Begin, beat, become. Become, begin, beat. The caterpillar became a butterfly. The butterfly beat its wings. At the pit of descendance, the wings instantaneously began their journey upward.

Irregular verbs. Born in Old English, these words disturb the pattern of the modern English language. Nonetheless, I need to express when, or how, or where, or in what manner I became something. So decidedly, these troubling verbs remain, reminding our poor creators of the insecurities in their patterns.

Awake, awoke, awoken. I am awake. I awoke in time for breakfast. Awoken by their mindless conversation, I shut my door.

We agree on the insecurities and let them stay. We learn to manipulate them and find something good to say. Or, we never learn them, because we were not taught or we were taught and we still found it too difficult.

Words are your greatest tool in becoming. But to become you must be open to learning new words. Seeing how these words become mirrors and windows to you. People are both the creators and creation of words, the role models and imitators.

A mixture of active engagement and passive avoidance characterize each person's academic career. Nevertheless, we are all impressions of the many stamps stacked from kindergarten to higher education, and beyond. These impressions are bent and bevelled as we are exposed to people, places, and things. This is why a waitress with strong wit and soft eyes might remind you of Elizabeth. Or, you cannot walk through an art museum without thinking of Don Quixote; a sheet of cookies redirects your mind to If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I shift toward literature, because if you do not know by now, I really, really care about literature.

If you are concerned with digging out the insecurities in yourself, your leaders, your governing policies and procedures, your family… read more books. If you think your Dean or your Governor or your President chews up issues and spits them out specifically to keep you in the dark about the truth of conflict, read more books. In analyzing words, you armor yourself with rare weapons - a defense against manipulation and patronization. When you can understand it, you can change it, but only then. Let me put it this way, everyone sounds foolish juxtaposed against literary giants past and present; you will learn, not out of external requirement but of internal necessity, to question everything.

Every single slab of content you scan has indefinitely been crafted for you by people who spend more time researching on how you might respond than the actual writing process or speech formulation. Discussions involving critical media training often direct you to other modern media sources. Ironic, isn't it? Surely, the latter could not be endorsed by the former.

If you are truly concerned with filtering what is being said and what is being said… Read. More. Books. As a society, we have produced hesitancy toward the validity of literature.

Go exactly where public figures, social medias, and publications, each with their beautiful hidden agenda, have not asked you to.