What is your story?
My story probably derives from my travel memories. I consider them the interesting and memorable parts of my life. I am extremely close to my family and everyone around me knows that I am a real family girl.
A broken home that has made me the person I am. I am not very educated, but I have common sense. I will do anything for anyone, if it’s in my power. I always wanted to be a teacher. I am so lucky to be able to do a job I love.
I don’t necessarily think I have a story, or at least I don’t know it just yet. As cliche as it sounds, I think I’m in the middle of my story right now, and I won’t know what the story will be until I’ve lived through it.
On our wedding day, we got married in Cyprus and it was a beautiful day. After the ceremony in a small village courtyard and all the photos in the midday heat we all got changed into our swimming stuff and spent a few hours in and around the pool. That evening a chef cooked us steak at our table. The best part of the day was sharing it with our children. Doesn’t that sound like a perfect day?
Retired, well travelled people-person. Wife, mother, daughter in law, good friend to wide circle of friends. Carer, yoga practitioner, tennis-playing, green, politically minded hippy feminist who is undefined by fashion and likes to sing, dance, and puff occasionally, and will recycle and up cycle until her dying day.
My parents divorced when I was three and I'm an only child, but I have a huge extended family. I've always craved to be close to people, I have always wanted a best friend and to have great relationships with family and friends. I was always very insecure but very creative and emotional.
My story is moving away from my birth country to a whole different country with my mum and my brother, letting go of all the stuff that happened to us for years and then trying to find myself and accept the fact that I went through so much just to get where I am.
Do you think there is a meaning to life?
I think the meaning of life is to create your own story and you do this by having different experiences, and different experiences tend to come from meeting people and discovering places. When I have my own children I would love to be able to tell them about all the things I have achieved and done.
Not sure.
Meaning of life...enjoy everyday, and love those that love you.
No, absolutely not -- I see our only purpose as to connect and be kind and preserve this wonderful experience on this beautiful planet for future generations.
Unlikely. As humans we just like to think we are a lot more special than we truly are and want to believe that there's this great deeper meaning so that we don’t feel insignificant and so that we feel we hold some value in the universe.
I think the meaning of life is dependent on the individual. I’d say everyone has their own view of what makes life life. For me, the meaning of life is to love and be loved, by yourself and by others, and to find something that makes you happy, no matter what it is.
To be the best version of yourself and treat every day like a new challenge.
I think that the meaning of life is love. I think we were put on this earth to love. To love people, for people to love us. Love, to me, means so many different things. It can mean hope, it can mean happiness. It can be the difference between life and death. Nothing else really makes sense to me as a reason for humans to exist, because ultimately we exist to feel, and life doesn't make sense without love. I'm not a religious person at all, but I believe in the universe and spirituality so much.
It has been a while since I wrote this article. I couldn’t tell you the exact date I started it, but it has been well over six months. And a lot can change in six months. I do not speak to some of the people I interviewed anymore, and I have new, far more important people in my life. I also find myself thinking about some of the questions differently, but my obsession with people remains. This research became the starting point for a university assignment on appreciating personal stories, memories and valuing the art of the everyday because of its individuality. Now, I am working on writing short fiction pieces inspired by people I see and find interesting. I write this sitting on a coffee shop roof terrace, watching people eat breakfast below me. A lady in a fluffy zebra print coat, smothering jam on a slice of toast. A blond girl smoking a cigarette. Empty plates and coffee-stained mugs signalling the end of a conversation as they leave and start walking and talking, moving onto the next subject. I wonder what they would say if I asked them the above questions, and how that would change in the next six months.