Kurai Extravaganza

Stubborn Aesthetics

At the moment the clock strickes twelve, my clothes will not turn to rags and my carriage will not return to it?s state of being but a mere pumkin. Not much will change for it is only a difference of a second. It is only a second, it is nothing. And yet, it is the end of an era, so to say. It is just a year, which is closed off, but a year exists out of many moments. Moments never to return to, places only to dwell in memories. The bridge is burnt but the road is not completely new. I?ll have to continue on the same road as I walked before.

But, I do not have to walk a path I do not wish to take. Each step I take forward creates new crossroades, each opportunity creates another path. And if the path seems endless, I might take the risk and do what I was always told not to and stray from the path, creating my own path where there was no road before.

In one of my favorite movies, Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabeth says to the earl of Essex "Princes never cheat, they simply have the rules altered to suit their needs". It expresses exactly the way life should be lived. Since I was a little girl, the king and queen have tried to hold me back by creating a thousand rules for me to obey to, which varied from the clothes and shoes I wear, which is a very unsignificant matter, to matters which have quite a lot more significance to me such as the study I wish to follow at a university. Now, when I was little, I did obey to those rules like a good girl, and I have to say it did not make me unhappy for it were quite reasonable rules. However, when I grew up, I grew weary of rules and being the stubborn teenage girl I was, I had to push the rules to see how far I could go. In the end, I concluded that breaking the rules certainly did not make me happier, but only would get me into trouble. Of course, would I simply have used some common sense, I would have known this before I even acted, but knowing myself, I probably still would have acted. But that is not the moral of this story. Now, I try to live by most of the rules which the king and queen created. I do not agree with all of them, for there are some quite silly rules amongst them, and I certainly will not let the king and queen decided about my life and I will not let them control it, but I do obey to the rules which make sense in my eyes.

Remain the rules which do not make sense. Well, there are times I try to explain my problems with these rules to my parents, but unfortunately, the king and queen listen beter to other people than to my when I try ot explain such a thing. However, this is not a big problem in most cases. You see, during the times I was stubborn and broke the rules, I learnt how to do things without the king and queen noticing and it are these techniques that I use to bend the rules as far as I can without breaking them. No rule, nor any law, is completely waterproof. There will always be mazes in them, small leaks which I use to glimp through them. As long as the rules do not get broken, no one will be able to punish them. And let?s admit it. This is the whole fun of rules, twisting and turning them until you get what you want. It is at least for me...

If things are not going like you wish to, try to bend the rules. If the road in front of you is endless and seems boring, take one step aside from the road and see what happens!

There is but one rule which I can not twist, nor bend: the wish of the king and queen for me to go to the RU, the university of Nijmegen, instead of the UM, the university of the city of Maastricht, which I would rather attend. And in fact, this is just an argument to prove whom is in charge. See, by letting me attend the UM, the king and queen would loose some of their power over me. Now, I do know they hold somewhat of a grudge against the UM, but I do not understand why. All I wanted in the first place was the freedom to decide for myself which university I will attend. But the more I hear about law school at the RU, the less I want to go there. The more I get pressured to go to the RU, the more my dislike grows. I haven?t lost an inch of my stubbornness. The point of pressuring me is to make me do what they want but by doing so, my parents only make me make the exact opposite choice.

I do know that the king and queen think I only want to go to the university of Maastricht because I want to live on my own - or actually, because I wish to leave the palace - but that is not the point. I do wish to leave the palace, but it is not my reason for wanting to attend the UM. See, the UM works with the so-called PGO system which can be translated as Problem Orientated Education, and although the queen firmly dislikes it, I think that - opposite of what my parents think of it - it might work for me. I am a person for books, but at the same time, I need to discuss it with other people. I do not like a teacher who stands in front of an auditorium and simply does tell me everything. I am not some sort of cow! I want to work with what I find in the books, and rather now than in three years.

I understand it is a silly reason, but my English lacks of words to explain my exact reasons, and I?m quite sure no one is very interested in them so it does not matter in the first place anyway.

Will I study at the UM at all in the end? I have no idea. Maybe I will agree with the king and queen in the end anyway and attend the RU, but I wish to make my decision out of free will, without being pressured, and based on arguments instead of the likes, dislikes and wishes of my parents. It is my life and I do not want to make the wrong choice, but at the same time, I wish to decide about it myself. And I do not think it is that strange...