Recently, in the past year, since my third traumatic brain surgery due to my childhood diagnosis of brain cancer, I have struggled to find my true ikigai. The reasons for this are mainly based on the fact that my talents and skills usually cannot be formulated into a cohesive pattern that fits into society as a whole. In hopes of rectifying this issue, I decided to go above and beyond what most childhood oncology patients could achieve and attempt to get my communications degree, and after a grueling 6 years (and two craniotomies) later, I finally fought through my rhetorical professors' theories enough to get my BA in Communications; all while feeling severely ostracized by many of my instructors.

I have come to realize through this grueling process of liberal studies that the thin veil of what we call liberalism is far from liberating. Keep in mind, I say this as someone who was told that the answer to my problems would be to go after the "privileged individuals," however, when I asked who the "privileged individuals" were, I got a very mixed response that failed to acknowledge the humanity in those the given speaker was referring to. They tried to frame in a manner first described by Paulo Freire, in his collegiately sought after book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed; however, that led to more dehumanization by "the moral humanitarians" because they refused to acknowledge the humanitarian struggles of those individuals. Thus, turning their theories of valuing the struggle of humanity meaningless.

Alternatively I have come to a new understanding of how to deal with these major societal issues that harkens back to message that the modern "progressive movement," has pretty much out right rejected. It was and is technically the message they preach about constantly, however because the viewpoint they have adopted (The Oppressor vs. The Oppressed dichotomy); it (at least from my perspective as childhood cancer patient) has been severely corrupted. To explain this this theology I have tried very hard to describe the struggles that I face on the daily. Most of them have been shouted out to deaf ears of those I refer to as regressives, for that fact that their ideology basically ends with the same result of the people they criticize or rebuke. Commonly self referring to themselves as progressives, these individuals use the dichotomy explained in the paragraph above; fail to comprehend the difference society we would have if chose to focus on the individual rather than the group. I based this switch of mindset upon how, in a historical context, treating people as groups has turned out. Yes, aas humans it is beneficial to have a group to support you, however in the imperfect tendencies, we as humans make, this has a high propensity to fail under unique circumstances.

A lot of times it's when these support groups get to big....this is why the evidence suggests that each individual needs a village of support behind them, while this is true to certain extent, it also takes a lot of tenacity on the individuals to get through traumatic events. Aristotle was once quoted as saying, "the whole is equal to or greater than the sum of its' parts," so in times of true struggle it only makes sense that it is appropriate that we try to be our best selves when faced with life struggles.