Fyisa

Fyisa is a man from Africa. He moved here, to America, many years ago when he was young. He's a smart and wise man, who has realized many things about life that I couldn't at first understand. When I first met him, I was 14 and in a dorm room with three other guys. He ran through the door and told me the greatest Hendonist inspired realization that I've came to understand. He told me that we only live once and the one thing that we need to do from beginning to end is enjoy ourselves and worry less about the small things. That we need to get as many friends as we can and as few enemies as possible. Live for our own happiness through making others happy. We must wake up every morning and decide what needs to be done and do what we want with out another person trying to hurt our happiness. That we must learn to accept all those who are here and appease everyone.

His thoughts stay with me today and grow. Fyisa would always be singing and telling stories about himself and life in general. He proposed many theories and among them, my favorite is his thoughts on clothing. He told me one day that he wished everyone was naked all the time. I kinda just sat there in the class room a little dazed and asked him why. He told me that if everyone was naked, there would be nothing to hide and fetishes would become extinct and people could only judge each other on what's there, not by what is not, like makeup or flashy clothes. People couldn't judge others harshly on appearance, because their physical flaws were visible. At first, yes it would be uncomfortable but, with time, it wouldn't be that big of a deal as everyone walked around with out their self-conscience mind controlling them to be who they were not. With time, no one would care about each other's appearance and rather, just judge others mentally.

I thought that this made no sense what so ever. Why would being nude make men any less sex-oriented. How would that change anything? Wouldn't this just make it impossible for some people to be happy, because their flaws were right there seen by all? I didn't know what to think, but i just knew that he just said what he thought.

Recently, this point was made up again as my language class; favorite author, David Sedaris, wrote in his book, Naked, about when he visited a nudist colony for a week. My friend made me read this article and I was very nostalgic as Mr. Sedaris pulled my thoughts to his time spent naked with the elderly (mainly). It reminded me of the African I knew, whose ideology was remarkably the same as the people who lived at the colony. I found it odd, how a these two related.

Even as I wondered if he was just using the same words as David Sedaris, I realized that no, Fyisa's thoughts went deeper and explored a much larger view of humanity. He was not just the guy who wanted to be naked, he was the guy who wanted to make others happy and wanted to end secrecy and hate. To this day, I'm sure Fyisa is just living to be happy for others, which makes me happy, because, I know that through him, others are too.